And So It Is Vincent O’Sullivan Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 97817765650592 Fits and Starts Andrew Johnston Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 97817765650592 “There is”: for the last two decades these words have been the key note of Vincent O’Sullivan’s…
Being Here: Selected Poems
Vincent O’Sullivan
Victoria University Press, $40.00
ISBN 9780864739315
Let the Writer Stand
Judith Dell Panny
Steele Roberts, $30.00
ISBN 9781927242803
Vincent O’Sullivan is a writer of such prodigious gifts that the Collected Poems I can’t be alone in longing for simply isn’t feasible. In the time such an edition would take to assemble, O’Sullivan would have written another collection or two. Just as the ironic, intellectual and psychological positions of his writing routinely pre-empt and outdistance critical responses, so too his extraordinary rate of production, not only in poetry, is ceaselessly speeding away from us. So this wonderful selection, Being Here, the first attempt to showcase his whole work in poetry since the 1992 Selected Poems, will have to do for now.
Grahame Sydney Paintings 1974-2014
Grahame Sydney (essay by Vincent O’Sullivan)
Craig Potton, $100.00,
ISBN 9781927213254
Myself, Looking Back is Grahame Sydney’s extensive memoir of his childhood and formative artistic years up until his sell-out solo exhibition in 1975. Early on in this detailed and reflective piece, Sydney’s boyhood self asks: “Weren’t all lives like ours?” This question is rhetorical and it hits the right elegiac note, but ultimately the answer is no.
Us, Then Vincent O’Sullivan Victoria University Press, $28.00, ISBN 9780867438929 The Lifeguard: Poems 2008-20013 Ian Wedde Auckland University Press, $28.00, ISBN 9781869407698 Life and Customs Bernadette Hall Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9780864739001 “But at my back I always hear…
Speaking Frankly: The Frank Sargeson Memorial Lectures 2003-2010 Sarah Shieff (ed) Cape Catley, $31.99, ISBN 9781877340277 Celebrating Katherine Mansfield: A Centenary Volume of Essays Gerri Kimber and Janet Wilson (eds) Palgrave Macmillan, $162.00, ISBN 9780230277731 It was a…
The Movie May Be Slightly Different Vincent O’Sullivan Victoria University Press, $30.00, ISBN 97800864736437 Adorno’s term for those last, wild works of Beethoven’s was “late style”, describing a maturity that is for the most part not round, but furrowed…
Dear Charles Dear Janet: Frame and Brasch in Correspondence Pamela Gordon and Denis Harold (eds) Holloway Press, $250.00, ISBN 9780986461804 As I’ve thought before about the Holloway Press, it’s a tricky business to bring out works of deliberately…
Further Convictions Pending: Poems 1998-2008 Vincent O’Sullivan Victoria University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9780864736062 In “Being here”, the first of the 44 new poems in this generous book, Vincent O’Sullivan states explicitly for the first time an important position: It has…