A quiz by Harry Ricketts and Hugh Roberts
Summer’s here and we thought you might enjoy a diversion. We started out with an orthodox quiz (“who wrote…?”) but then we decided that the only thing more tedious than being asked questions to which you already know the answer is being asked questions to which you don’t know the answer.
So here’s a self-esteem-safe quiz, to which all responses are guaranteed correct. We hope that these will prompt suitably desultory conversation lying in the sun on the lawn. There’s a year’s free subscription for the best overall set of answers sent to New Zealand Books, Peppercorn Press, P O Box 6341, Wellington by 31 January 1998. The best answers will be published in due course.
1. Allen Curnow’s rigorous pruning of the “canon” in his Caxton anthology earned him the description, “a bouncer at the doorway of New Zealand poetry”. Can you think of a similar phrase to describe Jenny Bornholdt, Greg O’Brien and Mark Williams in their role as editors of the recent Oxford Anthology of New Zealand Poetry?
2. If James K Baxter could be described as the Norman Kirk of New Zealand literature who is (a) the Winston Peters (b) the Jim Bolger (c) the Helen Clark?
3. Hugh Templeton called his political memoirs All Honourable Men. What will be the title of (a) Alamein Kopu’s, (b) Michael Laws’, (c) Tukoroirangi Morgan’s?
4. If you were selecting a New Zealand Literary rugby or netball team, who would you put in the following positions?
Rugby Netball
Hooker Goal-Defence
Halfback Centre
First five-eighth Goal-Shoot
5. Suppose Television New Zealand is to make a documentary about the health system. It wants the title to be drawn from the work of a New Zealand author (possibly with slight alterations). What would you suggest?
6. Suggest possible first drafts for thse lines
And quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The Magpies said. — Denis Glover
Not I, some child, born in a marvellous year,
Will learn the trick of standing upright here. — Allen Curnow
For though I cannot love you,
Yet, heavy, deep, and far,
Your tide of love comes swinging,
Too swift for me to bar. — Eileen Duggan
Summer diversion
A quiz by Harry Ricketts and Hugh Roberts
Summer’s here and we thought you might enjoy a diversion. We started out with an orthodox quiz (“who wrote…?”) but then we decided that the only thing more tedious than being asked questions to which you already know the answer is being asked questions to which you don’t know the answer.
So here’s a self-esteem-safe quiz, to which all responses are guaranteed correct. We hope that these will prompt suitably desultory conversation lying in the sun on the lawn. There’s a year’s free subscription for the best overall set of answers sent to New Zealand Books, Peppercorn Press, P O Box 6341, Wellington by 31 January 1998. The best answers will be published in due course.
1. Allen Curnow’s rigorous pruning of the “canon” in his Caxton anthology earned him the description, “a bouncer at the doorway of New Zealand poetry”. Can you think of a similar phrase to describe Jenny Bornholdt, Greg O’Brien and Mark Williams in their role as editors of the recent Oxford Anthology of New Zealand Poetry?
2. If James K Baxter could be described as the Norman Kirk of New Zealand literature who is (a) the Winston Peters (b) the Jim Bolger (c) the Helen Clark?
3. Hugh Templeton called his political memoirs All Honourable Men. What will be the title of (a) Alamein Kopu’s, (b) Michael Laws’, (c) Tukoroirangi Morgan’s?
4. If you were selecting a New Zealand Literary rugby or netball team, who would you put in the following positions?
Rugby Netball
Hooker Goal-Defence
Halfback Centre
First five-eighth Goal-Shoot
5. Suppose Television New Zealand is to make a documentary about the health system. It wants the title to be drawn from the work of a New Zealand author (possibly with slight alterations). What would you suggest?
6. Suggest possible first drafts for thse lines
And quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
The Magpies said. — Denis Glover
Not I, some child, born in a marvellous year, Will learn the trick of standing upright here. — Allen Curnow
For though I cannot love you,
Yet, heavy, deep, and far,
Your tide of love comes swinging,
Too swift for me to bar. — Eileen Duggan
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