Blog Archives

Plays and playmaking, Mark Houlahan

Performing Dramaturgy Fiona Graham Playmarket, $40.00, ISBN 9780908607648 Floating Islanders: Pasifika Theatre in Aotearoa Lisa Warrington and David O’Donnell ISBN 9781988531076 Dawn Raids Oscar Kightley Playmarket, $18.00, ISBN 97809080607631 “What is a dramaturg?” I overheard that question earlier this year…
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Posted in Art, Literature, Non-fiction, Pacific, Plays, Review

Connecting kindred tribes, David Eggleton

Black Marks on the White Page Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makereti (eds) Penguin Random House, $40.00, ISBN 9780143770299 Billed as a guidebook to the contemporary literature of Oceania, Black Marks on the White Page is not quite that; it’s too…
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Posted in Art, Literature, Māori, Non-fiction, Pacific, Short stories

Development journalism, Alex Perrottet

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific David Robie Little Island Press ISBN 9781877484254 It’s easy to read a book written by a journalist, especially if it covers wars, environmental disasters, independence struggles, and…
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Posted in Media, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review

Pacific art on the world stage, Ian Lochhead

Art in Oceania: A New History  Peter Brunt and Nicholas Thomas (eds) Thames and Hudson, $130.00, ISBN 9780500239018 When New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) opened its landmark exhibition Arts of the South Seas in 1946, the war in…
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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review

Erratic humanity, Roger Blackley

Nerli: An Italian Painter in the South Pacific Michael Dunn Auckland University Press, $79.99, ISBN I869403355 According to the traditional mythology of New Zealand art, the annus mirabilis of 1890 heralds the arrival of professionalism and modernism in the figures…
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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review

A spirit intense and rare, Doug Munro

Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings ed Roger Robinson Streamline, $34.95, ISBN 0958210624 Everyone knows about Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), described by a contemporary as “a spirit intense and rare” and immortalised by Samoans as Tusitala (the teller of…
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Posted in Literature, Pacific, Review

Rediscovering the great white discoverer, Jock Phillips

The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas Anne Salmond Allen Lane, $59.95, ISBN 0713996617 I will not forget reading Anne Salmond’s Two Worlds. I was on holiday at Tolaga Bay. Between walks to Cook’s Cove…
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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review

Wish you were here, Jane Westaway

On Blue Ice – A Not Very Brave Journey to Antarctica Kim Griggs Random House, $26.95, ISBN 1869415760 Travels with my Mother Peter Calder Tandem, $29.95, ISBN 1877298093 The most memorable travel books don’t merely transport you to foreign parts,…
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Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review

Art as survival, David Eggleton

Pacific Art Niu Sila: the Pacific Dimension of Contemporary New Zealand Arts  ed Sean Mallon and Pandora Fulimalo Pereira Te Papa Press,$49.95, ISBN 0909010838 Robert Louis Stevenson, writing about Samoan culture over a century ago, expressed it thus: No occasion…
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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review

Rain Queen, Judith Fyfe

Salote, Queen of Paradise  Margaret Hixon Otago University Press, $49.95, ISBN 1877133787 The image of Queen Salote, in London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in June 1953 – defiantly riding in an open coach in the pouring rain, and…
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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review
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