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Editorial – Issue 29

All our own words Carnie, cask wine, cabbage tree, camp oven, canary (no, not the bird), Captain Cooker, CHE, chillybin, Chinese gooseberry, Cobb and Co, cockabully, coconut (no, not the fruit), colonial goose, continuance (as in national continuance), coprosma, corner…
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Posted in Comment

With more to be said, Alan Riach

Atua Wera Kendrick Smithyman Auckland University Press, $34.95, ISBN 1 86940 157 3 A cynical critic, if asked whether Atua Wera should be described as Kendrick Smithyman’s masterpiece and one of New Zealand’s major poems, might reply like the Frenchman…
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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

And so what? Jane Stafford

Blue Blood Stevan Eldred-Grigg Penguin, $24.95, ISBN 0 140 26484 1 It is not often that literary affairs are featured on TV1’s Holmes Show but Stevan Eldred-Grigg’s novel Blue Blood was the focus of a lively if rather inconclusive discussion…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

A chance for scrutiny missed, Tom Brooking

Land and Water: Water and Soil Conservation and Central Government in New Zealand 1941-1988 Michael Roche Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, $24.95, ISBN 0 477 05691 1 Visiting American academics are intrigued by the over-confident manner with which New…
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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

Re-charting our child myth, Heather Murray

Boy Overboard by Peter Wells Vintage New Zealand, $24.95, ISBN 1 86941 319 9 Boy Overboard is a great novel. It is a work which will resonate for many a year, and become as important a marker of growing up…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Celts, Oracles and crystals, Paul Morris

Celebrating the Southern Seasons: Rituals for Aotearoa Juliet Batten Tandem Press, $29.95, ISBN 0 90884 54 0 The Oracle Speaks: Breakthroughs for Humanity The Oracle Oracle Publications, $29.95, ISBN 0 9648443 0 3 Our experience is increasingly shaped by a…
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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

After Adorno, John Newton

Critical Theory, Poststructuralism & the Social Context eds Michael Peters, Wayne Hope, James Marshall and Steven Webster Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 0 86469 233 1 Our culture’s aversion to theory is a theme which has been rehearsed numerous times. My…
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Posted in Literature, Review

Poem – Jan Hutchison

Languages                   for Aniwaniwa, aged 16 months When I come to this place past the yellow irises and red harakeke flowers, the current of two languages pulls me through your gate. Kia ora! Kei te pehea koe? my daughter asks. Hullo!…
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Posted in Poem

Finding space

We go to considerable lengths to review as many as practicable of the books published each year. However, for several reasons we cannot review all of them. The foremost reason is that we must be able to justify the review…
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Posted in Comment

Obscurity v the life principle, Kim Worthington

Envoy Alan Loney and Mark Wills Puriri Press, $28.00, ISBN 0 908943 13 x On Virgin Skin Gay Linden Sandpiper Press, $19.95, ISBN 0 473 04187 1 Before the Divorce We Go to Disneyland Diane Brown Tandem Press, $24.95, ISBN…
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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
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