Blog Archives

Invaluable taonga, Paul Wolffram

Nga Moteatea: The Songs, Part 4: Collected by Apirana Ngata, translated by Hirini Moko Mead Jenifer Curnow and Jane McRae (eds)  Auckland University Press, $22.50,  ISBN 9781869403867  This is the final instalment in the series of Nga Moteatea: The Songs,

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Posted in Māori, Music, Non-fiction

Absolutely commercially, Jenny Robin Jones

Logan Campbell’s Auckland: Tales from the Early Years R C J Stone Auckland University Press, $45.00,  ISBN 9781869403935 Wellington: Biography of a City Redmer Yska Reed, $44.99, ISBN 0790011077 Auckland illuminated through stories of the past; Wellington reconstructed through careful

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

No ordinary son, Janet Hunt and Michael Morrissey

Biographer Janet Hunt and writer Michael Morrissey attend Hone Tuwhare’s tangi.   In death, seen obliquely as he lay on the satin bed of his coffin, he was not himself. Oh, it was Tuwhare all right: there was the familiar

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Comment

Spot on the sun, David Hill

The Transit of Venus Marilyn Head (ed) Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 978095826972 A few years back, I had to review a self-published New Zealand novel. It was seriously rotten, and I wrote that it “tried to be bad, bold and

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Science

Man listening to God, Gregory O’Brien

Gregory O’Brien follows the comet-like trajectory of Karlheinz Stockhausen through the sky above Dannevirke. Early last December, I was up a ladder at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery overseeing the installation of a vast sculptural work by Elizabeth Thomson. This

See more ›

Tagged with: , ,
Posted in Comment

Bold words, Elspeth Sandys

The Story of a New Zealand River  Jane Mander Random House, $29.99, ISBN 9781869413897 I have been a fan of The Story of a New Zealand River ever since my discovery of it in a secondhand bookshop in London in

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Poem – Elspeth Sandys

Return   Yesterday I went to your house Wondering, as it is empty now, If I would meet the ghost of the life I too lived there   But what I met was bush where my garden used to be

See more ›

Tagged with: , ,
Posted in Poem

Take your partners, Dale Williams

Light Fantastic: Dance Floor Courtship in New Zealand Georgina White HarperCollins, $49.99, ISBN 9781869506193 Holiday Seasons: Christmas, New Year and Easter in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Alison Clarke Auckland University Press, $35.00,  ISBN 9781869403829 Who doesn’t recall the excited flutter of

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , ,
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Poem – C K Stead

Three to the Left   1 Vivienne   Today was her send-off. In a plywood coffin hand-painted with flowers she was laid out on trestles in the Trades Hall, eighty-four years of Stalinist conviction leavened by jokes.   Tunelessly interspersed

See more ›

Tagged with: , ,
Posted in Poem

Scarred by difference, Ruth Nichol

Lucky Bastard Peter Wells Vintage, $27.99, ISBN 9781869419431 At a recent funeral for a friend’s father many of us were surprised – and surprisingly moved – when a uniformed soldier played The Last Post. It struck a sombre note during

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Search the archive
Search by category