Man at the kerb The longest road the hottest tar the fish mouth before gulls the heart attacks the heat deafens the trembling the flying in the face the pockmarks pooling the squint the lean the chancing on the…
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Blog Archives
Issue 125 | Autumn 2019
A complicated relationship, Thom Conroy
The Ice Shelf
Anne Kennedy
Victoria University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9781776562015
What role does a book invite me to accept as its reader? I need not comply with a book’s request, of course, but I’m bound to recognise or, at the very least, consider the question when beginning a review. Never an advocate of unnecessary terminology, the critic Wayne Booth used the term “friendship” to describe this relationship between what a book asks of us as readers and our response to that request. Anne Kennedy’s latest novel, The Ice Shelf, makes some strenuous demands on its readers and promises an intense – if intensely muddled – friendship in return.
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Tagged with: Anne Kennedy, Autumn 2019, Issue 125, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Colonial orientalism, Paula Morris
Galleries of Maoriland: Artists, Collectors and the Māori World, 1880–1910
Roger Blackley
Auckland University Press, $75.00,
ISBN 9781869409357
The cover image of Roger Blackley’s impressive new book is a famous one: a tea break in Charles Goldie’s frame-stacked studio in 1901, Pātara Te Tuhi holding cup and saucer, his trousers and dusty boots visible below the sweep of his woven cloak. Both men seem deep in thought. Goldie – starched collar, shiny boots – was just 30, recently returned from studies in Paris; he’d seen a number of Gottfried Lindauer’s Māori portraits at the 1898–99 Auckland exhibition and begun his own rise to national fame.
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Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Autumn 2019, Issue 125, Roger Blackley
Posted in Art, History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, History, Non-fiction, Review
Editorial – Issue 125
“Evolution or revolution?”, Simon Upton
The New Biological Economy: How New Zealanders are Creating Value from the Land
Eric Pawson and the Biological Economies Team
Auckland University Press, $45.00,
ISBN 9781869408886
Having lived away from New Zealand for the best part of 15 years, I was delighted to read The New Biological Economy. In one fell swoop, its 13 crisp chapters brought me up to date with many very significant changes that have been transforming the land and landscapes of this country.
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Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Autumn 2019, Biological Economies Team, Eric Pawson, Issue 125, Simon Upton
Posted in Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Non-fiction, Review
Going high, Julia Millen
To the Mountains: A Collection of New Zealand Alpine Writing
Laurence Fearnley and Paul Hersey (eds)
Otago University Press, $45.00,
ISBN 9781988531205
Since the arrival of Pacific peoples, New Zealand’s mountains have enthralled and enchanted. Māori revered the craggy peaks from afar while they forged ways through the hinterland. The first European explorer, Abel Tasman, sailing to the Southern Ocean in 1642, recorded the sighting of “a large land, uplifted high”. Captain Cook’s crew were bent on “conquest” in more ways than one. This collection features the 1998 re-enactment by 13 climbers of the 1773 ascent of Mt Sparrman in Fiordland, made by a party from Cook’s second voyage on the Resolution.
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Tagged with: Autumn 2019, Issue 125, Julia Millen, Laurence Fearnley, Otago University Press, Paul Hersey
Posted in History, Literature, Natural History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology
Posted in History, Literature, Natural History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology
A critical lamp in a dark world, Helen Watson White
Charles Brasch: Journals 1958-1973
Charles Brasch, selected by Peter Simpson
Otago University Press, $60.00,
ISBN 9781988531144
“How many existences one leads at once,” wrote Dunedin poet, critic, patron and Landfall editor Charles Brasch in 1958:
I am here with LF work & household chores … I am haunted by the state of the world – the Near East, nuclear tests, the fear of war; I live through Dr Zhivago & its world; Rodney’s & Douglas’s worlds & those of other friends, & Emily [Forsyth]’s, & the de Beers at Raasay now; & Andrew who has gone to Adelaide is with me constantly; & as I prepare to go to Chch tomorrow Pearl draws near, & Harry & Margaret (whose house at Clifton, 31 Tuawera Terrace, has at last been sold, to their immense relief, although it doesn’t pay off all their debts; & J[ames Bertram] will be in Chch at the weekend; Kate, Tim, Penny [Thompson]; & I must see Ruth France … the list goes on & on. And my own life winds through all these in its own way.
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Tagged with: Autumn 2019, Charles Brasch, Helen Watson White, Issue 125, Otago University Press, Peter Simpson
Posted in Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Non-fiction, Review
Listening for the voice, Janet Hughes
Coming to it: Selected Poems
Sam Hunt
Potton and Burton, $30.00,
ISBN 9780947503802
Poeta: Selected and New Poems
Cilla McQueen
Otago University Press, $40.00,
ISBN 9781988531281
Watching for the Wingbeat: New and Selected Poems
Pat White
Cold Hub Press, $40.00,
ISBN 97804734444204
A “Selected Poems” doesn’t confer quite the accolade of a collected, with its connotations of canonisation. But the poet is more likely to have a hand in shaping it, and to be around to enjoy it; it is more likely to privilege reading pleasure; and it’s simply more likely to happen. Back when publishers were powerful arbiters and gatekeepers, a selected poems affirmed a career and a reputation. Now that there are more gates and fewer keepers, the fact of a selected probably carries less freight.
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Tagged with: Autumn 2019, Cilla McQueen, Issue 125, Janet Hughes, Otago University Press, Pat White, Potton and Burton, Sam Hunt
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Thanks
New Zealand Review of Books Pukapuka Aotearoa would like to offer a huge vote of thanks to Pauline and Peter Russell, who between them have acted as proofreaders for the quarterly for nearly 20 years. Proofreading requires much more than…
Posted in Comment