Blog Archives

Sustained fullness of feeling, Damian Love

Tell Me My Name
Bill Manhire
Victoria University Press, $30.00,
ISBN 9781776561070

 

Some Things to Place in a Coffin
Bill Manhire
Victoria University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9781776561056

It is often a revealing act. To translate, to imitate, to inhabit in some way a distant genre, is to offer a unique window. We have a glimpse of what the author is drawn to, but also how he differs from it, what he brings to a tradition and what it brings to him, what he takes from it and what he does not.

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Not what they seem, but more so, Lloyd Jones

The Stories of Bill Manhire Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9780864739254 Bill Manhire turns 70 this year, as does another eminent poet of his generation, Ian Wedde. Brian Turner is 72. Vincent O’Sullivan is fast approaching 80. C

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Posted in Literature, Review, Short stories

Moving the world along, Mark Houlahan

These Rough Notes Bill Manhire, Anne Noble, Norman Meehan, Hannah Griffin Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9780864738318 Selected Poems Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9780864737625 “In the future,” Bill Manhire predicts, while introducing his sweeping 2005 anthology of

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Posted in Literature, Photography, Poetry, Review

Bovver boys

What they wrote A taste of contributor comments over our first 20 years   On New Zealand Books My hope is that New Zealand Books will provide a forum for frank discussion that dares to rise above the suffocating confines

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Posted in Comment

Poem – Bill Manhire

A return after Milosz Stuff I believed in, gone; rules and other things – the stuff of song. I woke up feeling funny with no clothes on. Professors paraded in Greek, dreaming of oak and pine; the Leith wandered its

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Posted in Poem

Subtle conversation, Michael Sharkey

The Victims of Lightning Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 0780864736222 When this commission came, I’d recently re-read Manhire’s poetry from Malady to Lifted and his prose – the clever fables of The New Land, somehow redolent of Diderot’s

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Alice-in-Wonderland worlds, David Clark

The Elegant Universe of Albert Einstein: The Collected Lectures of the Royal Society of New Zealand E=mc2 Series Broadcast on National Radio Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 0958262926 Are Angels OK? The Parallel Universes of New Zealand Writers and Scientists Paul

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Science

Drawing in the air, Martin Edmond

The Desire of the Line: Ralph Hotere – Figurative Works Kriselle Baker Auckland University Press, $49.95, ISBN 1869403436 Pine Ralph Hotere and Bill Manhire Otakou Press, $800 (signed) $350 (unsigned), [no ISBN] In Dunedin in the mid-1990s, researching the Clairmont

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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Gold dust in the goose bath, Harry Ricketts

The Goose Bath: Poems Janet Frame (ed Pamela Gordon, Denis Harold and Bill Manhire) Vintage, $39.99, ISBN 1869417658 How The Goose Bath acquired its title is a good story and a characteristic one. The bath itself, as Frame’s niece Pamela

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Going live to death, Michael Hulse

Lifted Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 086473509X Bill Manhire’s marvellous new collection of poems opens, as Creation reportedly did, in an amorphous state, awaiting the shaping of the Author. “Without Form”, taking its title from Genesis 1.2, declares:

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
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