Blog Archives
The short story of non-fiction, Tony Simpson
When Famous People Come to Town Damien Wilkins On Kissing Kate Camp On Longing Vincent O’Sullivan Four Winds Press, $14.95 each, ISBN 0958237506; 0958237514; 0958237530 Shortly after these little books, none much longer than 50 pages, were published in September…
Tagged with: Damien Wilkins, Four Winds Press, Issue 56, Kate Camp, Summer 2001, Tony Simpson, Vincent O’Sullivan
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review
World-class in Timaru, Mark Williams
Chemistry Damien Wilkins Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734271 In a 1913 guide book, Forest and Ice, Blanche Baughan describes the Franz Josef glacier: “the grandeur of great, ordained descent, embodied here in a white stairway of the gods, magnificently…
Tagged with: Damien Wilkins, Issue 55, Mark Williams, Spring 2001, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Experts in avoidance, Emma Neale
Nineteen Widows Under Ash Damien Wilkins Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 086473395X Wilkins’ new novel, set in the United States, begins as Evelyn Herbert undertakes a road journey to her Pacific Northwest hometown. She has left her husband, and…
Tagged with: Damien Wilkins, December 2000, Issue 46, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
From a work in progress, Damien Wilkins
Finally she found the room. Truly they’d banished him and as she pulled up a chair beside the bed and took out the patient’s file from her folder, she had the question in her head, if this man is dangerous,…
Surprising ourselves, Lawrence Jones
Loving Ways Maurice Gee Penguin, $29.95, ISBN 0 140 25789 6 Little Masters Damien Wilkins VUP, $24.95, ISBN 0 86473 298 8 The reader of Loving Ways will quickly recognise family resemblances to earlier Gee novels. The structure within two…
Tagged with: Autumn 1996, Damien Wilkins, Issue 25, Lawrence Jones, Maurice Gee, Penguin Books, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Boxing the compass, David Eggleton
How Things Are Adrienne Jansen, Harry Ricketts, J C Sturm and Meg Campbell Whitireia Publishing and Daphne Brasell Press, $21.95 ISBN 0 958351341 four Damien Wilkins, Elizabeth Knox, Bill Manhire and Emily Perkins Published by the authors, no price given,…
Tagged with: Adrienne Jansen, Bill Manhire, Damien Wilkins, Daphne Brasell Press, David Eggleton, Elizabeth Knox, Emily Perkins, Harry Ricketts, Issue 24, J C Sturm, Meg Campbell, Whitireia Publishing
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Composed of small moments, Rod McGregor
The Miserables Damien Wilkins, Victoria University Press, 1993, $24.95 This, Damien Wilkins’s first novel, seems a natural extension of his earlier stories and poems. It is a bildungsroman of a very modernistic sort, tightly written, concise in scope but large…
Tagged with: Autumn 1994, Damien Wilkins, Issue 12, Rod McGregor, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Desperate lives, Heidi Van de Veire
The Idles Damien Wilkins, Victoria University Press, $19.95 Damien Wilkins’ first collection of poems strikes me as commentaries on snapshots, arranged in three photo albums. The first section has pictures of a father in ill-fitting togs who (God knows why…
Tagged with: Damien Wilkins, Heidi Van de Veire, Issue 10, Spring 1993, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
The self-loathing of a Stead novel, Damien Wilkins
The End of the Century at the End of the World C K Stead, Harvill/ HarperCollins, $39.95 C K Stead has always suffered from a surfeit of lucidity. This may seem like a wrong-headed thing to say. Surely those values…
Tagged with: C K Stead, Damien Wilkins, HarperCollins, Harvill, Issue 7, Summer 1992
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Rhythm and voice, R Carl Shuker interviews Damien Wilkins
Posted in Comment