The Book Reviewer His tatty raincoat conceals a country, rolled-up sleeves reveal many wristwatches. He airily waves away rainbows of neckties and pulls a smoke from a dark pocket. But his book-side manner is a corrupt text, for, though…
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Blog Archives
Biting irreverence, David Eggleton
Dog: Poems C K Stead Auckland University Press, $21.95, ISBN 1869402863 Amongst our intelligentsia the bald dome of C K Stead looms large. In the identity parade of contemporary New Zealand culture, he is one of those controversialists, one of…
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Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Autumn 2003, C K Stead, David Eggleton, Issue 61
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Art as survival, David Eggleton
Pacific Art Niu Sila: the Pacific Dimension of Contemporary New Zealand Arts ed Sean Mallon and Pandora Fulimalo Pereira Te Papa Press,$49.95, ISBN 0909010838 Robert Louis Stevenson, writing about Samoan culture over a century ago, expressed it thus: No occasion…
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Tagged with: Autumn 2002, David Eggleton, Issue 57, Pandora Fulimalo Pereira, Te Papa Press
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review
Stone upon stone, David Eggleton
Collected Poems 1967-1999 Bill Manhire Victoria University Press, ISBN 086473411 (paperback), $34.95 ISBN 0864734212 (hardback) $49.95 In this Collected Poems, the private universe of Bill Manhire is made readily available to his ever-increasing audience. But it may take years and many readings…
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Tagged with: Bill Manhire, David Eggleton, December 2001, Issue 51, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Zigzags and jags, John Horrocks
Rhyming Planet David Eggleton Steele Roberts, $19.95, ISBN 1877228567 Clearances Alan Riach Hazard Press, $21.95, ISBN 18772700705 Acetylene Geoff Cochrane Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734190 David Eggleton, street entertainer, licensed to rave, appears in a surprisingly subdued pose on…
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Tagged with: Alan Riach, Autumn 2001, David Eggleton, Geoff Cochrane, Hazard Press, Issue 53, John Horrocks, Steele Roberts, Victoria University Press
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
“A lotta nerve”, David Eggleton
Positively George Street: a personal history of Sneaky Feelings and the Dunedin Sound Matthew Bannister Reed Books, $34.95, ISBN 0 7900 0704 5 The mythology tells us that Dunedin in the 1970s was a studious, quiet backwater, seemingly permanently becalmed…
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Tagged with: David Eggleton, Issue 43, Matthew Bannister, Reed Books
Posted in Music, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Music, Non-fiction, Review
“A grand Edwardian lady”, David Eggleton
Queen Salote of Tonga Elizabeth Wood-Ellem Auckland University Press, $69.95, ISBN 1 86940 205 7 Tonga-watchers will know that there is a fairytale aspect to Tonga: this miniature kingdom by the sea containing a whole society in microcosm is a…
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Tagged with: Auckland University Press, David Eggleton, Elizabeth Wood-Ellem, Issue 39
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Poem – David Eggleton
Beyond the tapa curtain, David Eggleton
Speaking in Colour Sean Mallon and Pandora Fulimalo Pereira Te Papa Press, $39.95 ISBN 0 90901044 7 The country of the tourist brochures is, as Nadine Gordimer has suggested, always someone else’s country: unreal in its airbrushed perfection; its beckoning…
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Tagged with: David Eggleton, Issue 34, Pandora Fulimalo Pereira, Sean Mallon
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Pacific
Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Pacific
An open and, David Eggleton
Return to Sender Wira Gardiner Reed, $24.95, ISBN 0 140 25676 8 Nga Pepa a Ranginui — The Walker Papers Ranginui Walker Penguin, $29.95, ISBN 0 7900 0460 7 All festivals are acts of collective myth-making, chances for a nation to…
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Tagged with: David Eggleton, Issue 31, Penguin Books, Ranginui Walker, Reed, Spring 1997, Wira Gardiner
Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review
Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review