Blog Archives
Poem – Roma Potiki
Doña Musica for Julia Varley The butterflies that have come out of the garden of the kaosmos flutter behind each of the ears of Doña Musica. Doña Musica is a character and she is not. She is herself and…
Rough justice, Malcolm MacLean
Mene Confessions: Tall Tales from Netball’s Inner Circle Bernice Mene (and Geoff Young) Hodder Moa Beckett, $24.95, ISBN 1869588282 Picture the scene: an exceptionally glum group of public servants in Wellington one Monday morning in October 1999. The reason…
Tagged with: Bernice Mene, December 2000, Geoff Young, Hodder Moa Beckett, Issue 46, Malcolm MacLean
Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sport
Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sport
Language and loss, John Dickson
laminations Murray Edmond Auckland University Press, $19.95, ISBN 1869402227 In the poem “Can that Mango” from Murray Edmond’s latest book, the following lines are spoken (or so a note informs us) by one of two angels who are discussing a…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, December 2000, Issue 46, John Dickson, Murray Edmond
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
I remember, I remember, Jane Bowron
The High Jump: A New Zealand Childhood Elizabeth Knox Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864733372 Anyone who grew up in New Zealand in the 1960s and ’70s can bask in the nostalgia of Elizabeth Knox’s trilogy The High Jump…
Tagged with: December 2000, Elizabeth Knox, Issue 46, Jane Bowron, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
“’Tis desperate, so ‘tis” Tony Simpson
Burnt Barley Peta Mathias Vintage, $29.95, ISBN 1869414276 Irish at Heart Marie Gray HarperCollins, $24.95, ISBN 1865903449 It’s bound to continue to be one of the curiosities of this century – as it was of the last – that however…
Tagged with: December 2000, HarperCollins, Issue 46, Marie Gray, Peta Mathias, Tony Simpson, Vintage
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
“A genius for upholstery”, Kim Hill
Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady: such an adolescent cliché, you could say, not to mention a literary one. Spirited young thing falls in thrall to a superficially sophisticated older man, and ruins her life. The Victorians were apparently…
Overlapping associations, Tom Larkin
Japan and New Zealand, 150 Years ed Roger Peren New Zealand Centre for Japanese Studies, Massey University, in association with the Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, [not for sale], ISBN 0958350574 In 1878, Asajiro Noda, the eight-year-old son…
Tagged with: December 2000, Department of Internal Affairs, Issue 46, New Zealand Centre for Japanese Studies, Roger Peren, Tom Larkin
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review, War
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Pacific, Review, War
Light that fire, Lydia Wevers
Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975 eds Alan Brunton, Murray Edmond, Michele Leggott Auckland University Press, $49.95, ISBN 869402308 A thick black-and-white book with a beautiful cover illustration by Patrick Hanly taken from the second issue of Freed, Big Smoke…
Tagged with: Alan Brunton, Auckland University Press, December 2000, Issue 46, Lydia Wevers, Michele Leggott, Murray Edmond
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
Poem – James Brown
The Crickets We came creeping out the cracks hot summer nights at the local swimming pool like black, anti-cicadas of the night, our exotic chirps a skimpy advert for the sins we hoped would be forthcoming. We sucked in…
From the University of Suffering, Joe Bennett
Julia Moore : Julia Moore P.I. Penguin, $24.95, ISBN 0140293833 Lauren Roche: Bent Not Broken Steele Roberts, $24.95, ISBN 1877228338 These are the stories of two New Zealand women who have triumphed over circumstance. Neither story makes cheerful reading…
Tagged with: December 2000, Issue 46, Joe Bennett, Julia Moore, Lauren Roche, Penguin, Steele Roberts
Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review