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But is it a poem? Harvey McQueen

8 Stages of Grace Diane Brown Vintage, $26.95, ISBN 1869415256 The blurb to Sarah Quigley’s latest volume of poems says: people often ask her if there’s a connection between her prose and her poetry but she doesn’t think so. There

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Poem – Harvey McQueen

A Letter   Vanished is the postie’s whistle; with the anthem at the movies & a butcher in every suburb. In today’s letterbox, left by the bronzed lady with strong walk shoes there is a magazine & three letters, one

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Posted in Poem

Cultivating their own garden, Harvey McQueen

Dialectic of Mud  Richard Reeve Auckland University Press, $19.95, ISBN 869402529 The Whole Forest  Nick Williamson Sudden Valley Press, $16.95, ISBN 095820912X Abstract Internal Furniture Helen Rickerby HeadworX, $19.95, ISBN 0473078570 Most New Zealand poetry is a private garden. The

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Trusting the peripheral vision, John Allison

Unmanned Stephen Oliver HeadworX, $19.95, ISBN 0 473 05753 0 Pingandy Harvey McQueen HeadworX, $24.95, ISBN 0 473 05752 2 Drought and other intimacies Pat White Steele Roberts, $19.95, ISBN 1 877228 15 X On surveying trips, my father taught

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A rebore with the engine running, Harvey McQueen

Reforming Education: The New Zealand Experience 1984-1996 Graham and Susan Butterworth Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 0 86469 334 6 The book’s cover shows five scowling youngsters – not a good introduction to an account of the most far-reaching structural change in

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Posted in Education, Non-fiction, Review

A breath of fresh sound, Harvey McQueen

Birds of Europe Andrew Johnston Victoria University Press, $19.95, ISBN 0 86473 386 0 These Days Jenny Bornholdt Victoria University Press, $19.95, ISBN 0 86473 385 2   Delacroix remarked that to be a poet when one is twenty is

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Failing at order, Harvey McQueen

Obviously of peasant stock, I enjoy grubbing in my own particular patch of soil, pottering and planting around every home I have occupied in my adult life. I am in Stephanie Parkes’ words “an amateur gardener”, a term she uses in

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Posted in Comment

Freedom within a framework, Harvey McQueen

The Role of the State in Education The Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture delivered by Richard A Epstein New Zealand Business Roundtable, $12.50, ISBN 1 877148 06 7 Worldwide, education is under criticism. Why? First, after World War II large claims

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Posted in Education, Politics & Law, Review

Tales from a teenage colony, Harvey McQueen

The Duel on the Creek… and other tales of Victorian New Zealand Ray Hargreaves and Peter Holland (eds) University of Otago Press, $24.95 ISBN 0908569912 In the hastily constructed miners huts, over the elegant drawing room tea‑cups, around the boiling

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Posted in Fiction, Literature

Returning to the wisdom of an early world, Harvey McQueen

Laura’s poems Laura Ranger, Godwit, $12.95 The childhood juvenilia of famous poets is usually interesting – the first uncertain steps, the incorporation of nursery rhyme, and yes, a naivety that is pleasing. But what if a child is already a

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review
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