A Guide to the New Zealand Seashore Dave Gunson, VikingPacific, $19.95 If you can’t be bothered carrying all your seabird, rock pool fish and native plants books down to the beach with you, this book will be a fair substitute.…
Superwoman: Where are You? Social Policy and Women’s Experience C Briar, R Munford and M Nash (eds), Dunmore Press, $39.95 Superwoman: Where are You? is a catchy title. Since Superwoman is the female counterpart of Superman, created both after and in his…
The Vote, the Pill and the Demon Drink: A History of Feminist Writing in New Zealand Charlotte Macdonald, Victoria University Press, $49.95 Charlotte Macdonald’s compilation of original New Zealand writings by and about women’s rights is a most welcome addition…
Deep River Talk: Collected Poems Hone Tuwhare, Godwit, $49.95 hbk, $29.95 pbk Hone Tuwhare’s Collected Poems, drawn from eight previous volumes of poetry, spans thirty years of writing. This in itself represents a problem for the reviewer. There is something of the…
The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume 3, 1919‑1920 Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott (eds), Clarendon Press, $110.95 It is only in fiction that illness makes people saintly. In real life, invalids are cantankerous, depressive and manipulative. To be close…
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…
The Drummer Ian Wedde, Auckland University Press, $18.95 The poem is a place where language listens to itself. Often it can be an occasion for acute soundings, where nods and glances tug at every cadence. Poetry today can be edgy…