Blog Archives

Shivers of emotion, Tom McLean

Dan Davin: A Field Officer’s Notebook: Selected Poems Robert McLean (ed) Cold Hub Press, $30.00, ISBN 9780473430689 Robert McLean here presents an edited selection of Dan Davin’s poetry, collecting a body of verse seen as having value in itself rather…
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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Responsible writing

Writer Fleur Beale considers what’s difficult and desirable in books for YA readers. The answer to the question of what responsibility writers may or may not have to their teenage readers in essence for me is to write a damn…
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Posted in Comment

Thoughts well-wrought, Damian Love

View from the South Owen Marshall (Grahame Sydney photographer) Vintage, $40.00, ISBN 9780143771845 It often seems to be the case that novelists, when they turn to verse, move with a more relaxed gait, a less self-conscious regard, than those whose…
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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Almost too true, Aleksia Drain

Lyla Fleur Beale Allen and Unwin, $19.00, ISBN 9781760113780  Lyla is a book written in raw truth. The story begins in a world of homework and the normal everyday life of a young schoolgirl named Lyla. She attends Avonside Girls’…
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Posted in Literature, Review, Young adults

Girls galloping horses: unstable identities, Amy Brown

Rainfall Ella West Allen and Unwin, $19.00, ISBN 9781760296834 Showtym Adventures: Casper, the Spirited Arabian Kelly Wilson Puffin, $15.00, ISBN 9780143772248 Do You Want to Gallop with Me? Sophie Siers (Judith Trevelyan illus) Millwood Press, $20.00, ISBN 9780473408541 The Gift…
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Posted in Children, Literature, Review

Yearning and erasure, John Horrocks

He’s so MASC Chris Tse Auckland University Press, $30.00, ISBN 1781869408879 The Facts Therese Lloyd Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781776561810 Dark Days at the Oxygen Café James Norcliffe Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781776560837 (more…)
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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Keith Westwater – Poem

To Avis Elaine The flowers you loved strew the shores of my first seven years Sometimes, in flower shops they shout out their names gerbera gladioli iris Sometimes they sing to me from a bouquet only half-made peonies pansies sweet…
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Posted in Literature, Poetry

Making Art in words and paint

Grahame Sydney, artist, recalls a significant book. It lay beside my bed through most of my teenaged years, one of two constant companions of my privately turbulent adolescence. The other was Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit, and both paperbacks grew…
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Posted in Imprints

Whose history? Simon Hay

wThe Expatriate Myth: New Zealand Writers and the Colonial World  Helen Bones Otago University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781988531175 The Expatriates  Martin Edmond Bridget Williams Books, $50.00, ISBN 9781988533179 Helen Bones aims to dismantle the “myth” that New Zealand writers, in…
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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Life and death before 20, Angelina Sbroma

Catch Me When You Fall Eileen Merriman Penguin, $20.00, ISBN 9780143770930 Ash Arising Mandy Hager Penguin, $20.00, ISBN 9780143772439 Eileen Merriman’s Catch Me When You Fall – a title that provokes a head-tilt to begin with and that takes multiple…
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Posted in Literature, Review, Young adults
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