Blog Archives

Poem – Nick Williamson

Margaret’s Roses   Christmas Day and Uncle Frank is glued to the Queen’s Speech. Her pigeon voice glides over oceans and out of the fraying mouth of a wireless. She wishes us well stuck at far-flung corners of the Commonwealth

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Obiturary — Allen Curnow

Allen Curnow (1911-2001)   When did a wind of the extreme South before Mix autumn, spring and death? (“Elegy on My Father”, Allen Curnow, 1949) I cannot remember when I first encountered Allen Curnow’s poetry. It seems to have been

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Words for music perhaps, Nick Bollinger

Love This Life: Lyrics 1978-2001 Neil Finn Allen & Unwin, $35.00, ISBN 1865085081 Lyrics without melody Mahinarangi Tocker Street Women Press, $19.95, ISBN 0473074427 I have always been a passionate pop fan, but never a great lover of the printed

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Posted in Literature, Music, Non-fiction, Poetry, Review

Perils and blessings, Charlotte Yates

“Imprints” I have three Joni Mitchell albums in my collection – The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Blue and Heijira. They have acted as both a personal and a professional musical resource. They’ve become albums I return to, not exclusively but

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The uses of memory, Louise O’Brien

Little Moon  Emma Neale Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1869414756 Little Moon, Emma Neale’s second novel, following the success of Night Swimming in 1998, is an account of the troubled childhood and adolescence of a young woman growing up in New Zealand.

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Elliptical documentaries, Paola Bilbrough

A Stone Seat and a Shadow Tree Adrienne Jansen Inkweed, $19.95, ISBN 0473072556 The best poems in Adrienne Jansen’s A Stone Seat and a Shadow Tree have a lucid simplicity to them. The most compelling are those about beginnings and

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Gains and pains, Brian Gaynor

World Famous in New Zealand: How New Zealand’s Leading Firms Became World-Class Competitors Colin Campbell-Hunt et al Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869402499 The reforms initiated by Sir Roger Douglas in 1984 gave New Zealand businesspeople a wonderful opportunity to take

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review

The courtyard jungle, Kerry Carman

Life (and death) in a Small City Garden Philippa Swan Godwit, $24.95, ISBN 1869620798 In the vast and varied field of literature, gardens and writing are a classic pairing. Well-told stories of personal experience are few and far between, grist to

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Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review

Off the map, Tim Beaglehole

The Merchant of the Zeehaen: Isaac Gilsemans and the voyages of Abel Tasman Grahame Anderson Te Papa Press, published in association with the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the New Zealand-Netherlands Foundation (Inc), $49.95, ISBN 0909010757 The origins of this fascinating book

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Posted in Health, Non-fiction, Review

Out of the picture, Lydia Wevers

Lady Travellers: The Tourists of Early New Zealand  Bee Dawson Penguin Books, $39.95, ISBN 0141004150 Lady Travellers is a successor to Bee Dawson’s Lady Painters, which appeared in 1999, and makes me wonder if there’s a series planned – Lady

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Posted in Gender, History, Non-fiction, Review
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