Taking Off Brian Turner Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734239 A poet in his prime falls almost silent for ten years. When his new collection at last appears, it opens with a sad song of music overheard, that also asks,…
Flight of the Dancing Bird: One Woman’s Courageous Fight to Reclaim her Life Tanjas Darke HarperCollins, $24.95, ISBN1869503961 Imagine a dancing bird, pirouetting through the trees, the light catching the golden tips of feathered wings as it soars into the…
Spinning A Line: New Zealand Writing About Fishing ed Owen Marshall Vintage, $29.95, ISBN 1869414675 In the kaleidoscope of influences and events that has made me whatever I am today, fishing has a lot to answer for. Without doubt, it…
Spirit in a Strange Land: A Selection of New Zealand Spiritual Verse ed Paul Morris, Harry Ricketts & Mike Grimshaw Godwit, $39.95, ISBN 1869620976 The editors are to be warmly commended for taking the initiative in assembling this first anthology of New…
Spark to a Waiting Fuse: James K Baxter’s correspondence with Noel Ginn 1942-1946 ed Paul Millar Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 086473400X I began this book thinking that a shorter one might have been enough for a smallish collection of…
Settler Dreaming Bernadette Hall Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734247 Porcelain Diana Bridge Auckland University Press, $19.95, ISBN 1869402642 The death of Alan Curnow last year seemed to call for some kind of reassessment of our national poetry, and some…