Blog Archives

Issue 63 | June 2004

  Volume 14 | Number 2 | Issue 63 | June 2004 Jock Phillips: Michael King – The historian who opened our eyes (essay) Fleur Adcock: “Historian dies in fiery crash” (poem) Editorial Megan Hutching: Susan Jacobs, Fighting with the

See more ›

Tagged with: ,
Posted in Contents

Risky business, Bernadette Hall

Young Knowledge: The Poems of Robin Hyde (ed) Michele Leggott Auckland University Press, $49.99, ISBN 1869402987   I have known griefs o more than three – Tooth aching, Child-bearing, And the voice breaking Those silent frontiers Of dream, held hazardously.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Journeys and sympathies, Anna Jackson

Home Boys Bernard Beckett Longacre Press, $18.95, ISBN 1877135887 Lin and the Red Stranger Ken Catran Random House, $16.95, ISBN 1869415779 Tiggie Tompson’s Longest Journey Tessa Duder Penguin, $16.95, ISBN 0143318128   Finding myself questioning the whole genre of young

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Young adults

Angels in the meat-grinder, Les Cleveland

While You’re Away: New Zealand Nurses at War 1899-1948 Anna Rogers Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869403010 Nursing might be one of the few remaining professions not entirely driven by greed or self-interest. Anna Rogers assembles a chronicle of service by

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Health, History, Non-fiction, Review, War

Poem – Fleur Adcock

Historian dies in fiery crash (i.m. Michael King, 1945-2004)   And all our competence in words fails us. When the horror’s beyond exaggeration, go back. Try not to imagine it. But not only “historian”: his wife too – and just when

See more ›

Tagged with: , , ,
Posted in Poem

The dark night of the decent bloke, Peter Wells

The Scornful Moon Maurice Gee Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0143018752 Anyone who has heard Maurice Gee read can summon up his tone of voice: discerning, patient and artful. He is a shrewd observer of the human condition with, at times, an

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Their side of the story, Megan Hutching

Fighting with the enemy: New Zealand POWs and the Italian Resistance  Susan Jacobs Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0143018620 On 10 July 1943 Allied forces attacked Italy, landing in Sicily. Two weeks later the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was overthrown in an

See more ›

Tagged with: , , , ,
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, War

The historian who opened our eyes, Jock Phillips

Michael King I got to know Michael King as a student at Victoria University in the mid-1960s. It was an exciting time. There was marching in the streets, heated late-night discussions over instant coffee. We were getting out from under.

See more ›

Tagged with: , , ,
Posted in Comment

Editorial – Issue 63

A funny sort of pride This is an unusual issue of New Zealand Books, dominated by the loss of two of our pre-eminent writers. When Janet Frame died in January, we decided to commemorate her achievement in this June issue

See more ›

Tagged with: , , ,
Posted in Editorial

The “Frame effect”, Patrick Evans

The most famous of Janet Frame’s poems is probably the one about the little boy dying of leukaemia, “Yet Another Poem About a Dying Child”, which ends with the appearance of Death as a giant spider which gobbles the child

See more ›

Tagged with: , , ,
Posted in Comment
Search the archive
Search by category