Blog Archives
These Lives I Have Buried Lindsay Rabbitt Four Winds Press, $14.95, IBSN 0958251452 What Makes A Teacher? Jack Lasenby Four Winds Press, $14.95, IBSN 0958251444 Ghost Who Writes Martin Edmond Four Winds Press, $14.95, IBSN 0958251436 A directive for enjoying…
Volume 15 | Number 1 | Issue 67 | March 2005 Kim Griggs: Bill Manhire (ed), The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica Letters Martin Edmond: Chris Else, On River Road; Nigel Cox, Tarzan Presley; Mike Johnson, Stench Philip…
On Display: New Essays in Cultural Studies ed Anna Smith & Lydia Wevers Victoria University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864734549 Collections of essays by different authors are rarely more than the sum of their parts, although it is invariably the case…
Back Door High as the handle, a garden viewed square by square Through the stained-glass edging of a grandmother’s door. Yellow. Like a cheap sucked lollipop makes the sunshine rowdy the leaves and grass sickly. Yellow for running butter,…
New Zealand’s First Refugees: Pahiatua’s Polish Children ed Adam Manterys Polish Children’s Reunion Committee, $39.95, ISBN 0476007399 Many New Zealanders know that in 1944 a shipload of orphaned children, refugees from war-torn Poland (732 children and 102 caregivers, to be…
Beyond Wittgenstein’s Poker: New Light on Popper and Wittgenstein Peter Munz Ashgate Publishing Limited, $62.00, ISBN 0754640159 Working at the interface between literature and science, Gillian Beer recently asked in The Guardian: “How do you have new ideas? Language is…
Music from a Distant Room Stephanie Johnson Vintage, $26.95, ISBN 1869416171 Nola Lane is a dental nurse who loves her job. By day she peers carefully into small mouths, tamps down zinc and mercury into tiny jaws and snips cottonwool…
A Life’s Sentences Gordon McLauchlan Penguin, $39.95, ISBN 0143019163 Sorry, I’m a Stranger Here Myself Peter Bland Vintage, $29.95, ISBN 1869416325 Both these books call themselves/are called memoirs. I’ve never liked the word; I find a back-of-hand-to-brow affectation in it.…
Miles To Go Pauline O’Regan Penguin, $35.00, ISBN 0143019139 When I learned that Pauline O’Regan had written a book on ageing called Miles To Go, I thought damn, it’s bad enough being jolted or jollied by strangers – but a…
Maurice Shadbolt (1932-2004) Dear Maurice – We could not have a conversation the last time we met, so a letter will have to do, and, as your superstitions always allowed, you’ll be sure to read this, with more time than…