Blog Archives
Volume 20 | Number 1 | Issue 89 | Autumn 2010 Letters Andrew Wood: “Karl Wolfskehl (1869-1948)” (poem) Gregory O’Brien: “Low cloud, field of peonies, Martinborough” Ashleigh Young: Sam Hunt, Backroads: Charting a Poet’s Life Kathryn Walls: Tessa Duder…
Ned and Katina: A True Love Story Patricia Grace Penguin Books, $40.00, ISBN 9780143007401 Who could resist a love story set on Crete in 1945? Obviously Patricia Grace couldn’t. The celebrated author was approached by Ned’s and Katina’s family with…
Letters on the Go: The Correspondence of Suzanne Aubert Jessie Munro (ed) Bridget Williams Books, $69.99, ISBN 9781877242427 In 1922, 87-year-old Suzanne Aubert wrote to a Raetihi farmer: Dear Mr Punch Your valuable present of another truck-load of firewood arrived…
Plume of Bees: A Literary Biography of C K Stead Judith Dell Panny Cape Catley, $39.99, ISBN 9781877340239 Modernism, born in the era of wars and revolutions, grew on contradiction. Centred in London, none of its greatest writers were English.…
Restaurant, stars We had dined; we came out. The stars were above, high and bright. ‘Look …’ someone started but we started the car instead. In their autumn positions the stars – one noticed the displacement of a constellation –…
Was Jane Austen a plagiarist? Jocelyn Harris investigates. Creative writers present their texts as singularly their own. Readers, in return for what Coleridge called the willing suspension of disbelief, expect to be delighted and surprised by their freshness. But if…
The Trowenna Sea Witi Ihimaera Penguin Books, $37.00, ISBN 9780143202455 First, let’s deal with the distractions. Unless you were living under a rock in the latter part of 2009, you will be aware that Witi Ihimaera found himself in a…
Mark Williams re-assesses his position on Ihimaera’s borrowings and reworkings. Reviewing a book on modernism by C K Stead in Landfall in 1986, Ken Ruthven revived the old saw that one cannot step in the same river twice, meaning that…
Rethinking Women and Politics: New Zealand and Comparative Perspectives Kate McMillan, John Leslie and Elizabeth McLeay (eds) Victoria University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9780864736109 Rethinking Women and Politics is based on a series of papers prepared for a Wellington workshop in…
Mirabile Dictu Michele Leggott Auckland University Press, $27.99, ISBN 9781869404406 The Lustre Jug Bernadette Hall Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9780864736086 Just This Brian Turner Victoria University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9780864735911 One can expect that these new collections by three…
The voice on the page, Jocelyn Harris
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