Blog Archives
Issue 89 | Autumn 2010
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…
Life cycles, Murray Bramwell
Somebody Loves Us All Damien Wilkins Victoria University Press, $38.00, ISBN 9780864736161 The title of Damien Wilkins’ sixth novel, Somebody Loves Us All, comes from a line by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. The poem is called “Filling Station”…
Tagged with: Autumn 2010, Damien Wilkins, Issue 89, Murray Bramwell, Victoria University Press
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Letters – Issue 89
Fantasy London flat C K Stead thinks I am having a “fantasy” about a meeting I had with Dr Michael Bassett at Parliament in 1989 (NZB Summer 2009). Perhaps he has confused one meeting I describe with a later one.…
Love and war, Christine Johnston
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…
Tagged with: Autumn 2010, Christine Johnston, Issue 89, Patricia Grace, Penguin Books
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Doing what she pleased, Jill Trevelyan
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…
Tagged with: Autumn 2010, Bridget Williams Books, Issue 89, Jessie Munro, Jill Trevelyan, Suzanne Aubert
Posted in Letters, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Letters, Non-fiction, Review
Had experience, missed meaning, Dougal McNeill
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.…
Tagged with: Autumn 2010, C K Stead, Cape Catley, Dougal McNeill, Issue 89, Judith Dell Panny
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review
Poem – Elizabeth Smither
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 –…
Half a good book, John McCrystal
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…
Tagged with: Autumn 2010, Issue 89, John McCrystal, Penguin Books, Witi Ihimaera
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
Rivers, repetition and reproaches
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…
The voice on the page, Jocelyn Harris
Posted in Comment