Blog Archives
Fruit bats to faith, Stella Ramage
Dark Night: Walking with McCahon Martin Edmond Auckland University Press, $37.99, ISBN 9781869404833 A meander through Sydney in the possible footsteps of artist Colin McCahon, who once spent 28 amnesiac hours lost in the unfamiliar city, seems a flimsy…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Autumn 2012, Colin McCahon, Issue 97, Martin Edmond, Stella Ramage
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
In plain sight, Martin Edmond
Report on Experience: John Mulgan Peter Whiteford (ed) Victoria University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9780864736192 In Keats’s last letter, sent from Rome to his friend Charles Brown in England three months before he died, he writes of his “habitual feeling…
Tagged with: Issue 92, John Mulgan, Martin Edmond, Peter Whiteford, Summer 2010, Victoria University Press
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
One whole thing, Martin Edmond
Towards a Promised Land: On the Life and Art of Colin McCahon Gordon Brown Auckland University Press, $79.99, ISBN 9781869404529 As I began to read the 16 essays, plus introduction, that make up Gordon Brown’s Towards a Promised Land, I…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Colin McCahon, Gordon Brown, Issue 90, Martin Edmond, Winter 2010
Posted in Art, Essays, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Art, Essays, Non-fiction, Review
Letters – Issue 90
What’s in a name? John O’Leary in his review of Dominic Alessio’s edition of The Great Romance by “The Inhabitant” (NZB Autumn 2010) comments “we do not know who wrote it”. But the National Library’s wonderful searchable site of New…
Happenstance, Martin Edmond
Chance is a Fine Thing Philip Temple Vintage, $36.99, ISBN 9781869419851 In his preface to Chance is a Fine Thing, Philip Temple – writer, mountaineer, campaigner, explorer and historian – essays a distinction between memoir and autobiography. The latter, he…
Tagged with: Issue 88, Martin Edmond, Philip Temple, Summer 2009, Vintage
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Memoir, Non-fiction, Review
To hell and gone, down there, Jane Westaway
Zone of the Marvellous: In Search of the Antipodes Martin Edmond Auckland University Press, $34.99, ISBN 9781869404475 Anna Kavan’s New Zealand: A Pacific Interlude in a Turbulent Life Jennifer Sturm (ed) Vintage, $36.99, ISBN 9781869791339 Passageways: The Story of a…
Tagged with: Ann Thwaite, Auckland University Press, Bloomsbury, Christina Thompson, Issue 88, Jane Westaway, Jennifer Sturm, Martin Edmond, Otago University Press, Summer 2009, Vintage
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review
Walking with McCahon, Martin Edmond
In this extract from Dark Night, Martin Edmond retraces the steps of Colin McCahon, who, on April 11 1984, went missing in Sydney’s Royal Botanical Gardens and was not found again for 36 hours. I actually made the walk from…
Zero waste, Martin Edmond
Into the Wider World: A Back Country Miscellany Brian Turner Godwit, $44.99, ISBN 9781869621421 Near the beginning of the seventh of the 34 essays in this book, the 16-year-old Brian Turner, full of teenage angst and contemplating suicide, is sitting…
Tagged with: Brian Turner, Godwit, Issue 84, Martin Edmond, Summer 2008
Posted in Essays, Literature, Poetry, Review
Posted in Essays, Literature, Poetry, Review
The universe and everything, Philip Temple
Waimarino County and Other Excursions Martin Edmond Auckland University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781869403911 Phone Home Berlin – Collected Non-fiction Nigel Cox Victoria University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9780864735676 The revival of the essay in book form continues compensating, to our applause,…
Tagged with: Issue 81, Martin Edmond, Nigel Cox, Philip Temple, Victoria University Press, Winter 2008
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Essays, Non-fiction, Review