Blog Archives
Recollecting Mansfield Margaret Scott Godwit, $29.95, ISBN 1869620763 It is hard to know whether Katherine Mansfield would have been delighted, amazed or appalled at the industry that has evolved since her death, at the academic careers she has sustained, at…
Cock of the walk Heather Murray’s review of Curnow’s The Bells of St. Babel’s (in your August 2001 issue) is a kind of negative tribute to Curnow’s pre-eminent position on the New Zealand literary scene. How many poets in their…
Now here Family snaps in leatherette albums prove “nothing lasts forever” (thanks Mum) as shadows crawl on their stomachs, the sun sinks in the West you never won. Looming into the tedium waiters understand the way nostrils understand incense,…
Coasting: The Sea Lion and the Lark Neville Peat Longacre Press, $29.95, ISBN 1877135577 Two centuries ago, sealers and whalers came to New Zealand to hunt marine mammals for their oil and skins. Millions were slaughtered, most of them on…
Recently, when I called in to see my brother, we looked through a box of books and other items that were all in some way associated with our father. My father grew up in a small community where I often…
Lucky Table Vincent O’Sullivan Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734069 Vincent O’Sullivan is not – and has never been – one of our noisier poets. He’s not known, like Denis Glover or James K Baxter, for extravagant behaviour; or, like…
Never Lost For Words: Stories and Memories Amelia Batistich Auckland University Press, $29.95, ISBN 1869402464 Never Lost For Words is in part a memoir illustrated with snapshots from family albums, in part a collection of short stories triggered by events…
An Explanation of Poetry to my Father Glenn Colquhoun Steele Roberts, $14.95, ISBN 18877228443 Hats Jenny Powell-Chalmers HeadworX, $19.95, ISBN 0473071487 Chrome Paula Green Auckland University Press, $22.95, ISBN 1869402405 Last year my husband’s Uncle Alec, a retired Edinburgh bricklayer,…
Tagged with:
Auckland University Press,
Glenn Colquhoun,
HeadworX,
Issue 50,
Jenny Powell-Chalmers,
October 2001,
Paula Green,
Steele Roberts,
Stephanie de Montalk
Posted in
Literature,
Poetry,
Review
Mauri Ora: the Dynamics of Maori Health Mason Durie Oxford University Press, $44.95, ISBN 019558418X Recently I attended an international conference in Auckland, focusing on gambling. This was an important conference, for it was planned to link with the review…
Reviewing It’s been a good day. I read the last 20 pages, the treat I’d saved myself for the morning, then I got out of bed and wrote the review. Four hundred words in less than half an hour. The…