Selected Poems Vincent O’Sullivan, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1992, $24.95 Vincent O’Sullivan’s Selected Poems provides a timely conspectus on the poetry department of this one-man literary industry. It prints twenty-four new poems with a ruthless selection of the early work – from…
Treasure Elizabeth Knox, Victoria University Press, 1992, $24.95 ‘I have come that you might have life and have it in fullness’ is a biblical quotation repeated twice in Elizabeth Knox’s latest creation, Treasure. It relates most obviously to the sheer…
A Guide to Art Galleries and Museums In New Zealand Keith W Thomson, Reed Books, Auckland, 1991, $14.95 This snappy little paperback wins out over Thomson’s earlier book in that it is cheap and portable enough to be bought and…
Feral City Rosie Scott, Reed, 1991, $24.95 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/ The blood‑dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned; (W B Yeats, The Second Coming) The…
Pleasures and Dangers: Artists of the 90s Trish Clark and Wystan Curnow (eds), Longman Paul, $34.95 This volume is a refreshing challenge to several assumptions that have become the dead wood of art theory and scholarship in New Zealand, and,…
Tomorrow We Save the Orphans Owen Marshall, John McIndoe, Dunedin, 1992, $24.95 Last year as I was working through a huge box of anonymous entries to the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award competition, I came across an ill‑typed,…
Film in Aotearoa New Zealand Jonathan Dennis and Jan Bieringa (eds), Victoria University Press, 1992, $49.95 University lecturers have become very aware of the price of new books, especially if they are likely to appear on set text or recommended…
Daughters of Heaven a play by Michelanne Forster Daughters of Heaven has already been performed at Court Theatre in Christchurch and Downstage in Wellington. Now its author, Michelanne Forster, has received a joint commission from Television New Zealand and New Zealand…
The 1990 Election: Perspectives on Political Change in New Zealand E M McLeay (ed), Department of Politics, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 1991 The 1990 election was the dullest in recent decades, with a battered, cynical electorate sensing the inevitability…