The Idles Damien Wilkins, Victoria University Press, $19.95 Damien Wilkins’ first collection of poems strikes me as commentaries on snapshots, arranged in three photo albums. The first section has pictures of a father in ill-fitting togs who (God knows why…
The Drummer Ian Wedde, Auckland University Press, $18.95 The poem is a place where language listens to itself. Often it can be an occasion for acute soundings, where nods and glances tug at every cadence. Poetry today can be edgy…
Claiming the Law: Essays by New Zealand Women in Celebration of the 1993 Suffrage Centennial Elisabeth McDonald and Graeme Austin (eds), Victoria University Press, $29.95 I was brought up in a matriarchy, educated at a girls’ school by confident women…
Sevensome Vivienne Plumb and Paola Bilbrough (eds), Calliope Press, $13.00 Seven women, young enough to be able to use a word like ‘km’ comfortably and all of them talented, combined to publish this book. When I first read it, a…
Other Voices 3: Lifestories Ruth and Oz Kraus (eds), Brick Row/ Hallard Press, $19.95 Other Voices 3: Lifestories is one of those books you read and, midway through the page, stop, grab the phone and call anyone you can. It is,…
Gipsy: A Fictional Sequence of Poems Kathleen Gallagher, Nag’s Head Press, $22.50 This is an unusual book, not least because it is so handsome an artefact. Hardbound, beautifully produced, illustrated with evocative linocuts by David Nepia, Gipsy is not the sort of…