Edith Collier, Whanganui-born and British-trained, was a dynamic early modernist whose artistic legacy continues to reverberate. This book celebrates her life and work with a major essay by Jill Trevelyan and discussions of individual artworks by more than 20 leading writers. It includes over 150 artworks, from woodcuts to paintings, which showcase her range, skill and impact.
Leslie Adkin (1888-1964) was a farmer, photographer, geologist, ethnologist and explorer. A gifted amateur and renaissance man, of sorts, he used photography to document his scholarly interests, farming activities and family life. This book's selection of over 150 exceptionally beautiful photographs taken between 1900 and the 1930s showcase a remarkable body of work.
The wars of 1845-72 were described by James Belich as 'bitter and bloody struggles, as important to New Zealand as were the Civil Wars to England and the United States'. The conflict's themes of land and sovereignty continue to resonate today. This richly illustrated book, developed in partnership with iwi, delves into Te Papa's Mātauranga Māori, History and Art collections to explore taonga and artefacts intimately connected with the key events and players associated with the New Zealand Wars, sparking conversation and debate and shedding new light on our troubled colonial past. Contributing essays from Basil Keane, Arini Loader, Danny Keenan, Jade Kake, Mike Ross, Paul Meredith, Monty Soutar, Puawai Cairns, and Ria Hall.
The authors explore a wide field of art practice: raranga (plaiting), whatu (weaving), moko (tattoo), whakairo (carving), rākai (jewellery), kākahu (textiles), whare (architecture), toi whenua (rock art), painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, installation art, digital media and film. And they do so over a long time period - from the arrival of Pacific voyagers 800 years ago to contemporary artists in Aotearoa and around the world today. Through wide-ranging chapters alongside focused breakout boxes on individual artists, movements and events, Toi Te Mana is a waka eke noa.
After rejoining social media, Robert Sullivan wrote and posted a poem a day over two and a half months - the poems collected in Hopurangi--Songcatcher. Inspired by the cyclical energies of the Maramataka, these poems see the poet re-finding himself and his world - in the mātauranga of his kuia from the Ngāti Hau and Ngāti Kaharau hapū of Ngāpuhi; in his mother's stories from his Ngāti Manu hapū at Kāretu; in the singing and storytelling at Puketeraki Marae, home of his father's people of Kāti Huirapa, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha and Kāi Tahu Whānui in Te Tai o Āraiteuru; and in the fellowship of friends on Facebook. Tīhei mauri ora!
Catullus poems first appeared in my 1979 collection, Walking Westward, and continued to occur at intervals through Geographies (1982), Straw into gold (1997) and more or less vanished after Dog (2002). Though mine were not translations so much as 'versions in the manner of', there were derived elements, and Catullus's Lesbia became my Clodia - the name of the person on whom his Lesbia is believed to have been based. So the present sequence begins with 'The Clodian songbook (continued)' but soon introduces the new figure of Kezia (pronounced Key-zya), a name borrowed from Katherine Mansfield who used it for the child, based it seems on herself, in her stories of the Burnell (i.e. Beauchamp) family
From the unwitting tricks our minds play, to the mischievous pinch of literary pastiche; from the corruptions of imperialism or abuse, to the dreams and stories we weave for our own survival, these poems catalogue scenes that seem to suggest our species could be named for its subterfuge as much as for its wisdom. Yet at the core of the collection are also some tenets to hold to: deep bonds of love; the renewal children offer; a hunger for social justice; and the sharp reality that nature presents us with, if we are willing to look.
Slender Volumes locates the cypress trees of Buddhist folklore in Onehunga and the teachings of the Zen tradition along its foreshore. Clear-sighted and compassionate, this poetry collection recovers what it means to be intimate with our surroundings and to meet the particulars of our world with perfect curiosity.
Following a disastrous family holiday, Libby and Curtis make a promise: If they ever visit the West Coast of the South Island again, it will be to stay at the majestic Grand Glacier Hotel. Twenty years later, Libby is recovering from cancer and the couple finally return to the resort. Except the glacier has retreated, nothing goes to plan, and after a storm separates her from Curtis, Libby finds herself alone in the isolated hotel. Disappointed, she tentatively begins to explore her surroundings. Could the inaccessible hotel and its curious collection of staff and guests hold the key to Libby reconnecting with the person she once was?
It's time. Mary, an ex cop, and her husband, retired librarian Pete, have decided to move into a retirement village. They aren't falling apart, but they're watching each other - Pete with his tachcychardia and bad hip, Mary with her ankle and knee. Selling their beloved house should be a clean break, but it's as if the people they have lost keep returning to ask new things of them. A local detective calls with new information about the case of their son, Will, who was killed in an accident forty years before. Mary finds herself drawn to consider her older sister's shortened life. Pete is increasingly haunted by memories of his late mother, who developed delirium and never recovered. An emotionally powerful novel about families and ageing, Delirious dramatises the questions we will all face, if we're lucky, or unlucky, enough. How to care for others? How to meet the new versions of ourselves who might arrive? How to cope? Delirious is also about the surprising ways second chances come around.
These 13 stories, set in New Zealand and in the UK, are a testament to Gunn's unrivalled ability to look directly into the troubled human heart and draw out what dwells there. Gunn's is a steady, unflinching gaze. In this collection, Gunn practises 'reading and writing ugly' to pursue the deeper (and frequently uncomfortable) truths that lie under the surface, at the core of both human imagination and human rationality. Each story is an exquisite, thorn-sharp bouquet.
Water will come and you think it will be soft. You think it will be smooth and find its way around your things: your houses and cars and furniture, your gardens and windows and hope. But water can be the foot of an elephant, the horns of a moose, a herd of buffalo running from a lion, water can be the kauri falling in the forest, a two-tonne truck, a whole stadium filled with 50,000 people, screaming ... Water is life, and water can be death. Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks up on things that aren't hers to worry about. They live next door to Janet, a white woman with an opinion about everything, and new arrival Sera, whose family are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe. When Janet's son Conor arrives home without warning, sporting a fresh buzzcut and a new tattoo, the quiet tension between the neighbours grows, but no one suspects just how extreme Conor has become. No one except Wairere, who can feel the danger in their midst, and the swamp beneath their street, watching and waiting.
In this deftly woven work Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault, her mother’s house, a marriage counsellor’s office, the tip and New World. She takes us on a frenzied bender in Croatia, learns tapestry and meets romance novelists, all while wondering how families and relationships absorb the past, given everything we don’t say about grief, mental illness or even love. Most importantly, she asks, how do you write about a life honestly – when there are so many flaws in the way we record history and, more confrontingly, in the way we remember?
In the 1950s, a young Ngāhuia is fostered by a family who believe in hard work and community. Although close to her kuia, she craves more: she wants higher education and refined living. But whānau dismiss her dreams. To them, she is just a show-off, always getting into trouble, talking back and running away. In this fiery memoir about identity and belonging, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku describes what was possible for a restless working-class girl from the pā. After moving to Auckland for university, Ngāhuia advocates resistance as a founding member of Ngā Tamatoa and the Women's and Gay Liberation movements, becoming a critical voice in protests from Waitangi to the streets of Wellington.
We all used to be something else, and we will all be something new again in the worlds to come. Written in an effort to ward off existential dread, and to find new understandings and consolations for those similarly afflicted, The Chthonic Cycle is an eccentric and brilliantly curated tour through time, in which fascinating objects glint and spark and the transience of humanity flickers. At the heart of Una Cruickshank’s debut are Earth’s interlocking cycles of death and reuse. The blood of a billion-year-old tree emerges from the sea as a drop of amber; 4,756,940 pieces of Lego float towards the Cornish Peninsula; a giant squid’s beak passes through a whale’s intestines into bottles of Chanel No. 5. The violence of colonisation underpins some of the transformations illuminated here, as we follow wave after wave of ruin and remaking. This is a rare kind of writing, both galaxy-sweeping and microscopically specific. The Chthonic Cycle reminds us to be chastened and scared by our world – its mind-bending age, the insane complexity of its systems, the violent upheavals and mass extinctions – as well as to be awed.
After Richard Shaw published his acclaimed memoir The Forgotten Coast in 2021, he made contact with Pākehā with long settler histories who were coming to grips with the truth of their respective families' 'pioneer stories'. They were questioning the foundation of aggressive acts of colonisation and land confiscation on which those stories had been constructed. The Unsettled weaves those stories with Shaw's own and features New Zealanders who are trying to figure out how to live well with their own pasts, their presents and their possible futures. They may be unsettled, but they are doing something about it. It is an indispensable companion for the journey towards understanding the complex and difficult history of the New Zealand Wars and their ongoing aftermath.