New verse by Bill Nelson of Wellington. Someone needs to take control You should be planting autumn crops! The calendar says every morning from under its flimsy door magnets. Seed your onions! Mound your potatoes! In the real world, wild and disowned, heirloom tomatoes infiltrate silver beet. A patch of rocket, perhaps self-seeded, elbows a … Read more
Marion McLeod reviews Before the War by Fay Weldon. I threw away all my Fay Weldons last year. Well, I didn’t actually throw them. I piled them into a rusting supermarket trolley and pushed them across the road to Arty Bees. All of them – about two dozen novels (mostly hardback), a few collections of … Read more
We cross live to Matahiwi marae in Hawkes Bay, where Charlotte Grimshaw reports from a ceremony to honour the new poet laureate – her father, Karl Stead. The Poet Laureate had been summoned to a weekend at Matahiwi Marae in the Hawkes Bay, for a ceremony to honour his appointment. He was invited to bring … Read more
An excerpt from Colin Hogg’s sweet, elegiac book Going South, about going on a roadtrip with his friend, the journalist Gordon (“Gordie”) McBride. The two first met at the Southland Times in Invercargill. Hogg takes up the story in chapter one… Shortly after turning 21, I packed all my records in my car and moved … Read more
New verse by Wellington writer Dame Fiona Kidman. Man weeping A man walking down a road, his shoulder muscles packaged tight as boulders under his shirt, a thick set handsome man, all sinew and brawn. I knew this man, stayed under his roof more than once or twice. Until then I had not seen a … Read more
Fiona Kidman reviews the essay collection Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner Everywhere I Look is Australian writer Helen Garner’s latest collection of essays and, like much of her former work, it’s not lacking in controversial aspects. Her early writing was like entering a soothing bath of recognition, a woman who understood the suburban condition and … Read more
A top-level inquiry by an anthropologist (a bookseller, actually) into gender buying habits. The book world, like the world-world, shows sad signs of gender bias. To work in a bookshop is to become an anthropologist of sorts, specialising in the genus Biblio Lector (or book reader/buyer, for those who are not fluent in the anthropologists’ … Read more
A personal essay by Maria McMillan on the monopoly of Phantom Billstickers. “…if they were all putting up their own posters it would be mayhem.” RNZ, November 30, 2015. “We’ve been putting the New Zealand voice out there for some time.” NZ Book Awards website, March 21, 2016. Quotes from Jim Wilson, founder of Phantom … Read more
Margo White reviews Alive, Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill There is a scene in Alive, Alive Oh! in which Diana Athill recounts how she, aged 97 and with the help of two 94-year-old ladies, managed to plant the six rose bushes Athill had bought to brighten up the garden of … Read more
Writer and poet Rachel Bush died yesterday. We thank Sport magazine for permission to post one of Rachel’s poems. A statement from Victoria University Press: It is with great sadness we learned that our good friend Rachel Bush died yesterday. Rachel was a wonderful poet, an astute reader and a warm supporter of other writers. … Read more
An essay by long-time bad dude Iain Sharp on the state of book reviewing in New Zealand – and the preponderance of witless fucking “round-ups.” When I met the poet Lauris Edmond for the first time in 1990, she peered hard at me and announced with her trademark directness, “In person you seem quite gentlemanly, … Read more
Colin Hogg reviews Sinatra: The Chairman, by James Kaplan (Hachette, $40). According to this new book, the only reason the mobster Sam Giancana didn’t have his famous troublemaking pal Frank Sinatra knocked off was that he loved the singer’s voice so much. It was a lucky thing for Sinatra the infamous killer was a fan, … Read more
An extract from From the Podium, a collection of tales from orchestras around the world by former Auckland Symphony Orchestra conductor, Gary Daverne. I hate outdoor concerts and avoid them if possible. Lighting can be hopelessly inadequate. Engineers seem to always want to light from the front, so the audience can see the players, but … Read more
New verse by Auckland priest Jenny Blood. Sun I found the sun shining beside me when I woke this morning so I took that sun and pinned it to the wall
Linda Burgess urges you to read a new novel by a modern master – My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (Random House.) Elizabeth Strout is my current literary crush – though I’m fairly sure that this time, it’s the real thing. She is fabulous. Damn her, she knows everything, and she puts just a … Read more
The campaign to free wrongfully convicted Teina Pora is now the subject of a book – In Dark Places: The confessions of Teina Pora and an ex-cop’s fight for justice, by Michael Bennett (Paul Little Books, $34.99). Dr Jarrod Gilbert interviews the book’s hero, the “tall and good looking” Tim McKinnel. One day Tim McKinnel decided he’d bust a … Read more
Holly Walker reviews American Housewife (Doubleday, $43) by Helen Ellis. If the rumours are true, not only do we have another season of The Bachelor and a New Zealand Survivor to look forward to, but soon the Real Housewives franchise will hoist up a gilt-framed mirror in Herne Bay and show the rest of us … Read more
Steve Braunias shares a divan with British writer Andrew O’Hagan at the Wellington writers festival. London novelist and essayist Andrew O’Hagan was in Wellington last week as a guest at the New Zealand Writers Week, and people constantly mistook him for another guy. “Look,” said the Oscar-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten, as O’Hagan walked into the … Read more
Taika Waititi’s new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople opens on March 31. It’s a good-natured romp based on a novel by Barry Crump, who created an enduring myth of himself as a good keen Kiwi bushman. The reality was different. London-based poet Fleur Adcock offers a rare memoir about her brief marriage to “Crumpy”. When I’m … Read more
Your horse No matter the heat, the place was cooler. Its shade wasn’t ordinary. Its strategy was of sharply dragging the day under, of growing into the bodies we’d angled under the tree, filling us as if we’d barely made it up from the dirt. You’d hold on to the tree, for it … Read more
Long-lister Greg McGee pokes his head above the literary parapet… The Antipodeans has had a brilliant run, already in its 3rd print, and being short-listed for the Ockham NZ Book Awards would have been the icing on the cake, so I’m disappointed it hasn’t made it. That’s okay: win some, lose some, and good luck … Read more
Dad Art, the new novel by Damien Wilkins, is launched tonight at the writer’s festival in Wellington. Charlotte Grimshaw arrives ahead of the party to consider the book’s virtues and flaws. Michael Stirling is on his own. He has separated from his wife, his much-loved daughter has left home and his father is in a … Read more
The 31 best children’s books in New Zealand as selected by Storylines: you read it here first. The clock has struck 12.01pm, the exact minute that the embargo on the Storylines Children’s Literature Trust annual selection of the best children’s books in New Zealand can be lifted – and here’s your old pals from the … Read more
Sarah Forster re-reads a classic not just of children’s literature, but of all writing – the four Faraway books by workaholic and genius Enid Blyton. Even now, nearly 50 years after her death, no other writer can bring the world of everyday magic alive as well as Enid Blyton. I recently read Blyton’s great series The … Read more
Thom Shackleford grins and bears it as PJ O’Rourke comes across in an 844-page greatest hits package as that blowhard at the party who’s had a bit too much to drink, thinks he’s hilarious and sometimes is but mostly you just want to punch in the face. The first thing you notice about this anthology is … Read more
The shortlist for the New Zealand Ockham Book Awards: you read it here first. The clock has struck 12.01am, the exact minute that the embargo on the shortlist of the national book awards can be lifted – and here’s your old pals from the Spinoff, at the ready, first with the news. The winner of best … Read more
A lavish new book of photographs by artist Fiona Pardington. “Taking a photograph is like tilting at windmills. It’s taking on the universe,” says Fiona Pardington. Yes, that sounds like a load of pretentious and boring old tosh to us, too, but she’s a pretty amazing artist and her exquisitely produced new book Fiona Pardington: A Beautiful Hesitation … Read more
In which Steve Braunias selects the winner of the great Spinoff ‘colouring in thing’. “Very exciting” and “FFS” were among the remarks made by judges of the first ever Spinoff Review of Books colouring-in contest held yesterday on Twitter. Readers were asked to colour in a drawing I made based on various New Zealand books. … Read more
New verse by Paris-based writer Andrew Johnston. Deuteronomy South of the past, dreaming she was still alive, Echo came in low, under the dateline, over the mud flats, mirroring. To see the plane kiss its shadow she would have to be somewhere else but she sees it, she sees everything kissing everything. She was … Read more