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What's not to like?

30/9/2020

AUP New Poets 7
by Rhys Feeney, Ria Masae, Claudia Jardine
Anna Jackson (ed)

AUP have done it again, and well done: tonight’s concert, ably conducted by Anna Jackson, begins with Rhys Feeney’s ‘soy boy’, an active and energetic word explosion on being awake in the world. Ria Masae’s ‘What She Seees from Atop the Mauga’ is more internal, going back and forth from Aotearoa to Samoa. Claudia Jardine’s ‘The Temple of Your Girl’ builds on classical references, giving us a wide-ranging group of personalities.
Rhys Feeney goes from extreme to extreme, carrying on his back a huge (but not rejected) weight of awareness and the possibility of awareness, using wonderful images:
be a good patriot & eat a kilo of cheese with weet-bix
drink milk from a deforested plantation in brazil
or cowmilk from a waikato farm that runs right into the river
while the CEO of fonterra gets a salary of $1.95 million
put a chicken in the oven
where they have the most space they’ve had in their entire life
get on the bus to go to work
thank the driver think they look tired
                               ‘the world is at least fifty percent terrible’ (p3)
He uses quite a few weight images throughout the selections here, many in ‘brutalism’ (p19):
… every year we pour

    enough concrete to/ cover every maunga and fill in every
awa in the north island/ and that after water it is the most used

substance in the world …
Throughout the heaviness and the awareness, there is a huge and (in the poems) endless reservoir of vitality that Feeney is speaking out of; I am glad to see that someone who looks at the world like this is a schoolteacher.

     Ria Masae makes it clear from the very beginning who she is talking about and who she is talking to: her voice is powerful, describing people but certainly not expecting anyone else to enter into the conversation. ‘Saipipi, Savai‘i, Samoa’ – the first poem in ‘What She Sees from Atop the Mauga’ – starts out:
Nana Se’ela asked me once
      ‘E ke mana’o fai sau malu?’
  i turned to her, my makas widening in shock
      i gazed down at the jellyfish, seagulls and crosses
  under the stars
  tattooed around her thighs
  in my Samoglish I questioned
  ‘me? Aa ā Mum?’ …
and answers the question in a way that makes sense to the two of them, with no concession to the reader, who is either already in the in-group or is simply an outsider.
  i tilted my face up to the stars
  that were more familiar to me
  than the ones on Samoan thighs,
  without turning to her, i answered
  ‘Leai fa‘afetai, Nana.’             (p29)
The streets of Auckland, evil lodestar of the Pacific, are crowded with the downcast and the damned. The powerful ‘SkyCity Scraps’ (pp40-41) speaks of one ‘nomad, a no-man’ who thought he was ‘still in cruise control’ – but now, he
   has become one of the nameless.
He is but one rusted nail amongst thousands
on that discarded cross.

The setting sun colours the road ahead
a deep shade of sorrow.

Claudia Jardine speaks in a variety of voices. ‘The Flower Crown of Sulpicia’ is a retranslation of six short Latin poems by a first-century BCE poet who has recently been rediscovered. Each poem comes from a different mood: kick-ass triumph, petulant adolescent, “be nice to me, I’m suffering”, or regret. Jardine then assigns a contemporary voice to each:
Love has come such Love such Love
      more shame in stashing blushes
  than being famous for getting naked

  Venus delivered
  put in my pocket
  Love
                        ‘Sulpicia 3.13 – Etta James’ (p63)
Or on an unwelcome birthday jaunt:
hateful natality
is here

why was I even born?

to be spent in abusive country
trite in its lack of Cerinthus
(“Sulpicia 3.14 – Stevie Nicks’)
Jardine’s ear for sounds and her vivid imagery are evident throughout the selections. ‘High Functioning’ (p71):
I’m being eaten by my feelings
face down in the mud
like a farmer with a brain aneurysm
surrounded by piglets

face down in the mud
nudged and kneaded
hither!  the scoffing piglets
me?

fat pheasant flushed from the thicket
nudged and kneaded
tossed mid-air between kārearea
flat present smushed under a winglet ...
Her Orpheus poem, ‘Eurydice & the No/ or How Eurydice Died of Negligence and a Phonetic Misunderstanding’ (pp84-86) shows us ‘Something to know about the Grecian language,/ and the fauna of the mainland’, a lot more action and interest than the bare bones of the myth generally show us.
So there’s Auckland University Poets 7 – and what’s not to like? Roll on, volume 8...

Review by Mary Cresswell

Title: AUP New Poets 7
Author: Rhys Feeney, Ria Masae, Claudia Jardine. Anna Jackson 9ed)
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 1 86940 921 0
RRP: $29.99
Available: bookshops

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Perky chook in fun book

23/9/2020

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Omeletta Hen
by Janelle Wilkey
Illustrated by Deborah Hinde

Omeletta is a beautiful hen. There’s no doubting that, what with her bright and full plumage, and brilliant crest. And she does everything a regular hen should, except she will not lay her eggs in the henhouse.
Her little friend, Nelson, finds her eggs everywhere; the garden, the bath, and even in a shoe. Just imagine that!
So finally, Nelson lays down the law. Eggs must be laid in the henhouse. Not on the path, not in his bed, and definitely not on his head. The laying of an egg on Nelson’s head is simply the last straw.
So back off to the henhouse trudges Nelson, with Omeletta firmly grasped in his arms.
“Omeletta, you silly hen, from now on, you will stay in the henhouse!” says Nelson.
He busily restocks the nesting box with fresh straw, saying, “Nest is best.”
But Omeletta is not happy with this new arrangement. She fluffs her feathers, fumes, and plain sulks.
When Nelson checks the nesting box the next morning, not one egg does he find.
The following morning he checks the nesting box too. Not a single egg.
And so it goes. The nesting box remains empty, empty, empty.
It seems that as intent Nelson is on getting Omeletta to lay her eggs in the henhouse, she’s just as intent on not.
This perky chook is full of character and dogged determination. And her expressions are delightful.
The bright and sharp artwork enhances the simple storyline, making this a fun book to read with children or for them to read alone.
This is a book that is beautifully presented. And well deserving of The Joy Cowley Award.

Review by Susan Tarr

Title: Omeletta Hen
Author: Janelle Wilkey
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 9781775436393
RRP: $18.99
Available: bookshops

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Family history deserves to be read

16/9/2020

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The Ninth Candle
by Jenny Harrison

‘The Ninth candle is called the helper candle, used to light all the other candles, ‘Anushka whispered, ‘It is the most important candle we have.’
     A Jewish woman explaining to Chiune Sugihara the importance of the Festival of Lights of Hanukkah, explaining to a guest not of her faith but a man who saved thousands of Jews and refugees from Hitler’s Polish invasion.
    ‘The Ninth Candle’ is a true story. It follows one family, that of Peter Baruch, who watched as Hitler’s war machine engulfed their beloved Poland. From believing it would never happen to the ultimate tragedy that it did, this one family’s experiences were mirrored thousands, millions of times over. I have read and researched World War Two, and Poland’s story always tore at my heart. A country between power-houses who tore it to pieces and in doing so, murdered, pillaged, displaced and destroyed family after family.
    The rise of fascism in the world today gives one pause. Books like this need to be read and studied because while we’re busy denying it could ever be so bad, it can be. History has proven it. Unstable leaders with a power complex create chaos and destruction. They make a race or a people the enemy and while we’re pretending genocidal extermination couldn’t happen again, it does.
    For me the stand-out story in ‘The Ninth Candle’ belonged to Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of Polish refugees.
    Josef stammered. ‘You are rescuing us from certain death. But I don’t understand. This could cost you your life so why are you rescuing Jews in this way?’
Sugihara looked shocked. ‘I’m not rescuing Jews,’ he said. ‘No, no. Not only Jews, Josef. Anyone who needs my help will get it. My dear Josef, don’t you see  It’s not just Jews who matter. It’s everyone. Everyone matters.’
   ‘…on July 9th 1940 Chiune Sugihara took a decision that would change the course of his life and the lives of thousands of others. He opened the door of the Consulate and beckoned the first ten of the long line of refugees to enter the office.’
    It took courage and integrity. Sugihara had a Gestapo agent in his office yet he never faltered. He was a remarkable man in extraordinary times.
    Jenny’s blurb tells us how each family member acted out of love, Marysia for her son, Josef for his fiancée and Adam for the children under his paediatric care. I would add that Chiune Sugihara did, too.
    Thank you, Jenny, for putting this family’s history into the world. I hope it is read as much as it deserves to be.

Review by TJ Ramsay

Title: The Ninth Candle
Author: Jenny Harrison
Publisher: Lamplighter Press
ISBN: 9798623965950
RRP: $32.50
Available: Amazon, Kindle, author's website (www.jennyharrison-author.com)

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Immigration and a return to one’s roots

9/9/2020

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The Telling Time
by P J McKay

The Telling Time’s beautiful cover is in sharp contrast to the book’s contents – two grim and troubling stories woven together over time by family ties and family secrets. This is a story of naivety and trickery; trust and abuse; immigration and culture shock.
The Telling Time is the story of Gabrijela, a young woman from 1950s Yugoslavia, and her New Zealand-born daughter Luisa as she sets out to visit her mother’s homeland, now Croatia, in 1989.
Pip McKay’s writing is so vivid that right from page 1 when Gabrijela is describing her detested job, the clinging smell of the sardines wafts off the page and it’s easy to imagine the bleakness of the canning factory and Gabrijela’s determination to get away from it. Little does she imagine that her ‘escape’ won’t simply take her from the family home on Korčula Island a short ferry ride to the ‘mainland’. Instead, in answer to a plea from an immigrant friend of her father’s she is sent to Auckland to work as a housekeeper.
The descriptions of that Auckland, when women drank Pimms and ginger ale, young people danced to ‘Blue Suede Shoes, and an electric washing machine was a novelty, are well researched and sensitively narrated. They will take readers back to a time when we talked scornfully about Dally plonk but really knew very little about the hard-working group of immigrants who made it. For Gabrijela, homesick and impossibly far from home, a blue aerogramme in the letter box, two weeks old when it arrives, is the highlight of her day. Gradually though she makes friends and improves her English.
McKay paints an engaging picture of immigrant life in Auckland, revolving around the Dalmatian community, their social gatherings and family intrigues. Narrated by Gabrijela, this part of the book is often quite amusing, but Gabrijela’s secret, the real reason she left home, lurks brooding in the background: is it something really dark or something that in the light of 2020 New Zealand we would just shrug off?
Thirty years after Gabrijela came to New Zealand her daughter decides to take off to explore Europe and in particular to seek out her mother’s family on Korčula. Travelling through Macedonia and into Croatia brings cultural shock to Luisa much as her mother experienced on arriving in Auckland. But for Luisa it’s like travelling back in time to less sophisticated surroundings. Unbeknown to Gabrijela, Luisa hopes to get to the bottom of her mother’s youth – to find out what that unspoken taboo thing is that has always been in the background.
Although there are times of immense sadness and brutality in The Telling Time, it also celebrates love and hope; self-discovery, forgiveness and moving forward. McKay’s prose lifts the people off the page so that they become lifelike and the book is a joy to read.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie

Title: The Telling Time
Author: P J McKay
Publisher: Polako Press
ISBN: 9780473520113
RRP: $34.95
Available: bookshops

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Thoroughly good read

2/9/2020

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For Reasons of Their Own
by Chris Stuart

This book will appeal to readers over the age of eighteen who like a crime novel with an unusual slant.
It is well written, easy to read and follow. The descriptions of the Melbourne districts are very good indeed. The characters come to life and you quickly feel that you know and sympathise with the dedicated Detective Inspector Robbie Gray, whose recent internal investigation is tarnished when evidence goes missing, leaving Robbie feeling aggrieved and frustrated.
Robbie is sent to observe, undercover, at an International Disaster Conference, a role she feels is below her capabilities, but doubt has been cast on her professional judgement.
However, she is called to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding the discovery of a body in a rural swamp, north of Melbourne. Robbie is given a small team that includes Mac, an Aboriginal Police Officer, who has also suffered injustice in a disciplinary matter, which Robbie can empathise with.
Both Robbie and Mac have an admirable desire to search for the truth in what is, to them, clearly a murder. But when the nationality of the murder victim is revealed the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) take over the case, instructing Robbie and her team to “back off”. However, Robbie is convinced the ASIO are on the wrong tack and wants to continue her investigation, suspecting corruption and political manipulation.
Set in Melbourne during a stifling heat wave, drought and raging bush fires, D.I Gray has to convince her superior to allow her team to continue to investigate this murder with no apparent motive and, as Robbie suspects, the ASIO wrongly focusing on the murder as a terrorist orientated incident in order to reshape the Australian security policy.
Robbie and her team are challenged by heartbreaking humanitarian issues with the eventual outcome making the reader think deeply about the social injustices that are still happening in our world.
A thoroughly good read, making me want to look forward to another D.I. Robbie Gray story.

Review by Fran Hartley

Title: For Reasons of Their Own
Author: Chris Stuart
Publisher: Original Sin Press
ISBN: 9780473514921
RRP: $35
Available: bookshops

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What's not to like?

Perky chook in fun book

Family history deserves to be read

Immigration and a return to one’s roots

Thoroughly good read

FlaxFlower Reviews

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