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Visually and intellectually stimulating

30/12/2017

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Strangers Arrive: Emigrés and the Arts in New Zealand, 1930-1980
by Leonard Bell


In the middle years of last century considerable numbers of displaced people from Central and Eastern Europe found their way to New Zealand, escaping Nazism before World War ll, or the Communist regimes established after the War.
  A significant proportion of these were Jewish. Some were also highly educated intellectuals, with a strong interest in the Arts. What they found in New Zealand was a relatively tiny population of some two million people, with a proportionately smaller number still who shared their cultural interests. To some, at first, New Zealand seemed to be strange and unwelcoming; though most settled comfortably enough, finding others, emigrés and locals, who shared their interests, and adjusting their creativity to the new conditions. Some, perhaps not artists themselves, became patrons, their support being of very considerable significance to the development of the arts in a number of fields.
    There is an underlying suggestion in this book, reinforced mostly by quotation of the views of contemporary commentators, that New Zealand was, before the timely influence of the emigrés, a bland cultural backwater. Phrases quoted include: ‘methodical mediocrity’, ‘neither a country nor a culture, it’s a branch of the Salvation Army’, ‘half as big as Boston cemetery and twice as dead’, ‘scrubby vulgarity…third-ratedness and complacency’, ‘a bleak, inarticulate, materialistic society.’ The author himself iterates the common shibboleth that New Zealand society had (and has) a strong (by implication, a stronger than most) anti-intellectual character, having much greater pride in its ‘No. 8 wire’ mentality than in any cultural achievements.
    But was this really so? The numbers were small, yes – but those skilled in the use of No. 8 wire were sometimes the same people who enthusiastically supported the local Little Theatre, used the local library, listened to learned people on radio, and perhaps even scribbled their own stories or poems, shaped their own pottery or composed their own music, and so became contributors to the nation’s artistic heritage from their bases not only in the cities, but also in the smaller towns and rural communities. New Zealand was then, as now, a well-educated society with book-reading habits that placed them amongst the world’s most literate, and a lively interest in what was going on elsewhere, even in the midst of the economic depression, and of war. Of course there was a strong element of anti-intellectualism, but the same can be said of any other society, at any other time.
    During those mid-century years, the New Zealand arts scene was, in fact, one of exceptional creativity, as is revealed in, for example, Peter Simpson’s Bloomsbury South, or Terry Sturm’s biography of Allen Curnow. It was a time when the artists of the nation were moving away from the ‘imitative’ patterns of the colonial period and towards an art both more genuinely home-grown and yet more universal.
    There was a pre-existing and still dynamic tradition of Māori art, too. The book describes how the newcomers were able to look at this without the stifling historical baggage from the colonial period, some contributing significantly to a fresh appreciation of Māori art and Māori society.
    Bell convincingly demonstrates how the new arrivals made contributions, sometimes seminally important contributions, to all this activity, especially in the fields of photography, ceramics and architecture. A few of the names he presents to us are familiar, others less so; but either way, we can be grateful that he has reminded us, or made us aware, of them.
    A further feature of the book is the examination of the experiences of those who were, or who felt themselves to be, ‘outsiders’ (both newcomers and New Zealand born), and how such feelings affected their creative processes. By discussing these and other issues, the author encourages, even provokes, the reader into a deeper assessment of New Zealand cultural activities in those chaotic and difficult yet astonishingly productive years before, during and after the Second World War.
    The view of the New Zealand art scene presented here is largely an urban one, and the style of presentation is urbane. This is a visually and intellectually stimulating book, and Bell has skilfully integrated the text with well-chosen illustrations.
   Above all, it deals with themes of abiding interest and importance. As the author asserts, ‘[we should see] the arts and humanities as essential necessities for a good and truly civilised society.’

Review by Tony Chapelle
Title: Strangers Arrive: Emigres and the Arts in New Zealand, 1930–1980
Author: Leonard Bell
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408732
RRP: $ 75.00 
Available: Bookshops

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Elegance of poetry breath-taking

24/12/2017

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Allen Curnow: Collected Poems
edited by Elizabeth Caffin & Terry Sturm


Many of Curnow’s poems have been absorbed so effectively into our consciousness that coming across them in the pages of this collection is like rediscovering a temporarily forgotten piece of oneself. ‘Wild Iron’, ‘Landfall in Unknown Seas’, ‘Time’, ‘Continuum’, the passionate and sensuous ‘Spectacular Blossom’, ‘The Skeleton of the Great Moa’ (his most widely quoted poem), and ‘Pacific 1945-1995’ are examples of these.
  J.G.A Pocock, on discovering the early Island and Time poems, was struck by the way that they appeared to reject history, or to represent a new understanding of it as intimate snapshots of immediate experience: ‘Wasn’t this the site, asked the historian, / Of the original homestead? / Couldn’t tell, said the cowman; / I just live here, he said, / Working for old Miss Wilson / Since the old man’s been dead.’ (From ‘House and Land’)
    Curnow returned to imagined or real historical incidents in much later poems, but once again with the chief aim of making observations on the human condition. By this time, Curnow, while remaining ever a New Zealander, had also been rightfully claimed by the world. This is the poet as purveyor of knowledge. As Curnow himself wrote (quoted in Sturm’s biography) ‘… since no man is himself alone, but a member of mankind, the poem, if it is new and good finds and transmits some news about us all.’
    There is a huge variety in Curnow’s poems. Excursions outside the most frequently anthologised reveal all sorts of surprises and insights, sometimes throwing interesting light on his character. For instance, after hearing public readings by several poets, including Curnow, at a Christchurch Arts Festival in 1973, young journalist Sue McCauley, seeking a lively reply that she might use in a piece for Thursday Magazine, had the temerity to ask publicly ‘Does anyone care?’ She was somewhat annoyed not to receive a useable answer; but in a poem written later by way of reply, Curnow remonstrated, with an unmistakable touch of pontifical condescension: ‘Rhubarb to you, / my dear, with cornflakes and cream, / every glorious carefree day and night of your life.’ (‘To An Unfortunate Young Lady…’.)
   There are poems, like ‘Dichtung und Wahrheit’, that force us to reflect on the suppressed urges that bubble away not far beneath the surface of our lives, only to occasionally erupt, when the circumstances are sufficiently exceptional, in episodes of stunning brutishness. And there are others, such as one of those with the title ‘Lone Kauri Road’ that bring wonder and doubt into ordinariness: ‘Read for a bit. It squinted between the lines. / Pages were backing away. / Print was busy with what print does, / trees with what trees do that time of day, / sun with what sun does, the sea / with one voice only, its own, / spoke no other language than that one.’
     At times, he conflates times and places into a kind of nervous flickering, establishing an equivalence between here and elsewhere, between is, was and will be, even seeming to question if reality exists outside the perception of the beholder. Poetry as quantum mechanics.
    Words are played with. There are puns and double, triple meanings. This from ‘A Fellow Being’: ‘… dry on the beach / a ‘mature female’ reads the / Woman’s Weekly snuggling / bare breasts in warm sand / scallop and tuatua shells / lie around / unoccupied.’
     Reading the poems will result in the discovery of new favourites. The elegance of his poetry is breath-taking. It arises, of course, from the mysterious alchemy of words precisely chosen and precisely placed. Many of the poems require a re-reading, more thought, and further re-reading to get at their true richness. This is as it should be, and it is no less than Curnow himself expected. He was not much concerned with ease of understanding (he was always bemused by the popularity of his readily-accessible ‘Wild Iron’), and wrote to his son, Tim, that his poems ‘were written strictly for reading, not for intravenous injection.’
     Curnow’s poetry is our poetry, but its reach is universal. Collected Poems is a treasure trove, and AUP has done a splendid job in presenting it for our pleasure and mental stimulation. This volume, and Sturm’s biography, should sit side by side on a handy shelf, with a supply of bookmarks and a 5B pencil.

Review by Tony Chapelle
Title: Allen Curnow: Collected Poems
Editors: Elizabeth Caffin & Terry Sturm
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408510
RRP: $59.99
Available: Bookshops

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Extraordinary creative output

19/12/2017

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Allen Curnow: Simply by Sailing in a New Direction. A Biography
by Terry Sturm, edited by Linda Cassels


This is a bumper biography of our most internationally acclaimed poet, combining the story of his life with an overview of his extraordinary creative output.
  Curnow has been criticised for being monocultural; white, middle-class and too intellectual. He has also been accused of being a narrow nationalist. But to such an accusation he provided an answer: ‘Nationality’, he wrote (and ethnicity, he might have added), ‘isn’t an option but a circumstance.’ These things simply are; they are the point from which we must observe. As Sturm writes: ‘the past exists in a dynamic relationship with the present,’ or, as J. G. A. Pocock put it when commenting on some of Curnow’s earliest poems, ‘… we are none of us tangata whenua, but a biological species of voyagers and settlers.’ Curnow, in the 1979 poem, The Traveller, says it best of all: ‘All the seas are one sea, / The blood one blood / and the hands one hand.’
     Islands, isolation, the ocean; these themes do feature in much of his poetry and in his plays, even in poems and other works that are not ‘centred’ here, but surely not in a conscious effort to ‘define’ what it is to be a New Zealander. The ineluctable truth is that his themes are also always universal, even when, perhaps especially when, the focus is intensely personal.
      As a child, Curnow was in constant company with his paternal grandmother, and thus was exposed to the resigned anguish of an ‘uprooted settler’; but he also had stronger and deeper roots in New Zealand through his mother’s side, and most of his life experience was firmly anchored in this country. It was here he was born, schooled, twice married, helped raise three children, studied to become a priest, was for many years a journalist, and finally settled to a career as an academic. During all this time, he steadily worked on his poems, his plays, his verses as the witty, acerbic (and very popular) Whim Wham, and his work as a critic and anthologist.
     It was here, too, that he established his most meaningful friendships, particularly with Denis Glover, but also with others such as Douglas Lilburn, A.R.D. Fairburn, R.A.K. Mason and Charles Brasch, and where he became part of that Christchurch arts scene vividly described in Peter Simpson’s Bloomsbury South.
      Inevitably, Curnow also became involved in the debates swirling around ‘poetics’, and what should be left out or included in anthologies. Such debates at times generated uneasy relationships with some of his fellow poets, including Eileen Duggan, Louis Johnson, Alistair Campbell and (to a lesser extent) James K. Baxter. These differences of opinion didn’t diminish his awareness of their strengths as poets, though they might have strengthened his perception of their weaknesses.
    During his life he met and sometimes became friends with many of the greatest English language poets of his day, and by the 1980’s he was firmly acknowledged to be one of them himself, recognised as such by the major critics, with his work appearing in the most prestigious of journals worldwide. 1989 was a particularly wonderful year for recognition, including an invitation from Ted Hughes to accept the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and the offer of New Zealand’s highest honour, the Order of New Zealand.
       This is a rich biography of one of our major cultural figures, and merits reading from cover to cover. Even when dealing with esoteric matters of poetic style or the deeper influences of other poets on his work, it is pleasurable and interesting rather than daunting.
      At a special tribute to Curnow on 5 April 2002, J.G.A Pocock said: “He was a great man, and I do mean that… his powers, as a poet and a person, went on growing. So long as I live, I shan’t forget him.”
       We can be grateful that Terry Sturm has left us with such a generous opportunity to share in that remembrance of both the man and his works. To use the same exclamation with which Curnow ended three of his poems: ‘A big one! A big one!’ Yes, it is; and a very, very rewarding one.



Review by Tony Chapelle
Title: Allen Curnow: Simply by Sailing in a New Direction. A Biography.
Author: Terry Sturm, edited by Linda Cassels
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869408527
RRP: $59.99
Available: Bookshops

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A story of emotional survival

13/12/2017

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I’ll have You Home by Christmas
by June Allen


June Allen’s estranged husband snatched the oldest of their three children in August 1969, while the family was living in Sydney. He left June a note to say he would be back later the same day for the other two children. Terrified of losing the other children and heartbroken at having to leave 7-year-old Philip behind, June raced to the airport in the clothes she, Patti and Rex were wearing and carrying only the blanket 4-year-old Rex was wrapped in. Her father in New Zealand paid for their air tickets and later that day they were back in Auckland.
    So begins a heart breaking account of June’s struggle to care for Patti and Rex and after a brief time with her father, to manage alone as a solo-parent, all the while trying to figure out how to get Philip back from Australia. Her book is a stark reminder that today’s social woes – homelessness, dysfunctional families, child poverty and poor mental health – are nothing new. They all existed back then, 50-odd years ago.
     However, Allen’s story highlights that then those issues were greatly stigmatised and there was very little aid for a young mother in dire need. There was no tenant protection and it appears to have been far too easy for her family to free themselves of June by committing her to a psychiatric hospital and her children to foster care. Eventually her former husband and his new partner tired of caring for Philip and he was reunited with his mother, Patti and Rex. Without any financial support from the children’s father, the early 1970s were a tough time for Allen and her little family. Life was harsh and they were often cold and hungry, inadequately clothed and resorting to extreme tactics to find somewhere safe to be together. And yet Allen never relented in her determination to create a dignified life for her family.
     I’ll Have You Home by Christmas is an unembroidered account of Allen’s hardships. It is bleak and disturbing and sad. Perhaps it will have you wishing you could have been there to help her and there will be rare comic moments that will let you laugh out loud. There may be times when you wish you could have given Allen and/or her family a good shake. Readers who have ever had to deal first hand with any of Allen’s hardship will sympathise with her, while those who have escaped such challenges may find this a somewhat frustrating read, but at the same time, I’ll Have You Home by Christmas is a tribute to Allen’s unwavering courage, resilience, resourcefulness and single-mindedness.
     It would be so easy to dismiss I’ll Have You Home by Christmas for its simple, slightly jumbled literary style and no-frills presentation. However, even the luckiest of readers, and I count myself as having had a fairly untroubled life, will surely ask themselves, as I did, How would I have coped in those conditions? so that in the end this book is an acclamation of love and a mother’s survival instinct; of sheer grit and truthfulness.
     As difficult as life still is for the under-privileged in 21st-century New Zealand society, I’ll Have You Home by Christmas is proof that some conditions at least have changed for the better.

Review by Carolyn McKenzie
Writer, freelance proofreader, copy editor, and translator from Italian to English.
Carolyn kindly offers accommodation at reasonable ratesfor FlaxFlower writers
in Thames (Waikato) and Ventimiglia Alta (Liguria, Italy ). [email protected]
Title: I’ll Have You Home by Christmas.  A story of emotional survival
Author: June Allen
Publisher: Kwizzel Publishing 
ISBN: ISBN 978 0 473 388522; large print ISBN 978 0 473 396275
RRP: $ $32.00; large print $34.50
Available: McLeod’s Rotorua, selected Paper Plus stores, Wheelers, Unity Books Wellington, All Books, and the Publisher  <[email protected]>
On Kindle with title ‘I Stole my Children’

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Fertile imagination

9/12/2017

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Max And his Big Imagination – The Race Car
by Chrissy Metge
illustrations by Dmitry Chizhov

 
This is a delightful story about a resourceful little boy, and his equally resourceful mum.  She presents him with a large empty box to play with, and together they create something amazing.
   It's a speedy red sports car. With his fertile imagination, Max can do and be anything.
   The illustrations are sharp and colourful, making this one action-packed race with room for a lot of participation. 
Review by Susan Tarr
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​Title: Max And his Big Imagination – The Race Car
Author: Chrissy Metge; illustrator: Dmitry Chizhov
Publisher: Duckling Publishing
ISBN: 9780473401757
RRP: $16.99
Available: Publisher via http://www.ducklingpublishing.com
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Perfect gift for boys or girls

4/12/2017

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Little Truff and the Whales
by Ann Russell
with illustrations by Lara Frizzell


​    The perfect book for Christmas, for boys or girls!
    What a lovely story. Fully illustrated.
    The comprehensive information at the back takes it to a whole new level, depicting the plight of our marine life, and DoC's approach to rescues.
It is so important that our children appreciate that there is more to life than what they can see around themselves.
     As far as interactive reading goes, this would be one of my favourites.
The rhyming makes the reading more memorable. And as a grandmother, I can't wait to read this to my grandchildren.
     And the art work is beautiful, current and precise.
     I just love it.
Review by Susan Tarr
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Title: Little Truff and the Whales
Author: Ann Russell
Illustrations: Lara Frizzell
Publisher: Ann Russell Books
ISBN: 9780473367756
RRP: $21.00
Available: Bookshops

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