Selected by Emma Neale and Lynley Edmeades (Otago University Press, 2023)
Essays are on the up in Aotearoa. This has in part been fuelled by successes like when Wellington’s Ashleigh Young winning the 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize (worth $230,000!) for her essay collection Can You Tolerate This?.
The annual Landfall Essay Competition, which has been running since 1997, has also galvanised many a New Zealand non-fiction writer to put fingers to keyboard. In fact, I know very few writers, from essayists, to poets, to academics, to journalists, who have not had a crack. The Strong Words collections, which showcase some of the competition’s best entries, have thus become a snapshot of some of the country’s best writing.
A good essay, like a good poem, makes big points from small moments, or uses the personal to convey the universal. Strong Words 3 is packed with exceptional examples of this.
For Andrew Dean, a shitty London flat kickstarts an exploration of his Jewish family’s experience of fascism and erasure. In Tīhema Baker’s ‘Whakapapa’, a gravedigger’s son reconsiders his relationship with his father after coming across kōiwi (human skeletal remains) while digging. And Bonnie Etherington ‘A Fried Egg in Space’ centres on a low-grade brain tumour, but also splays in multiple directions to take in the January 6 insurrection, NASA’s Mars mission, nuclear waste and the Covid pandemic. You get the gist. Strong words indeed.
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LAURA WILLIAMSON
