Blog
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Music Review: Silhouette – Alba Rose
Silhouette is the debut EP from Alba Rose, AKA Rosie Spearing. Originally from Wānaka and now based in Wellington, Rosie is known as the lead singer of the indie-pop band Corduroy. She also collaborated with composer and producer Bravo Bonez on the trip-hop project ARLS. Alba Rose is her first solo project, and it continues…
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Book review: CUMULUS: an anthology of skies
Edited by Kirstie McKinnon (Caselberg Press, 2023) Hello you beautiful thing. We’ve been looking forward to the release of this book, a hybrid of sky-themed photographs by Dunedin-based photographer Carlos Biggemann and work by some of Otago’s most exciting poets, including Megan Kitching, Claire Lacey, Rushi Vyas and Iona Winter. The project was Carlos’ idea.…
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Food review: Off-Piste Provisions- Plant-based protein on the go
My people believe bacon fat and butter are spices, so I assumed the box full of plant-based jerky that arrived at 1964 headquarters had the wrong name on it. I am not their target market. Or am I? I thought it was going to be one of those gluten-free cake situations, where everyone at the…
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Book review: Erebus The Ice Dragon – A portrait of an Antarctic volcano
By Colin Monteath (Massey University Press, 2023) Colin Monteath was the Field Operations Officer for the New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme in the seventies and eighties, and was the first person to descend into the inner crater of Erebus (I know – golly!). It’s a place he knows from all angles, and in Erebus The…
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Book review: Takahē – Bird of Dreams
By Alison Balance (Potton & Burton, 2023) I don’t want to stir up any more Bird of the Century controversy, but takahē are the best. For one, they are crazy-pretty. The takahē’s plumage, with its layers of blue, turquoise and shimmering green, is everything you need to know about how nature makes perfect beauty. Also,…
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Poetry review: Remember Me – Poems to Learn by Heart from Aotearoa New Zealand
Edited by Anne Kennedy (Auckland University Press, 2023) Poetry is written as much for the ear as for the eye, and the more than 200 poems anthologised in Remember Me were chosen with this in mind. As editor Anne Kennedy explains in her introduction, these are works which “employ a kind of music to convey…
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Poetry review: When I Reach for Your Pulse
By Rushi Vyas (Otago University Press, 2023) When I Reach for Your Pulse is an uncomfortable read, but this is not about our discomfort. This is about Rushi’s sustained generosity in sharing his grief, his anger, his complex responses to living with the life and death of “the man who earned the money mom used…
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Poetry Review: Tung
By Robyn Maree Pickens (Otago University Press, 2023) The immediacy of the body in nature is the root system from which Robyn Maree Pickens’ debut collection of poetry, Tung, springs. The book’s first acknowledgment goes to a tiny cottage and surrounding nature in Ōtepoti’s greenbelt, where Pickens lived while writing this excellent and engaging collection.…
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Book Review: A River Runs
By Benny Sip Fishing and poetry – it’s a 1964 dream combo! Benny Sip’s spare collection A River Runs is named, presumably, for American author Norman Maclean’s classic novella A River Runs Through It, which tapped into a youth spent in Montana surrounded by family for whom there was “no clear line between religion and…