Blog
-
Book Review: Dirge Bucolic
By Jasmine Gallagher (Compound Press, 2022) Jasmine Gallagher’s debut collection is like a series of fractal prisms. She takes moments, spaces and stories, then breaks and turns them so we see them from all sides. As implied by the oxymoronic title, there’s a lot here. Dirge Bucolic delves into and through Jasmine’s personal experience of…
-
Review: AllTrails Hiking App
I was introduced to the AllTrails app while travelling for work. I was in unfamiliar settings, and wanted to escape my hotel room and go for a short hike. AllTrails had the answer. The app features more than 400,000 curated trails and a global community of over 45 million users. The largest collection of digital…
-
The tree tops! Our five favourite New Zealand trees
Aotearoa New Zealand has some exceptional trees. It’s a lush, green place, with more than 10 million hectares of its land mass covered in native and exotic forests. Prior to humans arriving, more than 80% of the country was forested, and what cool forests they were. Today it’s less that 40%. And while some native…
-
Book review: Fossil Treasures of Foulden Maar – A window into Miocene Zealandia
By Daphne Lee, Uwe Kaulfuss and John Conran (Otago University Press, 2022) This generously illustrated book takes the reader through the story of, and significance of, the Foulden Maar site in Otago. Formed by a volcanic eruption 23 million years ago, the Maar’s undisturbed sedimentary layers are chocka with rare, well-preserved fossils. It’s an extraordinary…
-
Book review: The Wandering Nature of Us Girls
by Frankie McMillan (Canterbury University Press, 2022) “Those girls are making a scene,” writes Frankie McMillan in ‘The movie of your life’ and oh she sure is. Fifty seven scenes in five sections. Are these scenes poetry, are they prose, are they prose poetry, flash fiction? The lines between these categories are blurry at best anyway…
-
Book review: No Other Place to Stand – An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand
Edited by Jordan Hamel, Rebecca Hawkes, Erik Kennedy and Essa Ranapiri (Auckland University Press) Can poetry save us? In No Other Place to Stand, ninety-one writers with connections to Aotearoa New Zealand grapple with the biggest issue on the planet right now, and while the answer isn’t quite yes, it isn’t quite no, either. As…
-
Poetry Review: Everyone is Everyone Except You and Meat Lovers
Meat Lovers by Rebecca Hawkes (Auckland University Press) Everyone is Everyone Except You by Jordan Hamel (Dead Bird Books) Both of the poets featured in the last issue of 1964 (Issue 9, Autumn 2022) have recently released their debut full-length collections. One word: Yay! Two words: Cows and Timaru! Rebecca Hawkes’ Meat Lovers is “a…
-
Poetry Review: Everyone is Everyone Except You and Meat Lovers
Meat Lovers by Rebecca Hawkes (Auckland University Press) Everyone is Everyone Except You by Jordan Hamel (Dead Bird Books) Both of the poets featured in the last issue of 1964 (Issue 9, Autumn 2022) have recently released their debut full-length collections. One word: Yay! Two words: Cows and Timaru! Rebecca Hawkes’ Meat Lovers is “a book of poems on…
-
Book review: Fine Line – Twelve Environmental Sculptures Encircle the Earth
By Martin Hill & Philippa Jones (Bateman Books) Fine Line is a global environmental art / science project, which draws a symbolic fine line around the earth and connects 12 ephemeral sculptures. Each work was created in situ using the natural materials available at each site, such as snow, as featured in the cover photograph…