Laura Williamson
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Book review: Rapture – An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand
Edited by Carrie Rudzinski and Grace Iwashita-Taylor (Auckland University Press, 2023) “I fell in love at the poetry night / with the meter of the verse / steady rhythms and free-flowing rhyme / visionary prophets gliding on intuitive time / the hopeful expression of these beautiful minds” – Andy Coyle Some poetry is written for…
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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a squid boat
Laura Williamson revisits a close encounter in the skies above Kaikōura. It was sometime after 2am on December 21, 1978. An Argosy turboprop freight plane was en-route from Wellington to Christchurch with a hold full of newspapers when the crew saw something strange off the Kaikōura coast. A set of lights seemed to be following…
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Talking points
It’s been a hot minute. The last time Wānaka’s Aspiring Conversations Festival of Ideas & Kōrero took place was in 2018, which was only six years ago, but jeez, what a six years. Aspiring Conversations is the biennial off-year sibling to the also-biennial Festival of Colour, which has been running for almost two decades. The…
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Book review: Sled Dog Racing in New Zealand – A Photographic Odyssey
By Teresa Angell We wrote about dog racing in Issue 2 of 1964 (March 2020) and featured photos by Teresa Angell, so we were pretty excited to see that she has published a full-length book on the subject. Sled dogs are just the best. Woof! Teresa explores our national sled dog scene from the sport’s…
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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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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…