WellingtonNZ
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Book review: Performance
By David Coventry Simply put, Performance is a memoir detailing David Coventry’s experience of living with ME (Myalgic encephalomyelitis), a debilitating illness that has a way of defying diagnosis, treatment, causation, and sense. But Performance can’t be simply put. It is a memoir, but also a novel, a work of autofiction, and a space in…
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Book review: Ash
By Louise Wallace Te Waka Herenga University Press (2023) Thea is a vet at a rural practice with two small children who works miracles on a daily basis just to get out the fucking door. She is choking. She is choking on the way she is belittled as a working mother and choking on the…
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Book review: End Times
By Rebecca Priestley Te Herenga Waka University Press (2023) For those of us who came of age during the 1980s, watching young people grapple with the existential threat of climate change is a dose of déjà vu. Like global heating, back then the threat of nuclear war begged the question: how do you go about…
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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: 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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Push, push, roll
Nat Halliday revisits the time he skateboarded (yes, skateboarded) from Cape Reinga to Bluff. It’s 2008, and I am 31 years old. I’m in the Auckland Airport with a huge bag, some cash savings and a plan to travel the 2000 kilometres to the southern tip of New Zealand by skateboard. I should probably have…
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Book review: The South Island of New Zealand: From the Road
By Robin Morrison (Massey University Press, 2023) First published in 1981, The South Island of New Zealand: From the Road was the result of a road trip taken by the late photographer Robin Morrison and his family in 1979. While travelling through the South Island, Robin chose to take pictures of places and people, instead…
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And yet it moves
A Foucauldian moment in the mountains. Bivvy /(‘bıvı)/ Verb 1. Informal for bivouac. 2. To stay outside in a small tent or temporary shelter. 1. Arriving in Wellington off the ferry late one drizzly night with no money to spare for accommodation, I wandered the city looking for somewhere to sleep. It was the 1980s,…
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Time to bide
Monty Bevins settles down. THESE STREETS ALL DISAPPEAR INTO A PORCUPINE HORIZON ‘TIL / SOMETHING NEW AND SHINING ARRIVES TO FEAST YOUR EYES ON / SEVEN YEARS OF RUNNING AWAY, FESTER IN THE DISARRAY – ‘BE HERE NOW’ When Monty Bevins took to touring, he really took to touring. It was 2012. He was working…