DunedinNZ
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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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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: At the Point of Seeing
by Megan Kitching (Otago University Press, 2023) At the Point of Seeing is the debut collection from Megan Kitching, who was the inaugural recipient of the Elizabeth Brooke-Carr Emerging Writer Residency in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Megan holds a PhD in English Literature from London’s Queens Mary University, where she has said her interest was piqued by…
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Book Review: Strong Words 3: The Best of the Landfall Essay Competition
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…
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Of M*A*S*H and mushrooms
The curious case of a puffball named for a famous pair of TV lips. There are many things I don’t know about fungi, but one thing I know for sure: it’s crucial to get a positive identification. Taxonomy is of the ultimate importance. Especially when the guidebook (Geoff Ridley’s A Photographic Guide to Mushrooms and Other…
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To grace the water: A love story
IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS I HAD EVER SEEN. MERCEDES WAS A MAHOGANY SPEEDBOAT, ABOUT FIVE AND A HALF METRES LONG. A CHRIS-CRAFT, I WOULD GUESS MANY YEARS LATER, THAT HAD COME FROM THE UNITED STATES. ITS VARNISHED WOOD AND POLISHED STEEL SPARKLED IN THE WĀNAKA SUN. MY DAD THOUGHT IT WAS…
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The lions of Lawrence
THE ANIMAL ATTIC IN DUNEDIN’S OTAGO MUSEUM IS ONE OF THOSE PLACES THAT IS BOTH MAGICAL AND UNSETTLING AT THE SAME TIME. DATING FROM 1877, IT IS ORGANISED LIKE A VICTORIAN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OR THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF A GENTLEMEN OF MEANS WHO HAD THE INCLINATION TO PURSUE THINGS SCIENTIFIC. IT IS AN ODE…
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watching us, watching them
1. Toroa ingoingo. In 1937 there was one pair on the Peninsula, marked and wrapped by Doctor Lance Richdale, breeding. Better banded, perhaps, than starved, egg-sucked, stuck in ship masts or dismantled for muffs, tobacco pouches, cigarette holders and walking stick handles. 2. Now they flock to the camera like Kardashians and we sit and…