Emma Sidnam is a Wellington-based writer and lawyer. As a fourth-generation Asian New Zealander, she is passionate about representation and ensuring that all voices are heard. She is a slam poet and her work has been published in the Spinoff, Capital, Newsroom and the anthologies A Clear Dawn and Middle Distance. Her debut novel Backwaters won the Michael Gifkins Prize and was longlisted for the…
Tongariro National Park: an artist’s field guide, by Desmond Bovey. Craig Potton (2023). RRP $39.99. PB, 200pp. ISBN 9781988550510. Reviewed by Andrew Paul Wood. It might be argued that our national parks are already works of art in their own right. In that respect, Tongariro is one of the most beautiful. Artist Desmond Bovey’s beautiful…
Tung by Robyn Maree Pickens. OUP (2023). RRP: $25.00. PB, 87pp. ISBN: 9781990048609. Reviewed by Michelle Elvy. Robyn Maree Pickens is an art writer, poet, curator, and text-based practitioner, all of which is evident in her debut poetry collection. Tung opens with an invitation, a weaving of words and wonder on the page: Brush the…
Artists in Antarctica edited by Patrick Shepherd. MUP (2023). RRP: $80. HB, 240pp. ISBN: 9781991016270. Reviewed by James Norcliffe. I couldn’t help but gather adjectives from the first few pages of this handsome book: brutal, fearsome, desolate, hostile, extreme, unforgiving, bleak, inhospitable, unpredictable, forbidding… There is in fact a thesaurus load of such adjectives to describe…
Tsunami by Ned Wenlock. Earth’s End Publishing (2023). RRP: $27.99. PB, 278pp. ISBN: 9780473655679, Reviewed by Matt Scowcroft. I’m a bit of an art masochist. I want to be hurt by the books I read, and I often find stories in which everything is alright in the end unsatisfying. I don’t think that is unusual —…
Talia by Isla Huia. Dead Bird Books (2023). RRP: $30.00. PB, 87pp. ISBN: 9781991150639. Reviewed by Ariana Tikao. Talia is Isla Huia’s (Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) debut poetry collection published by the Auckland-based indie publisher Dead Bird Books. It consists of 35 poems full of pūrākau, of fascinating images, of our atua Māori, and people – alive…
Te Rā: The Māori Sail, by Ariana Tikao and Mat Tait. Christchurch Art Gallery (2023). RRP: $26.50. HB: 36pp. ISBN: 9781877375811. Reviewed by Kirsty Dunn. ‘…Let us bring in the fishers, the warriors, the weavers,the healers, the connectors, the dreamers. Let us bring back in all those who have become stray strands,weave them in, weave them…
Hannah and Huia by Charlotte Lobb. Quentin Wilson Publishing (2023). RRP: $37.50. PB, 240pp. ISBN: 9781991103109. Reviewed by Rebecca Styles. In the author’s note to Charlotte Lobb’s debut novel, she explains her own challenges with the ‘discomfort of owning and accepting my own battles with depression, anxiety, PTSD and worse’ (p.238). While the novel is…
End Times by Rebecca Priestley. THWUP (2023). RRP: $35.00. PB, 240pp. ISBN: 9781776921188. Reviewed by Hester Ullyart. Dedicated to ‘Maz, my BFF’, End Times is based upon a week-long real-life West Coast road trip in 2021, mapping anxiety, formative teenage years, and rocks—metaphorical and literal. It would make an awesome female-gaze-scientist-post-kids buddy movie. You heard…
Saga by Hannah Mettner. THWUP (2023). RRP: $25. HB, 88pp. ISBN: 9781776921157. Reviewed by Vera Hua Dong. Hannah Mettner’s Saga offers a full-bodied subterranean vehemence, and profound social commentary and thought, inspired by her personal observations and sensibility. She delivers deep reflections without reserve on matters of importance to her. And she is not afraid…