Forthcoming Books

Beyond the Scene
Landscape and Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand

Co-editors: Janet Stephenson, Mick Abbott, Jacinta Ruru

Key Points

* Well-known writers, from a range of disciplines, explore the many meanings of landscape
* Each chapter focuses on a different part of the country, from Auckland's southern suburbs to a Waikato farm, from Taranaki's iconic volcano to Otago's pathways

The Book

What contribution does landscape make to our sense of identity? Images of spectacular natural features pervade the media – between the pages of glossy coffee-table books, in tourism promotions and on screen as the setting for blockbuster movies – but are these scenes that define its people?

For Beyond the Scene the editors asked eleven writers to choose a landscape that was important to them and to write it from the perspective of their life experience and knowledge. From farmer to art historian and film critic, geographer and planner to lawyer, from landscape architect to poet and environmentalist – these are diverse voices. Each discusses a very different landscape: from suburban Auckland and rural Waikato to a planned town in Canterbury and much-filmed Otago. Together, they investigate the relationship landscape has to identity, community and psyche.

Contents

Foreword Diane Menzies 1 Entering Landscape Janet Stephenson, Jacinta Ruru and Mick Abbott 2 Land, Sea and Sky in Taranaki Maori songs of lament Ailsa Smith 3 Of Rocks and Recollections: Our home in the South Waikato Gordon Stephenson 4 Waitaha – A Canterbury poem sequence David Eggleton 5 Eternal Sunshine: The search for spotless landscapes Jacky Bowring 6 Otara and Dannemora: Contrasting landscape and ethnic identities in two South Auckland suburbs Wardlow Friesen and Robin Kearns 7 Films, National identity and the Otago landscape Davinia Thornley 8 Outside the Frame: Depicting Auckland's urban landscape Linda Tyler 9 A Cloaked Landscape: Legal devices in Mount Aspiring National Park Jacinta Ruru 10 Patina: People and place in Akaroa Janet Stephenson 11 Travelling Landscapes: Ngai Tahu rock art and Ngai Tahu identity Lyn Carter 12 A Future with Our Past: Towards a creative practice of heritage in the coastal Otago landscape Mick Abbott 13 Landscape's Generosity Janet Stephenson, Jacinta Ruru and Mick Abbott

Editors

All three editors are based at the University of Otago. Janet Stephenson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment; Mick Abbott is Senior Lecturer and Environmental Designer at the Department of Design Studies; Jacinta Ruru is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law.

Publication details

IN-STORE March 2010
CATEGORIES Environmental Studies, Planning, Geography, Cultural Studies
FORMAT Paperback, 240 x 170 mm
EXTENT 224 pp
ILLNS b/w photographs, 4 pages colour
ISBN 978 1 877372 81 0
PRICE $45.00 / £18.50 UK

Mad or Bad?
The Life and Exploits of Amy Bock 1859–1943

Jenny Coleman

Key Points

* First full-length biography of New Zealand's most notorious female criminal and con artist
* Well researched and well written
* Biography for the general reader

The Book

Amy Bock's life has been the inspiration for plays, books, a television programme, a photographic exhibition, a musical composition and recent events surrounding the re-enactment of her wedding as Percy Redwood at Kaka Point 100 years ago. Mad or Bad? is the first full-length biography of New Zealand's most notorious female criminal con artist.

Born in Hobart, Tasmania, Amy had a convict heritage on both sides of her family. While she gained notoriety in 1909 for her impersonation of a man and marriage with an unsuspecting woman, the author shows how her whole life was one of fraud and misrepresentation. After teaching for six years in Victorian schools until she was asked to resign, Amy migrated to New Zealand in 1884. Assuming a variety of personae and remaining conveniently itinerant, she pursued a consistent course of petty crime for the next twenty-five years. In presenting her colourful and chequered life, this biography leaves the reader to judge whether she was essentially mad or just bad.

Contents

Prologue: Telling Tales: The con artist and the biographer / 1: Convicts, criminals and artists: 'It is in my blood' / 2: Inherited 'peculiarities' from her mother / 3: 'So I beg of you to excuse all errors this time'/ 4: A perfect mania for what she calls 'shopping' / 5: There was a great deal of method in her madness / 6: Unique in colonial criminology / 7: The case of the female bridegroom / 8: A startling denouement / 9: Declared an habitual criminal / Epilogue: Mad or Bad? / Notes / Appendices / Bibliography / Index

Author

Jenny Coleman is currently Programme Coordinator for the Women's Studies Programme at Massey University and was Coordinating Editor for the Women's Studies Journal, 2004 to 2009. Her research interests are in nineteenth-century women's history, feminist biography and media representations of feminism.

Publication details

IN-STORE April 2010
CATEGORY History/Biography
FORMAT paperback, 235 x 155 mm
EXTENT 370 pp approx
ILLNS b/w photographs
ISBN 978 1 877372 71 1
PRICE $49.95 / £22.50 UK

Landfall 219: The NZ Music Issue

Guest edited by Bill Direen

About

New Zealand music has been made with electric guitars, European orchestral instruments, laptops, bones, voices, skin, wood, pvc piping, air, magnetic tape and digital media. For this special Music issue, the editor seeks to demonstrate the essential cultural value of music and ways of making it in New Zealand. The musical aspect of poetry – phrasing, timing and the insinuation of meaning during performance – is an aspect that creative writers might respond to. Musical aspects of prose – alliterative and rhythmical or structural devices – may carry meaning quite as much as syntactical ones. Also included are writings related to the experience of listening, and especially writing that may consider the role of NZ music and ways of making it in a wider context.

Editor

Bill Direen grew up in the sixties surrounded by music and poetry of all sorts, classical, cultural, liturgical, radio pop and solid state rock. He studied electronic music under Douglas Lilburn before concentrating on literature (M.A. Hons, Canterbury University) and developing an independent career as writer and musician.

Publication details

IN-STORES May 2010
CATEGORY Literature/Art/Culture
FORMAT Paperback, 215 x 165 mm
EXTENT 208 pp
ILLNS 8 pages colour
ISBN 978 1 877372 98 8
PRICE $29.95