Queer Objects
Edited by Chris Brickell and Judith Collard
Queer lives give rise to a vast array of objects: the things we fill our houses with the gifts we share with our friends, the commodities we consume at work and at play, the clothes and accessories we wear, various reminders of state power, as well as the analogue and digital technologies we use to communicate with one another.
But what makes an object queer?
The 63 chapters in Queer Objects consider this question in relation to lesbian, gay and transgender communities across time, cultures and space. In this unique international collaboration, well-known and newer writers traverse world history to write about fabulous, captivating and transgressive items ranging from ancient Egyptian tomb paintings and Roman artefacts to political placards, snapshots, sex toys and the smartphone.
Women Mean Business: Colonial businesswomen in New Zealand
Catherine Bishop
From Kaitaia in Northland to Oban on Stewart Island, New Zealand’s nineteenth-century towns were full of entrepreneurial women. Contrary to what we might expect, colonial women were not only wives and mothers or domestic servants. A surprising number ran their own businesses, supporting themselves and their families, sometimes in productive partnership with husbands, but in other cases compensating for a spouse’s incompetence, intemperance, absence – or all three.
In this fascinating and entertaining book, award-winning historian Dr Catherine Bishop showcases many of the individual businesswomen whose efforts, collectively, contributed so much to the making of urban life in New Zealand.
A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Crèche Case
Lynley Hood
Originally published in 2001, A City Possessed is the harrowing account of one of New Zealand’s most high-profile criminal cases – a story of child sexual abuse allegations, gender politics and the law.
In detailing the events of the 1990s that led up to and surrounded the allegations made against several staff of the Christchurch Civic Crèche, author Lynley Hood shows how and why such a case could happen. A City Possessed won the Montana Medal for Non-Fiction at the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Listening In
Lynley Edmeades
In this original second collection, Lynley Edmeades turns her attention to ideas of sound, listening and speech. Listening In is full of the verbal play and linguistic experimentation that characterised her first collection, but it also shows the poet pushing the form into new territories. Her poems show, often sardonically, how language can be undermined: linguistic registers are rife with uncertainties, ambiguities and accidental comedy.
She shuffles and reshuffles statements and texts, and assumes multiple perspectives with the skill of a ventriloquist. These poems probe political rhetoric and linguistic slippages with a sceptical eye, and highlight the role of listening – or the errors of listening – in everyday communication.
Deadpan
James Norcliffe
The new collection from one of New Zealand’s leading authors, Deadpan is the work of a mature and technically astute poet.
The title of James Norcliffe’s tenth poetry collection points deftly to the way it conveys big emotions without cracking a smile or shedding a tear. In Deadpan, Norcliffe writes in an alert, compassionate yet sceptical voice.
‘Deadpan,’ writes the author in his introductory essay, ‘is the porter in Macbeth pausing to take a piss while there is that urgent banging at the gate. It is Buster Keaton standing unmoved as the building crashes down on top of him. It is my poker-faced Yorkshire grandfather playing two little dicky birds sitting on the wall.’
Wild Dunedin
The natural history of New Zealand's wildlife capital
Neville Peat and Brian Patrick
Dunedin city and its environs are home to an amazing range of habitats and landscapes, of plants, animals, birds, insects and geological features. From the ocean, with its albatrosses and penguins, to the high alpine zone of inland ranges, this book introduces a magnificent natural environment.
This revised edition of Wild Dunedin includes new and updated information and stunning new images, including a look at the jewel in Dunedin’s natural history crown, Orokonui Ecosanctuary.
An essential guide to the natural beauty of this stunning southern city.
Details
Peat
Lynn Jenner
Peat starts out as Lynn Jenner’s study of the Kapiti Expressway, built between 2013 and 2017 and passing, at its nearest point, about a kilometre from her own house. She decides to create a kind of archive of the construction of this so-called Road of National Significance. How did it come to be built? What is its character? Who will win and who will lose from its construction? What will be its impact on the local environment?
Jenner begins a quest to find a fellow writer with different sensibilities to help her think about the natural world the road traverses. New Zealand-born poet, editor, art collector and philanthropist Charles Brasch is her choice. Researching Brasch will be her refuge from the constant pile-driving and the sprawling concrete, and perhaps the poet will offer some ways of thinking that will help her understand contemporary events.
A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley
Elspeth Sandys
A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley is a beautifully written multi-layered narrative centred on New Zealander Rewi Alley and his part in the momentous political events of mid-twentieth-century China. Part-biography, part-travel journal, part-literary commentary, A Communist in the Family brings together Alley’s story and that of his author cousin, Elspeth Sandys.
Two or More Islands
Diana Bridge
Stewart Island
Rakiura National Park
Neville Peat
Stewart Island is an increasingly popular holiday destination for eco-tourism and outdoor recreation, with many bush walks and a wealth of natural features to enjoy. Neville Peat introduces the attractions of the island – what to see and do, its walks and tramps, its national park, wildlife, history and magnificent scenery.
West Island
Five twentieth-century New Zealanders in Australia
Stephanie Johnson
Five notable twentieth-century New Zealanders who made their lives in Australia are the subject of this fascinating biographical investigation by award-winning author Stephanie Johnson.
Roland Wakelin, Dulcie Deamer, Jean Devanny, Douglas Stewart and Eric Baume had little in common in personality, proclivities and politics. Yet they all experienced fame and/or notoriety in the ‘West Island’ while being largely forgotten in their country of origin. They also occasionally crossed paths in the course of eventful lives.
As a writer with strong connections to both countries, Johnson draws on her own experiences of life on both sides of ‘the ditch’ in her reflections on the trans-Tasman diaspora and the subtle differences and cultural divide that set apart the two countries.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive
A memoir
Wendy Parkins
Every morning, so far, I’m alive is about what it’s like to live in a world where shaking a stranger’s hand, catching a taxi or touching a door handle are fraught with fear and dread.
This memoir charts the author’s breakdown after migrating from New Zealand to England: what begins as homesickness and career burn-out develops into depression, contamination phobia and OCD.
Increasingly alienated from all the things that previously gave her life meaning and purpose – family, work, nature, literature – the author is forced to confront a question once posed by the young Virginia Woolf: ‘How is one to live in such a world?’
Landfall 237 Autumn 2019
Edited by Emma Neale
Landfall is New Zealand's foremost and longest-running arts and literary journal. It showcases new fiction and poetry, as well as biographical and critical essays, and cultural commentary.
Landfall 237 features results and winning essay from the Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition 2019 along with featured artists Sharon Singer, Ngahuia Harrison, Peter Trevelyan, and many New Zealand writers and poets.
