James Norcliffe (5)

Bonsai : Best Small Stories From Aotearoa New Zealand

ISBN: 9781927145982

Authors: Michelle Elvy, Frankie McMillan, James Norcliffe    Publisher: Canterbury University Press

‘Slippery, and exciting … The stories come at youdirectly, and then turn askance, and then slap youin the face’ Allan Drew ‘Bonsai’ brings together a ...


‘Slippery, and exciting … The stories come at youdirectly, and then turn askance, and then slap youin the face’ Allan Drew ‘Bonsai’ brings together a pioneering collection of flash fiction and associated forms (prose poetry and haibun) from 165 writers in Aotearoa New Zealand, along with intriguing essays on this increasingly popular genre. In 200 small stories of no more than 300 words, where the translucent boundaries between prose and poetry are often transgressed, we discover a vast array of human experience. Here, children race snails, shoot tin cans, learn to fly, and look for Antarctica in a drain pipe, while Schrödinger’s cat dreams of life and death, a dog licks away a woman’s tears, and a peacock guards its human family. Family tensions spill over during trips to the beach, couples get together and fall apart, babies are born – or not born – and parents die. You might find yourself dancing like the cool kids, listening to a neighbour sing in the dark, or watching a tractor catch fire. There are perfect moments in miniature as dew falls on a spider’s web and strangers make eye contact. Composed with precision in a form where every word counts, these carefully chiselled works are provocative, tender and endlessly surprising. About the editors Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor of flash fiction whose recent work appears in ‘New Micro Fiction’(WW Norton, 2018). Among her many editing roles she is editor at ‘Flash Frontier’. Frankie McMillan has been called ‘our maestro of flash fiction’.Her book ‘My Mother and the Hungarians, and other small fictions’ (CUP, 2016) was long-listed for the Ockham Book Awards. James Norcliffe is a poet, editor and writer for children. He is editor at ‘Flash Frontier’and has published nine collections of poetry, including ‘Dark Days at the Oxygen Café’(VUP, 2016).


Bind: paperback


Pages: 296


Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm


Publication Date: 24-08-2018


$39.99
Deadpan

ISBN: 9781988531755

Author: James Norcliffe    Publisher: Otago University Press

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 Deadpa...


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. The book’s first section, ‘Poor Yorick’, shares the thoughts of an introspective narrator as he contends with the travails of later life. ‘In his hospital pyjamas’, Yorick is by turns cheerful and beset by loss, laughing and weeping, comparing the stages of life (and death). The following sections – ‘Scan’, ‘Trumpet Vine’, ‘Telegraph Road’ and ‘Travellers in a small Ford’ – reach around to mine experience in a world where ‘nothing lasts’; not childhood, place nor identity. An appropriate response to this ephemeral world is to embrace ambiguity, uncertainty, absurdity and surrealism. ‘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.’ These poems are concise and contained, using supple, precise language and a gleam of dry and mordant wit. Deadpan is the work of a mature and technically astute poet who is one of New Zealand’s leading writers.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 100


Dimensions: 165 x 235 x 10 mm


$27.50
Ko Aotearoa Tatou We Are New Zealand An Anthology

ISBN: 9781988592527

Authors: James Norcliffe, Michelle Elvy, Paula Morris    Publisher: Otago University Press

In the aftermath of the Christchurch terrorist attacks of 15 March 2019, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared: ‘We are all New Zealanders.’ These words re...


In the aftermath of the Christchurch terrorist attacks of 15 March 2019, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared: ‘We are all New Zealanders.’ These words resonated, an instant meme that asserted our national diversity and inclusiveness and, at the same time, issued a rebuke to hatred and divisiveness. Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand is bursting with new works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art created in response to the editors’ questions: What is New Zealand now, in all its rich variety and contradiction, darkness and light? Who are New Zealanders? The works flowed in from well-known names and new voices, from writers and artists from Kerikeri to Bluff. Some are teenagers still at school; some are in their eighties. Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika, Asian, new migrants, young voices, queer writers, social warriors … Aotearoa’s many faces are represented in this unique and important compendium. In a society where the arts, especially marginalised arts, are under threat, this anthology shows that creative work can explore, document, interrogate, re-imagine – and celebrate – who we are as citizens of this diverse country, in a diverse world. A list of all contributors can be found at https://wearenewzealand.org/.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 280


Dimensions: 165 x 210 mm


Publication Date: 20-10-2020


$39.95
The Crate : A Ghost Story

ISBN: 9780995143746

Author: James Norcliffe    Publisher: Quentin Wilson Publishing

• A dark lake with darker secrets. • The bizarre delivery of a mysterious crate. • A fortune-teller unnerved by what she reads in a palm. • Why is the p...


• A dark lake with darker secrets. • The bizarre delivery of a mysterious crate. • A fortune-teller unnerved by what she reads in a palm. • Why is the past reaching for the present with such bony fingers? For the four teenagers staying near a West Coast lake, what begins as an intriguing puzzle ends with the most terrifying night of their lives, a night that will change them forever… Award-winning author James Norcliffe’s compelling supernatural tale will delight and thrill all young readers with its bittersweet ending as unexpected as it is satisfying. “James Norcliffe is a national treasure.” – Sarah Forster, The Sapling


Bind: paperback


Pages: 160


Dimensions: 153 x 234 mm


Publication Date: 25-10-2022


$27.50
Letter To Oumuamua

ISBN: 9781990048517

Author: James Norcliffe    Publisher: Otago University Press

In this wry and witty collection – addressed to the first interstellar object ever to be detected in our solar system – James Norcliffe applies a cool, clea...


In this wry and witty collection – addressed to the first interstellar object ever to be detected in our solar system – James Norcliffe applies a cool, clear eye to human life on Earth. Our foibles and absurdities are laid bare, but so too is the human capacity for love, desire, sorrow and regret. Norcliffe’s succinct observations traverse the personal and the political. Grounded in the local but encompassing the global, they range through subjects such as commuting, insomnia and faltering health to the contemplation of current events and issues such as gun violence and climate change. The landscapes and settings of these poems are vividly evoked, often in terms of human impact. Birds, ‘knowing what we are’, take flight at the approach of a person; a coal range is the acknowledged centre of a West Coast family’s survival. Often very funny, and always deeply felt, Norcliffe’s Letter to 'Oumuamua describes a world where every day is both everyday – gritty, material, bread-and-butter – and also luminous and precious: a ‘day like no other’. The little ones bring us stories. They want us to read to them, to embroider the bright illustrations and make them even brighter. How can we resist? Lying is in our blood. From "Wolf Light"


Bind: paperback


Pages: 98


Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm


Publication Date: 20-02-2023


Tag: Poetry
$25.00
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