Otago University Press (196)

Acknowledge No Frontier

ISBN: 9781927322369

Author: Andre Brett    Publisher: Otago University Press

While other British settler societies – Australia, Canada, the US and South Africa – have states or provinces, New Zealand is a unitary state. Yet New Zeala...


While other British settler societies – Australia, Canada, the US and South Africa – have states or provinces, New Zealand is a unitary state. Yet New Zealanders today hold firm provincial identities, dating from the time when the young colony was divided into provinces: 1853 to 1876. Why were the provinces created? How did settlers shape and change their institutions? And why, just over 20 years later, did New Zealand abolish its provincial governments? Acknowledge No Frontier, by André Brett, is a lively and insightful investigation into a crucial and formative part of New Zealand’s history. It examines the flaws within the system and how these allowed the central government to use public works – especially railways – to gain popular support for abolition of the provinces. The provincial period has an enduring legacy. This is the surprising and counterintuitive story of how vociferous parochialism and self-interest brought New Zealanders together.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 346


Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm


Publication Date: 13-06-2016


Tags: History   New Zealand
$45.00
Getting It Right

ISBN: 9781927322659

Author: Alan Roddick    Publisher: Otago University Press

After establishing a poetic presence on the literary scene in the early 1960s, Dunedin’s Alan Roddick published his first collection, The Eye Corrects: Poems ...


After establishing a poetic presence on the literary scene in the early 1960s, Dunedin’s Alan Roddick published his first collection, The Eye Corrects: Poems 1955–1965, in 1967. A mere 49 years later comes the sequel, Getting it Right. Poet C.K. Stead writes in Shelf Life (AUP, 2016) that he has always been a great admirer of the economy and the quiet, sharp wit of [Roddick’s] writing … Alan Roddick is a ‘cool’ poet, a temperament that seems reserved, controlled, decent, funny and intelligent; a craftsman not a showman, with a fine musical ear, whose work is dependable and of the highest order. And as well as witty and clever work, there are poems that catch moments of deep feeling; and equally of exhilaration, such as the ten-year-old Alan standing up on the seat, his head through the sunroof of his father’s car that is cruising downhill, ‘pushing 40’ with the engine off to save petrol, ‘drunk with the scent of heather and whin / that airy silence …’ Alan Roddick is writing as well as any New Zealand poet currently at work on the scene. It is wonderful to have him back – something to celebrate!


Bind: paperback


Pages: 100


Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm


Publication Date: 20-09-2016


$25.00
Map For The Heart

ISBN: 9781988592565

Author: Jillian Sullivan    Publisher: Otago University Press

To live in Central Otago is to come to terms with the dominance of nature. Writer Jillian Sullivan set out to walk the hills and mountains of the Ida Valley whe...


To live in Central Otago is to come to terms with the dominance of nature. Writer Jillian Sullivan set out to walk the hills and mountains of the Ida Valley where she lives, and follow the Manuherekia River from the mountains to its confluence with the Clutha/Mata-au. Her aim was to explore not only the land and river for themselves, but the ways in which we grow in intimacy with where we live; how our histories, and those of the people who went before us, our experiences of loss and love, our awakening to what is around us, bring us closer to community – closer to a meaningful life. Map for the Heart is a haunting collection of essays braiding history and memoir with environmentalism, amid an awareness of the seasonal fluctuations of light and wind, heat and snow, plants and creatures, and the lives and work of locals. In writing that is psychologically nurturing and deeply attentive to all that’s around, Sullivan leads readers to the core of the questions that persist throughout a life: who to love, how to love, how to be independent and yet how to live a moral life that also cares for others. The land reminds us, she writes, that we are not in charge. We are only a part of this world, and privileged to be here. Moving and yet restrained, poetic and spiritual yet unsentimental, Map for the Heart is a deeply satisfying collection of writing.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 280


Dimensions: 230 x 150 mm


Tags: Education   New Zealand
$35.00
Fiona Pardington: The Pressure of Sunlight Falling

ISBN: 9781877578090

Author: Kriselle Baker    Publisher: Otago University Press

European explorers of the Pacific in the 18th and early 19th centuries faced a problem – how to describe the people they met and report what they had seen and...


European explorers of the Pacific in the 18th and early 19th centuries faced a problem – how to describe the people they met and report what they had seen and found. From Cook onwards, a serious expedition included artists and scientists in its ship's company. An ambitious journey of the 19th century was the third voyage of the French explorer Dumont d'Urville, from 1837 to 1840. It was just before the invention of photography, when phrenology, the study of people's skulls, was the latest thing. D'Urville chose to take on the voyage an eminent phrenologist, Pierre-Marie Dumoutier, to preserve likenesses of people by making life casts. When the expedition returned to France, the casts were displayed, and later stored in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, to be joined eventually by other casts from Dumoutier's collection, including those of the d'Urville and Dumoutier families. All were overtaken by photography and history. Fiona Pardington first learnt of the life casts in 2007, when a chance conversation initiated a four-year project. It took her from Auckland to the Musée de l'Homme, as she researched and photographed some of more than fifty casts of Maori, Pacific and European heads, including casts of her Ngai Tahu ancestors. This book publishes these photographs and coincides with the opening of a major travelling exhibition. The photographs are extraordinarily beautiful, evocative and spiritually powerful images. They recover likenesses and revive the life force of Dumoutier's subjects, eliciting our empathy and fascination with a world we can never really know. This is a rich and engaging book. With essays by leading scholars in Pacific history, art and photography, on subjects as diverse as phrenology and cast-making, the voyage, and the identity of the Maori casts, it will appeal to anyone interested in nineteenth-century encounters between voyagers and the peoples of the Pacific, or contemporary art and photography.


Bind: hardback


Pages: 160


Dimensions: 245 x 330 mm


Publication Date: 31-12-2011


$80.00
Common Ground: Garden Histories of Aotearoa

ISBN: 9781988592572

Author: Matt Morris    Publisher: Otago University Press

Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa takes a loving look at gardens and garden practices in Aotearoa New Zealand over time. While a lot of gardening book...


Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa takes a loving look at gardens and garden practices in Aotearoa New Zealand over time. While a lot of gardening books focus on the grand plantings of wealthy citizens, Matt Morris explores the historical processes behind ‘humble gardens’ – those created and maintained by ordinary people. From the arrival of the earliest Polynesian settlers carrying precious seeds and cuttings, through early settler gardens to ‘Dig for Victory’ efforts, he traces the collapse and renewal of home gardening culture, through the emergence of community initiatives to the recent concept of food sovereignty. Compost, Māori gardens, the suburban vege patch, the rise of soil toxin levels, the role of native plants and City Beautiful movements … Morris looks at the ways in which cultural meanings have been inscribed in the land through our gardening practices over time. What do our gardens say about us, and where we have been? Matt Morris digs deep in Common Ground.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 284


Dimensions: 240 x 170 mm


$45.00
Letters Of Denis Glover

ISBN: 9781988592541

Author: Sarah Shieff    Publisher: Otago University Press

Oh Christ, a bloody ½ witted student, for purposes of an essay, has just come in to ask me what I and Baxter write verse for, and if we mean what we say, or is...


Oh Christ, a bloody ½ witted student, for purposes of an essay, has just come in to ask me what I and Baxter write verse for, and if we mean what we say, or is there something deeper; could we write better verse in England, or here; or do the critics and professors just read a lot into what’s said that isn’t there? So much. And I have been very rude indeed. – Letter to John Reece Cole, 16 August 1949 Nothing about this excerpt from a letter by Denis Glover will surprise anyone who knows him by reputation. He – and his letters – could be witty, intelligent, alarmingly frank and frequently highly entertaining. A widely admired poet, honoured naval commander, gifted printer and typographer, Denis Glover was founder of the Caxton Press in Christchurch. For 15 years from 1935 he directed a publishing programme that did much to define New Zealand literature for its day, and for much of the rest of the century. His literary work was suspended for war service in the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, during which he earned a DSC for his activities in the Normandy landings. But he was also a serial philanderer and prodigious drinker, and his private life increasingly disintegrated around him, more and more publicly. And yet his energy as a correspondent appeared never to wane, and almost to the end he confided openly, prolifically and entertainingly to hundreds of acquaintances and confidants. In this magnificent volume Sarah Shieff presents around 500 of Glover’s letters to around 110 people, drawn from an archive of nearly 3000 letters to over 430 recipients. Many now recall Glover as little more than a misogynistic old fart, a court jester. These letters should give readers the opportunity to revise – or at least complicate – those dismissive categorisations.


Bind: hardback


Pages: 800


Dimensions: 230 x 150 mm


$79.95
Landfall 239

ISBN: 9781988592435

Author: Emma Neale    Publisher: Otago University Press

FEATURED ARTISTS Vita Cochran, Star Gossage, Robert West AWARDS & COMPETITIONS Results from the 2020 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition WRITERS J...


FEATURED ARTISTS Vita Cochran, Star Gossage, Robert West AWARDS & COMPETITIONS Results from the 2020 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition WRITERS John Adams, Johanna Aitchison, John Allison, Shaun Bamber, Tony Beyer, Iain Britton, Medb Charleton, Ruth Corkill, Doc Drumheller, Mark Edgecombe, Lynley Edmeades, David Eggleton, Johanna Emeney, Rhys Feeney, Michael Giacon, Carolyn Gillum, Patricia Grace, Eliana Gray & Jordan Hamel, Isabel Haarhaus, Bernadette Hall, Sarah Harpur, Jenna Heller, Stephanie Johnson, Erik Kennedy, Brent Kininmont, Megan Kitching, Claire Lacey, Leonard Lambert, Wes Lee, Malinna Liang, Emer Lyons, Carolyn McCurdie, Cilla McQueen, Owen Marshall, Talia Marshall, Zoë Meager, James Norcliffe, Keith Nunes, Kōtuku Tithuia Nuttall, Vincent O’Sullivan, Leanne Radojkovich, essa may ranapiri, Gillian Roach, Pip Robertson, Jo-Ella Sarich, Tim Saunders, Sarah Scott, Sarah Shirley, Elizabeth Smither, Charlotte Steel, Nicola Thorstensen, Rushi Vyas, Susan Wardell REVIEWS Landfall Review Online: books recently reviewed SARAH HARPUR on Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy by Paul Horan and Phillip Matthews PETER SIMPSON on Peat by Lynn Jenner EMMA GATTEY on Life on Volcanoes: Contemporary Essays, ed. Janet McAllister JOHN GERAETS on Verses by Lola Ridge; Two or more islands by Diana Bridge; and The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage by Amy Leigh Wicks MAIRÉAD DE RÓISTE on Singing the Trail: The story of mapping Aotearoa New Zealand by John McCrystal DAVID EGGLETON on The New Photography: New Zealand’s first-generation contemporary photographers by Athol McCredie


Pages: 208


Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm


Publication Date: 01-05-2020


$30.00
Sinking Lessons

ISBN: 9781988592411

Author: Philip Armstrong    Publisher: Otago University Press

The poems in Sinking Lessons portray the vitality of a world full of things and beings we too often disregard, using language that vibrates in harmony with the ...


The poems in Sinking Lessons portray the vitality of a world full of things and beings we too often disregard, using language that vibrates in harmony with the lively tales it tells – from small, everyday events to stories of shipwrecks and strandings, resurrections and reanimations, arctic adventures and descents into the underworld. The cast of characters includes members of the poet’s family alongside heroes from myth and literature, such as Orpheus, Scheherazade and Frankenstein’s Creature. And crowding in upon these, at all times, a multitude of non-human protagonists: sun and stars, wind and water, mud and sand, body fluids, decaying matter, chemicals organic and inorganic, and a great many fishes and birds and beasts. Sinking Lessons is the first collection of poetry from Philip Armstrong, winner of the 2019 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 54


Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm


Publication Date: 07-08-2020


Tag: Poetry
$27.50
Crossing The Lines

ISBN: 9781988592381

Author: Brent Coutts    Publisher: Otago University Press

In Crossing the Lines, Brent Coutts brings to light the previously untold history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in World War II, drawing on the experiences...


In Crossing the Lines, Brent Coutts brings to light the previously untold history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in World War II, drawing on the experiences of ordinary men who lived through extraordinary times. At the centre of the story are New Zealand soldiers Harold Robinson, Ralph Dyer and Douglas Morison, who shared a queer identity and love of performance. Through their roles as female impersonators in Kiwi concert parties in the Pacific and Egypt they found a place to live as gay men within the military forces, boosting the morale of personnel in the Pacific Campaign and, along the way, falling in love with some of the men they met. Crossing the Lines is a richly illustrated account that follows the men from their formative pre-war lives, through the difficult wartime years to their experiences living in a postwar London where they embraced the many new possibilities available. It is a story of strong friendships, the search for love and belonging as homosexuals within the military and civilian worlds, and the creation of the foundation of the queer community today.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 336


Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm


Publication Date: 07-08-2020


Tags: History   NZ (History)
$49.95
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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