FEATURED ARTISTS Sharon Singer, Ngahuia Harrison, Peter Trevelyan AWARDS & COMPETITIONS Results and winning essays from the 2019 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition, and judge’s report by Emma Neale. WRITERS John Adams, Peter Bland, Laura Borrowdale, Bill Bradford, Iain Britton, Medb Charleton, Stephen Coates, Carolyn DeCarlo, John Dennison, Lynley Edmeades, David Eggleton, Joan Fleming, Jasmine Gallagher, John Gallas, Brett Gartrell, John Geraets, Tim Grgec, Michael Hall, Rebecca Hawkes, Joy Holley, Aaron Horrell, Gail Ingram, Claudia Jardine, Sam Keenan, Erik Kennedy, Arihia Latham, Jessica Le Bas, Wes Lee, Tina Makereti, Ria Masae, Cilla McQueen, Zoë Meager, Robynanne Milford, Sean Monaghan, Art Nahill, Kavita Nandan, Rachel O’Neill, Maris O’Rourke, Claire Orchard, Joanna Preston, essa may ranapiri, Anna Rankin, Jeremy Roberts, Leanne Radojkovich, Carrie Rudzinski, Kerrin P. Sharpe, Sarah Shirley, Rachel Smith, Elizabeth Smither, Catherine Trundle, Kirsteen Ure, Tam Vosper, Tom Weston, Anna Woods, Kirby Wright REVIEWS Landfall Review Online: books recently reviewed John Dennison on Collected Poems by Allen Curnow, eds Elizabeth Caffin and Terry Sturm Michael Hulse on Allen Curnow by Terry Sturm, ed. Linda Cassells Tracey Slaughter on Caroline’s Bikini by Kirsty Gunn Philip Temple on Charles Brasch Journals 1958–1973, ed. Peter Simpson Lynley Edmeades on louder, by Kerrin P. Sharpe; Enclosures 4 by Bill Direen; and Luxembourg by Stephen Oliver Airhia Latham on Tāngata Ngāi Tahu /People of Ngāi Tahu (Vol. 1), eds Helen Brown and Takerai Norton

Bind: paperback

Pages: 208

Dimensions: 165 x 215 mm

In 1858 Canterbury settler Thomas Potts protested against the destruction of tōtara on the Port Hills near Christchurch. A decade later, as a member of Parliament, he made forest conservation a national issue. Through his writing he raised the then novel idea of protecting native birds on island reserves, and proposed the creation of national ‘domains’ or parks. As a pioneering colonist, acclimatist and runholder, however, Potts’ own actions threatened the very environments he sought to maintain. This makes him a fascinating subject as we confront present-day problems in balancing development and conservation. This book is about, and partly by, Potts, and through him about New Zealand and the course and consequences of colonisation. It describes and interprets his life, from his early years in England through to his 34 years in New Zealand. Excerpts from Potts’ vivid 1850s diary, written from close to the edge of European settlement, are published here for the first time. Thomas Potts of Canterbury also reproduces 11 long-forgotten essays by him from the 1880s, in which he reflected on the 1850s and what had happened since – both to New Zealand’s natural environment and to Māori and Pākehā. Sixteen pages of contemporary images supplement the text. Thomas Potts of Canterbury will appeal to anyone interested in the early history of Canterbury, in environmental change, and in early efforts in New Zealand towards conservation. It is a story of conflicting goals, magnificently exemplified in the life and writings of a man who strove, 150 years ago, to be both colonist and conservationist.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 342

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 20-09-2020

This study of the art of William Hodges opens fresh theoretical perspectives on the representational problems raised by these early paintings produced in the South Pacific. Following Pacific Island historians of the 1960s, it argues that it is possible to read the texts and visual material produced from early South Seas encounters against the grain, as moments of cross-cultural exchange that challenge postcolonial complacencies. Tuhituhi is presented in sections that follow the geographical and chronological progression of Cook’s voyage on the Resolution, for which William Hodges was hired as official artist, Cook’s ‘landskip painter’. Painters like Hodges found themselves staring again and again in disbelief at landscapes and seascapes that stretched 18th-century conventions of painting, such as the ‘picturesque’, the ‘sublime’ and the ‘beautiful’. Each chapter of Tuhituhi focuses on the close reading of a significant painting of a South Pacific location by Hodges. The last chapter considers the important influence of Hodges’ work on a series of paintings by the major twentieth-century New Zealand painter Colin McCahon.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 346

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

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/.

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Pages: 280

Dimensions: 165 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 20-10-2020

The South Pacific is a vast expanse of ocean – over 50 million km² – with tiny scattered islands and island groups. From Kiribati, Tuvalu and Fiji in the west, to the far-flung Marquesas and Austral Islands in French Polynesia in the east, this book surveys (and discovers) the butterfly inhabitants of these tropical islands. For completeness, Hawai’i to the north – where there are many fewer islands in an otherwise empty ocean – is included. To the south and with a much larger land area, lies temperate New Zealand, with a further string of islands reaching into subantarctic waters. It is easy to misjudge butterflies as fragile flying insects: their distribution across a wild and expansive Pacific Ocean proves otherwise. Long ago they colonised by flight isolated and tiny atolls and they continue to claim new territory. Others came by land bridges when sea levels were lower, to mark out their distribution and perhaps establish new species. More recently, people have made their way into the South Pacific region; the final chapter considers the impacts of human migration and population growth, and identifies conservation issues.

Bind: hardback

Pages: 240

Aftermaths explores the life-changing intergenerational effects of colonial violence in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. The settings of these accessible, illustrated short essays range from Ōrākau pā in the Waikato to the Kimberleys in northwest Australia, from orphanages in Fiji to the ancestral lands of the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California. Story by story, this collection powerfully reveals the living legacy of historical events, showing how they have been remembered (and misremembered) within families and communities into the present day.

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Dimensions: 170 x 240 x 20 mm

Publication Date: 14-04-2023

Natanahira Waruwarutu was a child at the time of the capture of Kaiapoi Pa by Te Rauparaha's Ngati Toa warriors in 1832. The early years of his life, recounted here in the original Maori text and an accompanying translation, saw great change in the Maori communities of Waitaha (Canterbury) and Akaroa. Otako leaders set aside Moeraki, further south, for Kaiapoi refugees and Waruwarutu moved between the two places until he died in 1895. Before his death, he passed on to scribe Thomas Green, himself a Ngai Tahu elder, a substantial body of material that now defines modern understanding of the traditional history of Ngai Tahu. This manuscript was part of that material and, as Te Maire Tau describes in his introduction, has a history of its own. The story in this book is not a Ngai Tahu 'Grand narrative'. As Te Maire Tau says, Maori history simply does not work like that. Rather, it is one narrative by a survivor of the period 'that recollects the reality of what he saw as a child; on this basis, it is a superb example of an oral tradition.' The author has included a chapter on the historical context of Waruwarutu manuscript and annotations for both Maori and English texts. A further chapter presents in Maori with English translations a text recorded by scribe Charles Creed that supplements Waruwarutu's account of his induction into the Kaiapoi whare purakau (house of learning). It is one of the few manuscripts that provides a glimpse into a world that no longer exists.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 112

Dimensions: 155 x 230 mm

Judging her first Landfall Essay Competition in 2018, Landfall editor Emma Neale was seriously challenged. The overall high quality of the 90 submissions made it impossible to choose. After a nails-bitten-to-the-quick struggle, she optimistically submitted her ‘shortlist’ of 21 essays. The publisher had some strong words with her. Emma was told a shortlist needed to be shorter than 21. A lot shorter. There were no fingernails left to chew. She wasn’t flexible enough to bite her toes. The only thing left to gnaw down was the too-long list. In the end she pared the list back to 10 but it seemed so wasteful not to be awarding many more prizes. The world needed to be able to read these damned fine essays. That’s when this book was born … Strong Words is a striking collection of essays that show what Virginia Woolf once described as the art that can at once ‘sting us wide awake’ and yet also ‘fix us in a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification of life’. It celebrates an extraordinary year in New Zealand writing.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 184

Dimensions: 215 x 165 x 20 mm

Publication Date: 01-11-2019

Bus Stops on the Moon is a personal and a cultural history. As memoir, it is a sequel to The Dreaming Land (2015). A troubled and restless young Martin Edmond is on his way to becoming the wiser, older man who will sit down and write both narratives. As cultural history, the book gives us a participant’s-eye view of the early years of Alan Brunton and Sally Rodwell’s avant-garde theatre troupe Red Mole. Formed in 1974, Red Mole performed Dadaesque cabaret, agit-prop, costume drama, street theatre, circus and puppetry, live music, and became a national sensation. They toured the country with Split Enz and travelled internationally. One of Red Mole’s five founding principles was ‘to escape programmed behaviour by remaining erratic’. They ticked that one off. In Bus Stops on the Moon Martin Edmond offers, with his customary elegance, a rich and entertaining picture of the high times and low lives of Red Mole.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 274

Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm

Publication Date: 11-09-2020

She gripped lightly with her knees, as she’d been taught. She didn’t want wings. She wanted to fly on the thunder of hooves, feel muscles surging beneath her. The word in her head, matching stride – free-ee-dom, free-ee-dom, free-ee-dom – as she bent low over the withers, pressing her cheek against the finial’s neck, her own hair a mane, streaming wild in the wind. – From the poem ‘Silks’ This remarkable second collection by award-winning poet Joanna Preston charts a course for the journey from child to woman. Her bold and original voice swoops the reader from the ocean depths to the roof of the world, from nascent saints, Viking raids and fallen angels to talking cameras and an astronaut in space. Always, the human heartbeat is at stake, as Preston explores love, loss, longing and lust – how we stumble, how we soar. tumble is a beautifully crafted collection that traverses traditional forms, the lyric and free verse. It is earthy and embodied, while at the same time woven through with myth and magical realism.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 88

Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 15-11-2021