Fiction & Literature (255)

Ngaio Marsh's Hamlet - The 1943 Production Script

ISBN: 9781988503134

Authors: Ngaio Marsh, Polly Hoskins    Publisher: Canterbury University Press

Dame Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982), a distinguished University of Canterbury alumna, was one of the greatest crime writers of the twentieth century. Marsh was also ...


Dame Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982), a distinguished University of Canterbury alumna, was one of the greatest crime writers of the twentieth century. Marsh was also a gifted Shakespearean director, establishing her reputation in 1943 with the Canterbury University Drama Society modern-dress production of ‘Hamlet’. Fast-paced, with a deftly-cut script, and featuring especially commissioned incidental music by Douglas Lilburn, Ngaio Marsh’s production of ‘Hamlet’ was a hit with wartime audiences. Marsh’s 1943 ‘Hamlet’ production typescript is reproduced here for the first time, together with Lilburn’s previously unpublished music and a selection of archival photographs. An introductory essay by Polly Hoskins examines the staging of the production and the wartime context in which the play was performed, offering broader reflection on Marsh’s compositional approach, and a note from Robert Hoskins introduces Lilburn’s music. This edition makes the perfect starting point for enriching our understanding of Ngaio Marsh as a Shakespearean director and producer, and presents a fresh perspective on New Zealand’s theatre history.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 134


Dimensions: 148 x 210 mm


Publication Date: 01-09-2019


$29.99
The Paper Nautilus

ISBN: 9781988531793

Author: Michael Jackson    Publisher: Otago University Press

The Paper Nautilus is about loss – the forms it takes, how we go on living in the face of it, and the mysterious ways that new life and new beginnings are bor...


The Paper Nautilus is about loss – the forms it takes, how we go on living in the face of it, and the mysterious ways that new life and new beginnings are born of brokenness. The paper nautilus provides a vivid image of this interplay of death and rebirth since, for new life to begin, the angelically beautiful but fragile shell that sustained a former life must be shattered. Michael Jackson has recourse to his ethnographic fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone, as well as autobiography and fiction, in exploring his theme. This book crosses and blends genres most engagingly. Beginning as a series of essays, it gradually morphs into a mesmerising work of the imagination in which the boundary between author and other becomes blurred, and the line between fact and fiction erased.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 224


Dimensions: 130 x 198 mm


Publication Date: 01-11-2019


$35.00
Landfall 237

ISBN: 9781988531731

Publisher: Otago University Press

FEATURED ARTISTS Sharon Singer, Ngahuia Harrison, Peter Trevelyan AWARDS & COMPETITIONS Results and winning essays from the 2019 Charles Brasch Young Writers’...


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


$30.00
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
The Beacon Project

ISBN: 9780473464684

Author: Toby Fraser    Publisher: Lovat Publishing

Nanotech entrepreneur Ryan Trishler and retired Soviet general Alexander Volkov come from very different worlds, yet both have survived the toughest of upbringi...


Nanotech entrepreneur Ryan Trishler and retired Soviet general Alexander Volkov come from very different worlds, yet both have survived the toughest of upbringings. And now each man understands something of the nature of military conflict: one using technology to avoid senseless deaths on the battlefield, the other profiting from wartime brutality wherever it happens. A searing indictment of the international arms trade and the political corruption that feeds it, The Beacon Project is both high-octane thriller and moving family drama, a story that shows the stark choices powerful men make, and the razor-thin line between good and evil. You know you’re getting deep into your research when it attracts official attention in New Zealand. For Christchurch author Toby Fraser, that moment came when he was researching the illegal arms trade for his novel, The Beacon Project. More than once his extensive online searching led to a follow-up from concerned security agencies checking on his intentions. Fraser was drawn to the subject matter not by fascination but by abhorrence. His studies, travels and life experience had made him aware of the horrors of war zones and refugee camps, and of the sheer misery the arms trade created. He also saw the bigger picture that lay behind the trade – large corporations that exploited their position as manufacturers of armaments in order to promote their products. It is this nexus of legitimate business and the criminal underworld that Fraser explores in his novel, and as he does so he exposes the ways in which military purchasing can corrupt not only itself but the political systems that fund it. Toby Fraser was born in Canterbury, where he studied and subsequently worked as an engineer, and he brings an engineer’s eye for detail to his descriptions of machines and materiel. Fraser was also a father, though, and the empathy and understanding that parenthood fosters also shines through in The Beacon Project, in its depiction of a family under severe stress as killers circle. Fraser’s passion for the environment and his experience skiing, fishing, cycling and otherwise exploring the great outdoors is also evident. The book’s settings in-clude the United States, Canada and New Zealand, and the story draws on visits the author made to the Ross-land and Kettle Valley areas of Canada, famous for their mountain-biking trails, and the remote Orwell Creek area of Westland, New Zealand. Tragically, The Beacon Project is published subsequent to Toby’s death.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 408


Dimensions: 152 x 234 mm


Publication Date: 16-08-2019


$35.00
Two Or More Islands

ISBN: 9781988531625

Author: Diana Bridge    Publisher: Otago University Press

Diana Bridge’s subjects are reflected through a range of cultural lenses. To engagement with Western and New Zealand literature should be added her immersion ...


Diana Bridge’s subjects are reflected through a range of cultural lenses. To engagement with Western and New Zealand literature should be added her immersion in the great Asian cultures of China and India. Her poetry is an intricate meshing of realities and possesses a remarkable depth and richness of perspective. These are poised, elegantly wrought poems, full of lively intelligence and verbal deftness. Since Baxter, most New Zealand poets have shied away from the use of myth in their poetry. In this collection, Bridge mines this vein for its deeply traditional and personal resonances. She knows, as firmly as did Jung, that ‘myths give us pictures for our emotions’. Here, the poems that openly glance off myth are brief, fresh takes that centre on the heroines of Western Classical legend. They begin in an irony that is needed to cope with the sometimes shocking stories, then range through time to alight with radical brevity on Shakespeare and English history. The refrain of the past narrows down to the notion of the family, No one of us today is of the House of Atreus – Just meet the Family, I say. The book concludes with ‘The Way a Stone Falls’, 22 poems set in Southeast Asia. The sequence takes on board the Cambodian tragedy of last century by way of headless statues – taking a sideswipe at French colonialism. It confronts the hardest decision in the whole Hindu tradition, that of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. This is how Bridge finds her way in the world – a place of trees and people and noise and contingency – with the assurance that myth tells her story as well as its own.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 80


Publication Date: 01-06-2019


$27.95
Listening In

ISBN: 9781988531786

Author: Lynley Edmeades    Publisher: Otago University Press

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 lin...


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. Edmeades’ poems are terrifically accomplished – they show confidence and a sure, skilful handling of language, even when expressing tentative, slippery ideas and emotions. Her work is full of verbal play, celebration, pleasure and despair. This is a book where you know the poet is intensely alive to language and its possibilities – she’s always looking for another angle, another way. Edmeades’ voice is an essential one in the ‘now’ of NZ poetry. – Jenny Bornholdt This book confirms Edmeades as both a wily and witty writer with a sure grasp of the potential for shifts of linguistic register to create telling shifts of perspective. Extracting poetry from noise with cool measured techniques, Edmeades emerges in this collection as a precise observer of the human comedy as well as a careful listener. Edmeades’ poems are alert to the phenomena of the real world, delivered with a fidelity and assurance that indicate a significant writer. Every poem in this collection is rewarding. – David Eggleton


Bind: paperback


Pages: 74


Dimensions: 165 x 235 mm


Publication Date: 20-09-2019


$27.50
Poetry For Millennials

ISBN: 9781786859723

Author: Tamsin King    Publisher: Summersdale Publishers

Are you fed up with that one person who posts way too much personal info on social media? Are you worried your friend is taking the hipster look too far but don...


Are you fed up with that one person who posts way too much personal info on social media? Are you worried your friend is taking the hipster look too far but don’t know how to tell them? Do you need a poem for when your satnav crashes and you start catastrophising that you’ll never make it home again? Yes? Then Poetry for Millennials is the answer to all your woes, offering poetry from some of our greatest literary figures as an antidote to help laugh off the most common millennial problems. From the joys of internet dating and house-shares to digital detoxing and growing up, this book will help make you more resilient to what’s thrown your way and show the previous generations that you definitely aren’t a snowflake *after wiping away your tears*.


Bind: hardback


Pages: 128


Dimensions: 127 x 170 mm


Publication Date: 08-08-2019


$24.99
Strong Words 2019

ISBN: 9781988531779

Author: Emma Neale    Publisher: Otago University Press

Judging her first Landfall Essay Competition in 2018, Landfall editor Emma Neale was seriously challenged. The overall high quality of the 90 submissions made i...


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


$35.00
The Father of Octopus Wrestling and other small fictions

ISBN: 9781988503127

Author: Frankie McMillan    Publisher: Canterbury University Press

Darkly comic, surreal and full of perceptiveness about human vulnerability and eccentricity, Frankie McMillan’s small fictions often duck and dive away from t...


Darkly comic, surreal and full of perceptiveness about human vulnerability and eccentricity, Frankie McMillan’s small fictions often duck and dive away from the reader’s expectations. With a poet’s sense of how single words or phrases ripple out with alternate meanings, and a dramatist’s feeling for how apparently small gestures reveal character, and how sudden, cataclysmic change can wrench us out of comfort, routine and unthinking assumptions, the author leaves us ransacking the language for finer genre definitions. This collection teems with both the animal world and a vivid circus of quirky human individuals. The pieces globe-trot all over the planet: from Russia to America to New Zealand; and yet often their piquant wisdom comes from how they bear down into ‘micro-geography’ of intimate relationships: the troughs, peaks, cliff-sides, the warm, still pools of recognition. Frankie McMillan is like a quietly outrageous Zen master, showing us human folly and idiocy, steering us carefully over the dark river of vulnerability that swells under it all. "The Father of Octopus Wrestling, and other small fictions" is an artisan production, designed and printed by Ilam Press, Ilam School of Fine Arts and is published with the support of Creative New Zealand.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 146


Dimensions: 165 x 230 mm


Publication Date: 23-08-2019


$27.99
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