The tingling sand in your toes, the smell of pinewood in the forest and the howling wind everywhere… the earth’s beautiful landscape is poetic. From Whanganui River to Banks Peninsula, from famous poets to eminent photographers, this blog features landscape, river, lighthouse and animal poems from across New Zealand.

Land very fertile : Banks Peninsula in poetry and prose
“Engaging a mix of style and content that embraces the peninsula’s unique heritage and charm, this collection of poetry and prose about a special region in New Zealand draws from a wide variety of sources–including such New Zealand greats as Ursula Bethell, James K. Baxter, Denis Glover, Ngaio Marsh, Allen Curnow, and Maurice Shadbolt, along with many newer voices. The contributions are thematically arranged to capture the ambience of Banks Peninsula on the eastern coast of New Zealand’s South Island.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

Flow : Whanganui River poems / Beautrais, Airini
“Where there is water, people settle and stories collect. Six generations of poet Airini Beautrais’ family have lived near the Whanganui River, all-encompassing figure at the heart of Flow. Flow is a brilliant polyphony of stories – large, small, geological, ecological, and human. In March 2017, in a world first, the Whanganui River was granted the status of legal personhood. ‘This remarkable sequence winds and eddies like the Whanganui River, filtering the region’s many histories into something rich and swimmable.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

The nature of things : poems from the New Zealand landscape
“The Nature of Things is a celebration of the relationship between poetry and the New Zealand landscape. It matches a wide range of poems, that in some way evoke or describe our landscape, with images from the pre-eminent New Zealand photographer Craig Potton. The poems have been selected and the introduction written by James Brown, one of New Zealand’s leading contemporary poets The Nature of Things includes work from many of the central figures.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

Continue reading “Poems about the landscape: Books from Te Pataka” →

This blog highlights some famous contemporary Chinese people in New Zealand in different fields, including world-renowned haute couturier Guo Pei’s fashion (now showing at the Auckland Museum), and Geeling Ng, currently Geeling Ching, an actress and model. This list also features filmmaker Roseanne Liang and Meng Foon, who was the Mayor of Gisborne and Race Relations Commissioner.

Guo Pei : couture beyond
“The first major book on China’s leading couture visionary reveals the intricate craftsmanship and imperial glamour that has fashion publications worldwide declaring Guo Pei’s creations. including the aureate cape Rihanna wore to the 2015 Met Gala to a gown festooned with 200,000 crystals featured in the Beijing Olympics, distinguishes Guo Pei as a worthy heir to the grand tradition of haute couture. An exponent of artisan craftsmanship and theatrical fantasy.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

Banana in a nutshell
“Having fallen in love with a white New Zealand boy, 27-year-old Rosanne Liang turns the camera on herself in this thoroughly intimate self-account of the struggle to gain acceptance from traditional Chinese parents.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

Great New Zealand argument : ideas about ourselves
“Tze Ming Mok is a prominent writer in New Zealand, a column writer at the Sunday Star-Times, and of Singapore and Malaysian Chinese descendent.  This book features: Ideas about ourselves is a collection of some of the most important writing about who New Zealanders are and how we are changing, spanning 70 years of our history. It includes the first published transcript of David Lange’s momentous 1985 Oxford Union debate speech, arguing the proposition that ‘Nuclear weapons are morally indefensible’.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

Continue reading “Stories of Chinese people in Aotearoa” →