Abstract
Introduction
2015 was a year of reflection on the state of New Zealand literature, these musings triggered in part by a loss of funding for the New Zealand Book Awards and a consequent anxiety about the lack of support for New Zealand writers. Novelist Catherine Robertson raised concerns over the threat of overseas e-tailers, the closing of small presses, and the troubling statistic that “New Zealand fiction comprises only 3% of all fiction bought here” (“What is the true state of New Zealand’s book scene?” Booksellers). Kirsten McDougall shared a similar message, complaining about a “stagnating” New Zealand literary culture and calling for “new initiatives” and “cross-pollination between practitioners from different art forms” (“Abandon Normal Instruments: A Call for Change in New Zealand Literary Arts”, Horoeka / Lancewood Reading <horoekareading.com>).
There was also ongoing debate about what constitutes New Zealand literature. In his New Zealand Book Council lecture Witi Ihimaera traced two historical imperatives in New Zealand literature: the nationalistic and the belief in writing as art. He lauded the expansion of these origins to include the voices and stories of Māori and Pacific writers. For Ihimaera the challenge is “to create a New Zealand literature not based on the Old World but Our World”. He warned that in an age of digitalization and globalization there is a danger of our literature becoming homogenized and losing what he regards as its essential quality: a New Zealand core (Where Is New Zealand Literature Heading? pp13–14, see
While many writers expressed concern for the state of New Zealand literature, they also spoke hopefully about new initiatives and directions, including Dunedin’s new status as a UNESCO City of Literature, the launch of New Zealand Bookshop Day, and the rise of small independent presses such as Rosa Mira Books, Steam Press, Upstart, Makaro, Paper Road Press, and Paul Little Books. Joan Fleming celebrated the rise of new forms of publishing, in particular the rise of online journals publishing creative work such as Sweet Mammalian (with its mission statement to provide “a fresh space for poetry that comes out of the complex, the absurd, the warm-blooded”), Rejectamania (which only publishes work that has been rejected elsewhere), and Starling (for writers under 25). Fleming also praised other “independent, rigorous … risky” ventures: the crowdfunding initiatives of new publishing houses Compound Press and Hue & Cry Press; the South Auckland voices that emerge from Ika (the journal publishing work from the Creative Writing School at the Manukau Institute of Technology), and Eleanor Catton’s Horoeka / Lancewood Reading Grant to encourage young and emerging writers to read (“‘We Are All Rejects’: Unsupported Writers and the New New Zealand Journal”, Cordite Poetry Review).
The revival of the national Book Awards in 2016, after a year’s hiatus in 2015, also led to renewed optimism. The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards will be held annually in May as part of Auckland Writers Festival. The 2016 awards honoured work published in 2014 and 2015. The contenders for the fiction award — all published in 2015 — highlight the diversity of New Zealand fiction. The top award went to Stephen Daisley for Coming Rain. Inspired by the 1890 painting Shearing the Rams by Australian artist Tom Roberts, the novel is set in the harsh environs of 1950s rural Western Australia and is a compelling tribute to the tenacity and courage of the region’s people and animals. Another novel with an overseas setting is David Coventry’s The Invisible Mile, which won the award for best debut fiction. The narrative follows the experiences of the 1928 Ravat-Wonder team from New Zealand and Australia who were the first English-speaking team to ride the Tour de France. The journey of the hero, an unnamed rider from Taranaki, is both physical and spiritual, as he struggles to make sense of personal trauma and the tragedy of the First World War. Patricia Grace’s Chappy is likewise focused on coming to terms with the past. Travelling to New Zealand from England, 21-year-old Daniel pieces together the history of his Māori family, particularly the remarkable love story between his Māori grandmother Oriwia and his Japanese grandfather Chappy. Moving between time periods and voices, this is a haunting evocation of the traumas of war and bigotry, the interconnectedness of people, and the healing power of family. Rounding out the shortlist is Patrick Evans’ The Back of His Head, a caustic and disturbing satire about the disjunction between the public perception of a beloved author and the sadistic reality.
Paul Cleave’s thriller Trust No One also centres on the dark side of a treasured author, in this case a bestselling crime novelist whose plots emerge from his murderous actions rather than, purely, his imagination. The novel has been nominated for the 2016 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, with Cleave winning the 2015 award for Five Minutes Alone. Another contender for the 2016 prize is Something Is Rotten by Adam Sarafis, the pen-name for a collaboration between acclaimed Swedish-born novelist Linda Olsson and award-winning young playwright Thomas Sainsbury.
The power of stories to influence, agitate, and console is central to fiction by Kate De Goldi and Hamish Clayton. De Goldi’s young adult novel, From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle, follows the adventures of the titular protagonist and his sister Ren as they make short films. Barney speaks of the way in which stories and books “more or less take up residence inside you” and reviewer Emma Martin points to the novel’s reflections on the ability of stories to “preserve and commemorate” but also “destabilise previous certainties” (New Zealand Books 26(1) p5). Experimental and poetic, Clayton’s The Pale North begins with a writer’s return home to an earthquake-devastated Wellington. Circling out from this to other voices and other times, the initial narrator becomes the subject and object of the narrative in a shifting meditation on the elusive threads that connect places, people, and moments in time.
Poetic prose and an apocalyptic landscape are also a feature of Anna Smaill’s first novel, The Chimes, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Set in an alternate England in which written words and memory are banned and everything is controlled by an immense Carillon whose majestic Chimes create acoustic vibrations that result in “memoryloss” for the populace, this lyrical dystopian narrative handles familiar themes with inventiveness and a remarkable gift for evoking the aural through the written.
C. K. Stead — poet, novelist, critic, and social commentator — began his tenure as New Zealand’s poet laureate in 2015. On receiving the news, he commented that “poetry has been somewhere near the centre of my consciousness for the past 70 years, so this affects me more than any other honour I could have” (Herald, 11 August 2015). The prize for best poetry collection in 2015 went to David Eggleton for The Conch Trumpet. A particular feature of the collection is the beautiful design, including six exquisite woodblock prints by Eggleton’s brother Tonu Shane Eggleton. Structured in five sections (Shore, Inland, Waitaha, Erewhon Unearthed, and Fire) the poems juxtapose the beauty and enduring strength of the natural world and the shaping power of myth with the pollution, exploitation, and ugliness of contemporary capitalism. Nature is also a powerful presence in Roger Horrocks’ Song of the Ghost in the Machine (the other collection from 2015 to be shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards). The origins of the poem lie in the walks Horrocks took over the course of the year, walks which spark an awareness of the body but also “the ghost in the machine”, the strange, terrible, wonderful human capacity for thought.
Vincent O’Sullivan’s Being Here: Selected Poems was hailed by Michael Hulse as a “stunningly good book” from an “unquestionably … major poet” of international standing. The collection provides a “working through of all the traumas, doubts and agonies that accompany the historical transition to a post-belief condition in developed, sceptical societies literate in the scrutiny and dismantling of what they once collectively believed” (New Zealand Books 25(4) p7).
2015 saw the publication of several important collections of work that have been long out of print or never published. The standout collection is the magisterial four volume Complete Prose by James K. Baxter, a comprehensive complement to Baxter’s better-known poetry, deftly edited by John Weir. Seven virtually unknown poems and plays by James Courage — whose 1959 novel A Way of Love was the first New Zealand novel with explicitly homosexual themes — are now available in New Country, sensitively introduced by Christopher Burke. Selected poems by Charles Brasch (1909–1973) and selected poetry and prose from Blanche Baughan (1870–1958) provide fresh insights into two important literary figures.
The Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in poetry went to Bernadette Hall, while the fiction award was conferred on playwright Roger Hall. The Adam New Zealand Play Award went to Maraea Rakuraku for Tan-knee, the first in a planned trilogy about a contemporary Tōhoe family that tackles issues of identity, belonging, and Māori Sovereignty. Collections of New Zealand monologues from New Zealand plays for male and female actors published by Playmarket will be a valuable resource and it is excellent to see the work of exciting playwright Ralph McCubbin Howell — whose 2015 work Dead Men’s Wars provided a fresh perspective on the ANZACS — receiving critical attention from Nicola Hyland.
Archibald Baxter, James K.’s father, is the focus of an essay in the excellent First World War special issue of the Journal of New Zealand Literature, which also contains fine essays on Alexander Aitken, Donald H. Lea, and Alfred Clarke. The Lion and the Unicorn devoted an issue to the work of Margaret Mahy, but once again the main focus of scholarly attention was Katherine Mansfield, with books published on her connections with Europe, her literary influence, her work in translation, and her contribution to the development of the short story. Janet Frame likewise attracted considerable critical comment, with essays published on A State of Siege, The Carpathians, and The Adaptable Man and a book exploring her connection to Buddhist thought. Rachel Barrowman’s Maurice Gee: Life and Work offers “a brilliant guide through an eerie labyrinth of haunting fiction, her breakdowns of the plots is sure and clear and some of her sleuthing into sources and parallels is breathtaking” (New Zealand Listener July 2015), and John Smythe’s The Plays of Bruce Mason provides the first comprehensive survey of Mason’s dramatic works.
The passing of poet and historian W. H. Oliver was a sad loss for the literary and historical community. In both his historical writing and his poetry, Oliver was preoccupied with “the project of finding a country by thinking about it”. Vincent O’Sullivan commented that “at the centre of all he did was his commitment to the possibilities of language” and that “good history should be good literature” (New Zealand Books 25(4) p2) Oliver leaves an enduring legacy in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, his histories of New Zealand, his work on the Waitangi Tribunal, his biography of James K. Baxter, and his several volumes of poetry. It seems fitting to end by quoting the start of a poem from his 1993 collection Bodily Presence: Goodbye in good time to the body gone home to the bright dark where it has been heading all through long days in the light and loving…