Search results for ""Otago University Press""

Calling to the scattered tribes of contemporary New Zealand, The Conch Trumpet sounds the signal to listen close, critically, and "in alert reverie." David Eggleton’s reach of references, the marriage of high and low, the grasp of popular and classical allusion, his eye both for cultural trash and epiphanic beauty, make it seem as if here Shakespeare shakes down in the Pacific. There are dazzling compressions of history; astonishing paens to harbours, mountains, lakes, and rivers; wrenchingly dark, satirical critiques of contemporary politics, solipsism, narcissism, the apolitical, and the corporate, with a teeming vocabulary to match. And often too a sense of the imperative, grounding reality of the phenomenal world—the thisness of things: cloud whispers brush daylight’s ear, fern question marks form a bush encore, forlorn heat swings cobbed in webs. In this latest collection, David Eggleton is court jester, philosopher, lyricist, and a kind of male Cassandra, roving warningly from primeval swampland to gritty cityscape to the information and disinformation cybercloud.

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There have been many published collections of soldiers’ diaries and letters from the First World War, but never a firsthand account of one New Zealand family’s life in England during these challenging and frightening years. When her sons, Oswald and Seton, decided they wanted to serve as pilots, which meant enlisting in Britain, Annie Montgomerie decreed that the whole family would go too. So from 1916 to 1919 they lived in London, facing Zeppelin attacks, giving hospitality to young New Zealand friends who left to fight and sometimes never came back, watching Oswald and Seton go off to war, and suffering in the influenza epidemic. Through all this Annie kept a diary, in which she recorded her deep love and concern for her family, her hatred of the war, her forthright, amusing and proudly Kiwi views on the English, and myriad fascinating details about wartime London life. Annie’s granddaughter, Susanna Montgomerie Norris, has transcribed and edited this extraordinary account, along with many letters and diary excerpts from her pilot father, Seton. Richly illustrated with contemporary photographs and other memorabilia, Annie’s War offers a unique and compelling view of a crucial time in world history. Susanna spent many years transcribing and working on her grandmother Annie’s diaries, which were discovered by her cousin, John Montgomerie, who has also supplied a large number of the photos used.

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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.

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In May 2006 some fifteen artists from New Zealand took over the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (UK) as part of Pasifika Styles, a groundbreaking experiment in the display of contemporary Pacific art. Installing their works in cases next to Taonga or treasures collected on the voyages of Cook and Vancouver, the artists flung open the stores of the museum to bring more of the museums unparalleled Oceanic collections to light. At the opening of the exhibtion, the song of ancient instruments played by contemporary musicians called historic artefacts to life, heralding a new era of collaborative curatorship to enthnographic museums. Over the next two years, visiting artists continued to bring vitality to the collections, offering workshops, seminars, public activities and a festival of performing arts. This book describes the making of Pasifika Styles, from the perspective of the artists, museum professional and scholars involved in this pioneering project, placing it i

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In 1907 Dr T.M. Hocken of Dunedin - historian, bibliographer and collector - undertook to gift to the University of Otago his magnificent collection of books, manuscripts, paintings and other historical documents relating to New Zealand and the Pacific. Published to celebrate the centenary of the Hocken Collections' Deed of Trust, this book documents almost 200 items, dating from the seventeenth century to the present day, photographed by Bill Nichol. These include historical and modern paintings, photographs and drawings, maps and plans, books, newspapers and posters, sheet music, sound recordings, and early New Zealand manuscripts. Many items relate to Maori history.

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In the mid twentieth century Charles Brasch was a major figure in New Zealand's cultural life -- a poet, patron and founding editor of Landfall , the country's premier journal of letters and art. Published to coincide with the release of his papers at the Hocken Library from a 30-year embargo, this volume celebrates his life and legacy in a series of essays by writers and critics, including people who knew him. Brasch was an early collector of New Zealand modernists, including Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston, Evelyn Page and many other important artists. This book is well illustrated with personal photographs and color reproductions of works from that art collection, many of which have never before been published. The editor, Donald Kerr, is Special Collections Librarian at the University of Otago and has curated many exhibitions on Brasch.

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Twelve short stories by one of New Zealand's best-loved poets are collected here. Set in the south, they are spare pieces of prose, showing an eye for detail and for the ironies of life.

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This book tells the story of New Zealand's land girls during the Second World War. Drawing on the oral histories of 130 women and the written interviews of 90 others, it uncovers what has been a hidden history, overlooked in most surveys of New Zealand's war experience. The Women's Land Service was formed to supply labour to keep New Zealand agriculture going during the War. From 1940, city girls from the age of seventeen were sent to assist on sheep, cattle, dairy, orchard and poultry properties. Many had the experience of arriving at a remote destination late at night and starting work the next morning as a farm-hand, when they had never been close-up to a sheep. They learned to ride horses, train and whistle up dogs, muster and shear sheep, plough and harvest crops, and to master all the myriad tasks of rural industries, often without electricity. The experience dramatically changed lives. Some gave up university education, or left their careers and changed direction. Others were bi

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