Revelations, Still Standing by Dame Anna Crighton, Feedback by Nicholas Golledge and Lucas Rijneveld. Photos / Supplied
Revelations, Still Standing by Dame Anna Crighton, Feedback by Nicholas Golledge and Lucas Rijneveld. Photos / Supplied
Revelations is the title of the Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 (Massey University Press). It’s again edited by Tracey Slaughter who notes, “We are so often detonated into poetry by our nerve ends,” even if the market generally likes its poets “shining not bleeding”. The yearbook gathers new versefrom many of the country’s best poets, as well as essays and reviews. It is the closest thing to the UK’s The Forward Book of Poetry, though unfortunately without the monetary prizes.
Still Standing (Canterbury University Press) is Dame Anna Crighton’s memoir. For those outside the region, she is a city councillor and fierce advocate for Christchurch’s heritage buildings. But her memoir tells a broader story. She writes about a difficult childhood and depression, a wild adolescence and early pregnancy, and a “horror” marriage, but also about art and architecture, delight in being a mother and grandmother, gaining a PhD at the age of 68 and becoming a dame.
Wellington climate scientist Nicholas Golledge is interested in the biggest of pictures. Feedback (Prometheus Books) argues that, “The exact same patterns that describe plate tectonics, evolution and mass extinctions also emerge in the heartbeat of our everyday lives, underpinning everything from the cohesion of our social networks and personal relationships to our emotional wellbeing and spiritual beliefs.”
Dutch novelist Lucas Rijneveld’s first novel, The Discomfort of Evening, earned acclaim and won the International Booker Prize. It concerned a 12-year-old girl being introduced to sex games. The author’s second, My Heavenly Favourite (Faber), treads similar contentious ground, a teen girl being sexually groomed and exploited by a middle-aged farm worker. Is it the analysis of an unbalanced mind? An exercise in being “transgressive” or a condemnation of paedophiles? The prose can sometimes rise to brilliance, but it’s worth asking: to what purpose?
