Three books this week. Firstly Auē (Mākaro Press). Becky Manawatu's haunting book with its compelling New Zealand story and unforgettable characters stays with me still. It's a stunning first novel, raw and moving.
I read it in great gulps, then slowed down to read it again. Events in Auē maybe stark and searingly described, but the book has aroha woven through it and the children, Ārama and Beth, are brave and endearing. I willed them to survive.
After the power and sadness of Auē, I needed another kind of writing, and turned to Bill Manhire's book of poems, Some Things to Place in a Coffin (VUP).
I've enjoyed reading Bill's clever, funny, often cryptic, authentic poetry since I first encountered it in Zoetrope many years ago. His words play in the mind and there's never a single one wasted. Some of the poems are only a couple of lines.
"My World War I Poem": Inside each trench, the sound of prayer. Inside each prayer, the sound of digging.
Today I'm reading Ian Church's The Wreck of the Hydrabad (Dunmore Press), an account of an iron sailing ship that ran aground in a storm off the west coast of the North Island between Foxton and Ōtaki.
That I can still wander over what is left of this 1878 shipwreck and ponder over the lives of its captain and crew brings the past and the present very close together for me.
Carol Markwell. Photo / Supplied
Carol Markwell's biography of New Zealand poet, writer and early prison reformer Blanche Edith Baughan, Enough Horizon: the life and work of Blanche Baughan (The Cuba Press, $40) is out now.
