Sick Power Trip
by Erik Kennedy (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30)
Erik Kennedy is a two-fisted satirist in the tradition of Roman poet Juvenal or 18th-century Jonathan Swift – no holds barred. The US-born Christchurch poet hints at social complaisance in his poem Individualistic Societies. Loneliness Studies satirises our human inability to get on intimately with other people. There is deep irony in The Health Benefits of Winter Sea Bathing. As for the collection’s title, it comes from the poem I Like Rich People, but I Couldn’t Eat a Whole One Myself, strongly mocking the idea that super-rich people are different from the rest of us. There is much more where that comes from. But if it seems that Kennedy is deadly serious about everything, it’s worth noting he can sometimes be nostalgic or even whimsical. He’s nostalgic in seeing hippiedom as harmless nonsense in Self-Defining Hippiedom Discourse or, in Bildungsroman, concerned with growing up. As for whimsy, there is the jump of imagination in seeing moths and butterflies as if they are airplanes (Magpie Moth vs Monarch Butterfly). All this shows that although Kennedy is a skilled satirist, he is capable of writing in different tones, both angry and cool.
In The Hollow of the Wave
by Nina Mingya Powles (Auckland University Press, $24.99)
The New Zealand-raised, now London-based Powles offers a very cosmopolitan outlook in her poetry, referring to favourite writers from Sylvia Plath to Sin Chi Yin. With a very delicate touch she deals with her interest in animals, the tides, phases of the moon and the moods they conjure up. But what most interests her are textures, the making of quilts – such as those stitched by her grandfather – and elaborate Asian gowns. She delights in both the tactile and the visual. In At the Metropolitan Museum, 1990 she recalls seeing a room “filled with Chinese and Japanese silks, jade and red and blue embroidered with birds, leaves and pagodas, everything shimmering in low light”. This is her favoured territory. But she addresses other issues. In one poem, she acknowledges some Asian batik crafts are made by people in great poverty. For all that, In the Hollow of the Wave could be seen as a good example of modern Romanticism.
Touch Screen
by Philip Armstrong (Otago University Press, $30)
With the careful touch of a philosopher, Christchurch’s Philip Armstrong delves deeply into the problems that go with our species – where we came from, where we are going, and how we are now being dominated by machines and artificial intelligence. He is concerned about the way computers often overwhelm us. One poem, Uber-Ich, shows an annoyance at the way cars now tell us what to do and how we are supposed to drive. But there’s much more to this. Armstrong critiques the optimistic Francis Bacon’s 16th-century views in The Advancement of Learning. More profoundly, he looks at what made us in the first place. Are we all ultimately made of clay? He frequently uses as a metaphor Mary Shelley’s scientist Frankenstein, who made a monster. Are we doing the same? His Book of the Dead is a precise description of the ancient Egyptian burial customs, including nearly all the Egyptian gods. How we deal with the fact of death is always a problem. Is this all too heady for the reader? Not a bit. Armstrong also addresses the environment and is very clear of purpose. A great read.
Dear Alter
by Jiaqiao Liu (Auckland University Press, $29.99)
Jiaqiao Liu has a different perspective on the future from Philip Armstrong. Liu deals with cyborgs, androids, robots and telenoids – robots designed to convey a sense of another person’s presence during communication. The title of the collection refers to “an android designed to mimic human movements”. There are poems titled Computational Theory of Mind and Inorganic Carcinisation in the Neo-Cambian Era. Liu is mainly interested in how these creations connect with the human brain, their “soul status” and the variety of minds that exist. Sometimes, Liu makes use of Chinese mythology and dreams. Some of those dreams call us back to the origin of the human brain in the first place. But this is all built on how a young person responds to both brain and environment. Sometimes the language is cryptic but it adds up to a unique outlook.
Pakiaka
by Gabrielle Huria (Canterbury University Press, $25)
Slim, to the point and very informative, offering poems about traditional Māori foodstuffs, how planting dealt with the seasons and how birds and eels came into it. Tuahiwi had been a large area in North Canterbury, but in the 1860s much of this land was confiscated and the Māori community was deeply impoverished. Gabrielle Huria lives in Tuahiwi with her extended whānau and Pakiaka is in part a reckoning with history. Amazingly, there are moments of joy.
