Unity Books Wellington, Victoria University Press and Auckland University Press
warmly invite you to celebrate the launch of
LOST AND SOMEWHERE ELSE
BY JENNY BORNHOLDT
&
ALWAYS SONG IN THE WATER
BY GREGORY O’BRIEN
BOTH BOOKS TO BE LAUNCHED BY CHLOE SWARBRICK, MP
Thursday 19th September, 6-7:30pm
Unity Books Wellington, 57 Willis St
ABOUT LOST AND SOMEWHERE ELSE
Where do I stand?
Usually
in the little square of sunlight
by the back door.
In Lost and Somewhere Else, Jenny Bornholdt finds many places to stand: at home, in memories of places and people, and in the Ernst Plischke-designed Henderson House in Alexandra, Central Otago, in which she lived while writing these poems. This graceful, witty and unsettling book is Bornholdt at her very best: her language at once bold and subtle, and even her smallest insights profound.
Cover image by Deborah Smith (2014)
Cover design by Dexter Smith Murray
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenny Bornholdt is the author of many collections of poems, including The Rocky Shore (Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, 2009) and Selected Poems (2016), and editor of several notable anthologies, including Short Poems of New Zealand (2018).
ABOUT ALWAYS SONG IN THE WATER
Beginning in Northland and heading into the blue beyond, Always Song in the Water is a book of encounters and epiphanies, a dinghy ride through New Zealand’s oceanic imagination.
Every spring on Gregory O’Brien’s front lawn, on a ridgetop in Hataitai, an upside-down dinghy blooms with flowering clematis. In this book, O’Brien takes his metaphorical dinghy to the edges of New Zealand – starting with a road trip through Northland and then voyaging out into the Pacific, to lead us into some under-explored territories of the South Pacific imagination.
With creative spirits such as Janet Frame, Ralph Hotere, Robin White, John Pule and Epeli Hau‘ofa as touchstones, O’Brien suggests how we New Zealanders might be re-imagining ourselves as an oceanic people on a small island in a big piece of water.
Always Song in the Water is a book of encounters, sightings and unexpected epiphanies. It is a high-spirited, personal and inventive account of being alive at the outer extremities of Aotearoa New Zealand. ‘This is my field notebook, my voyaging logbook,’ Gregory O’Brien writes, ‘this is my Schubert played on a barrel organ, my whale survey, my songbook.’
Among the many artists whose work is featured are John Pule, Robin White, Phil Dadson, Fiona Hall, Euan Macleod, Laurence Aberhart and the Sydney-based painter Noel McKenna, who produced numerous works specifically for this book.
‘Always Song in the Water is like a splendid tapa cloth left out to dry on the salt of Oceania. It admits all-comers into its wet and capacious tapestry – shoes, seabirds, icebergs, painters, whales, stranded pianos, poets, horses, ghostly containers, dinghies, oil spills, surfboards, reef knots and travelling saints – and so lays claim to a hospitality as vast and ancient as Oceania.’
– Sudesh Mishra, University of the South Pacific
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Matamata in 1961, Gregory O’Brien is a poet, artist and writer of non-fiction. As well as exhibiting his work widely and illustrating numerous books, he has authored or contributed to books on Ralph Hotere, John Pule and architect John Scott, amongst many others. He also co-authored Parihaka: The art of Passive Resistance (VUP, 2000) and Kermadec: Nine Artists Explore the South Pacific (Pew, 2011). O’Brien is the author of two introductions to art for the young and curious: Welcome to the South Seas (AUP, 2004) and Back and Beyond (AUP, 2008), which both won the Non-fiction Prize at the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. His most recent books include A Micronaut in the Wide World: The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy (AUP, 2011), Beauties of the Octagonal Pool (AUP, 2012), Whale Years (AUP, 2015) and See What I Can See: New Zealand Photography for the Young and Curious (AUP, 2015). He has received many awards for his books and, in 2013, was given the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (Non-fiction) and an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award. He was granted an MNZM award in 2014 and, in 2017, an Honorary Doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington.
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