Tuesday

JAAM 33: Small Departures (2017)





Jack Ross, ed.: Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017 (March 2017)

Books and Magazines in brief:

JAAM 33: Small Departures. Ed. Kiri Piahana-Wong & Rosetta Allan. ISSN 1173-633X. Wellington: JAAM Collective, 2015. RRP $25. 147 pp.




JAAM 33 (2015)


The latest issue of JAAM has been edited by Auckland writers Kiri Piahana-Wong and Rosetta Allan. Their theme of “small departures” is explained by them as follows :
… there are departures from the self, lost lives, lost memories. There are physical departures (from one house to another, from a watching post, from a bad dinner party, the flight of birds, the sea’s retreat) and emotional departures (lost love). There are metaphorical departures (from convention, the truth), departures across time (the difference between now and then). Some of the departures are clearly evident, others oblique or tangential. (p. 6)
Given that (as Shakespeare has it), “Journeys end in lovers meeting,” one could perhaps imagine a world in which this theme would fold into the theme of the latest brief, and a kind of final emotional lift-off could occur. Joking apart, though, this is an exceptionally rich issue with so many great pieces that one despairs of pointing them all out. I guess I found the rich selection of short fictions best, but that’s perhaps an occupational hazard of editing a poetry magazine.





(27/8-5/9/16)

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017. ISBN 978-0-9941363-5-0 (March 2017): 321.

[201 wds]


Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017






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