INTO THE WIDER WORLD
A Back Country Miscellany
Brian Turner – Random House - $44.99

These days Brian Turner, is known as a southern man, poet and environmental activist but when I first knew him many years ago he was a publisher’s sales rep and if I recall correctly he used to call at our bookshop in Napier selling the Oxford University Press list. Hard to imagine him selling bibles!

He went on to become a fine publisher in his own right heading up John McIndoe Ltd. which was for many years a significant publishing and printing company in Dunedin.

During this time he continued to write poetry and was also a columnist writing very fine pieces on sport and the outdoors for various publications. I remember cancelling my subscription to The Independent in protest when they stopped publishing his weekly column. And all the while he fished and tramped in some of the most isolated parts of New Zealand sometimes alone, often with mates.

These days he lives in the coldest inhabited place in New Zealand, Oturehua in Central Otago. He has done a stint as the Poet Laureate, still has poetry published regularly, rides his bike over vast distances, and is often to be found sitting with Grahame Sydney and Anton Oliver through interminable hearings when some power company or another has plans to degrade or even destroy the places that he loves.
He can be a gnarly old bugger when he wants to be but he is a master wordsmith who loves the land and I have a great deal of admiration for him even if he is known to go on at length about soft Aucklanders.

So it was with great pleasure that I came upon his latest book, Into the Wider World, an especially handsome tome from publisher Random House. It runs to 500 pages, is filled with poems and essays, and the occasional philosophical rant, all beautifully peppered with gorgeous photographs from a raft of people but particularly Gilbert van Reenen along with a number from Grahame Sydney.

It is fair to call this a back country treasury of the very best kind and I hope that many a lucky father receives a copy for Father’s Day next month. I am certainly delighted to have it on my shelf.
Well done Turner, you have produced a gem and your publishers have done you proud.