THE THOREAU OF CENTRAL OTAGO

Loved this headline in The NZ Listener out today. It is a review by poet/writer Jeffrey Paproa Holman of Brian Turner's latest collect, JUST THIS, published by VUP ($25).

Here is the beginning of Holman's review:

A vigorous presence since the late 1970's Brian Turner is one of NZ poetry's longest survivors" a former Poet Laureate, biographer of sportsmen, editor, conservationist, and longtime resident of the Ida Valley, Central Otago.

Donning the mask of the misanthrope, a champion of the natural world, he is like Henry David Thoreau reincarnated in the hoar-frosted, windfarm-threatened wilds of our own Deep South.
Anyone who has heard Turner read will recall the sinuosity of his best work, the authority that his weathered delivery brings to the sharply observed world the poems enact. The dose of dyspepsia, too, when he dons the cap of a world-weary sage, loosing salvoes at any whiff of political correctness infecting his beloved back country and rotting the minds of the mall-mad urbanites.

Read the rest in the NZ Listener October 17-23, 2009, on sale now.

Also in the same issue are Guy Somerset's review of HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY by Audrey Niffenegger, (Jonathan cape $38.99), running to three pages, a longish review of Glenn Colquhoun's NORTH SOUTH (Steele Roberts $34.99), and Michele A'Court's review of GLORY DAYS:FROM GUMBOOTS TO PLATFORMS by Ian Chapman (Harper Collins $39.99).

And in the main front section of the magazine a four page, illustrated spread by Joanne Black on DICK FRIZZELL:THE PAINTER (Random House $75), a book that has enjoyed more publicity and review coverage than perhaps any other NZ title this year.

Brian Turner photo above from the Sunday Star Times.