Otago University Press
A selection of new publications from Otago University Press.
Landfall - Autumn 2018
Have you got your copy of Autumn Landfall? This issue, under the guiding hand of new editor, Emma Neale, features a local artist, Kathryn Madill, alongside other visual work; there are also reviews and creative work by local people.
Whisper of a Crow's Wing, By Majella Cullinane
Published simultaneously in Ireland by Salmon Poetry, Majella Cullinane’s remarkable second collection, Whisper of a Crow’s Wing, is the work of a poet with a distinct and powerful voice. These poems weigh and examine oppositions – the distance of time and place, the balance of life and death, the poet’s New Zealand home and her Irish heritage. Cullinane conjures the ghosts that haunt places and objects; our inner and outer world, with rich, physical language.
Recipient of the 2017 Friends of the Hocken Collections award.
Winner the New Zealand Mountain Non-Fiction Book Award, 2018.
Karen McNeill, A Ridge Too Far: The first female ascent of Denali’s Cassin Ridge:
The air temperature was probably -35 degrees Celsius with wind chill. We couldn’t stand still for long. Our brains felt taxed and our bodies were running on empty. On the Football Field not far from the summit, Sue discovered a square of chocolate. We shared it, telling our bodies we didn’t need more. As we continued the descent, the air warmed and filled with oxygen. We began to encounter climbers heading up. Most knew who we were, incredulously asking: ‘are you the girls who slept on the summit’?
A schoolgirl races from class to join a weekend trip to the hills. A mountaineering guide recalls his first weeks on the job during the 1920s. A young climber is shown the best route over the Main Divide by a big bull thar. A climbing party is bombarded by falling rock when Ruapehu suddenly erupts. A mountaineer pays tribute to the Māori guides from south Westland, while a fighter pilot tries to recapture an ascent of the Minarets from his tent in Nigeria during World War II.
From the Darrans of Fiordland to Denali in Alaska, mountaineers and writers have captured the New Zealand alpine experience through letters, journals, articles, memoirs, poems and novels. Drawing on 150 years of published and unpublished material, To the Mountains provides a fascinating and moving glimpse into New Zealand's mountaineering culture and the people who write about it.
Christopher Johnson, Letter from Nigeria, 1942:
As I lie in bed — day or night—I reclimb old peaks—it is quite a strenuous job—the reluctant fluctuating brain must be forced like a jibbing horse, to stick to the road and not skip a few hours. For example, climbing the Minarets last night, I must have spent five minutes cudgelling before I reluctantly admitted that I couldn’t remember what we had for breakfast.