Poetry Shelf review: Landfall 245

Posted: Tuesday Aug 01, 2023

'Ah. Literary journal bliss. Usually I dip and delve, and leap frog from one poem that takes my fancy to the next, but on this occasion I am following the reading arc shaped by the editor, delighting in the structured melody with shifting tones, keys, subject matter. I am finding tonic and uplift, bemusement and inspiration. This issue makes me want to write, it makes me want to track down more work by writers new to me and return to work by writers I already love.'

Poetry Shelf review: Landfall 245 | NZ Poetry Shelf

'The body unfolds over time as music does. We need to be listening.'
Xiaole Zhan from 'Muscle Memory'

Landfall 245 features 'Five Lemons', a striking pigment print by Gavin Hipkins, the results and winning entry of the Charles Brasch Young Writers' Essay Competition, generous attention to book reviews, and an eclectic range of poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

The essay judge, Landfall editor Lynley Edmeades, pitches the qualities of the winning essays in her report. Her report is a gift for the reader as it not only introduces the winners, it offers an impetus to advance the craft, subject matter, innovations, lyricism and effects of the genre. The winning essay is by Xiaole Zhan. She has previously won the National Schools Poetry Award (2019) and was equal winner of the Secondary Schools Division of the Sargeson Short Story Prize (also 2019). Xiaole's essay is everything Lynley says and more - such a potent piquant sharp sensual question-raising
idea-sustaining gender and body aware melodic exquisitely structured articulation and re-articulation on being. The title is genius: 'Muscle Memory'. Xiaole is a writer to watch. They are more than that. They are a sign of the extraordinary range of voices emerging in this new generation of writers, writers you might encounter in cafe readings or through small presses, university presses or at Starling.

Literary journals are both a return bridge to writers you love and an open window on unfamiliar writers, especially new, scarcely published voices. The inclusion of artwork in Landfall is one of its strengths: this time the evocative vibrating hues of Gavin Hipkins' work plus Anya Sinclair's 'flowers' series ('these portals of the present tense') and Amanda Shanley's ceramic pencil-scrawled bowl.

And there is the feast of writing to linger over. Here is a taste of my
reading so far.

Evangeline Riddiford Graham has had two poetry chapbooks published that have
escaped my attention (La Belle Dame avec les Mains Vertes, Compound Books and Ginesthoi hard press), and is the co-creator and host of the poetry podcast Multi-Verse. I want to track Evangeline's books down and follow her next poetry moves, as her two poems are breathtaking. 'Treatment Plan' is a symphony of aroma and omission while 'Hypothetical' changes tack to become an undercurrent of dark and spike.

Jodie Dagleish is a writer, curator and sound artist currently based in Luxembourg, with work published in multiple journals. Her poem 'The Edge of the Sea, or Sea Rose (1977)' is dedicated to Joanna Margaret Paul and Imogen Rose (Feb - Dec 1976). As I read Jodie's poem, I am transported back to Joanna's paintings and poetry, and the grief she felt for her beloved daughter. The poem's visual and aural detail, as it circles and amasses, as it
overlays and connects, is sublime.

As a long time fan of Airini Beautrais' writing, I fall into the nonfiction piece, 'The Beautiful Afternoon'; into the strata of an extended moment (the beach, streets, warm air, subtropical gardens). The moment becomes an extended sigh, an intake of breath, an appraisal of the now, the intimate bodies, the distant children, the solo tent. The movement through age and life and corners. Memorable.

Nafanua Purcell Kersel is a Samoan poet raised in Aotearoa and based in Te
Matau-a-Māui. She recently graduated with an MA in Creative writing from IIML. Her poem, 'Rātapu/Aso Sā', is a eulogy for Dr Moana Jacksona. It's a flowing current of heart, a musical stream, an embrace of wāhine, an evocation of place and situation, of connection and loss, that rises above the page and holds you close.

Maria McMillan's piece, 'Sixteen Ways to Incite a Revolution', like others in the issue is genre hopping, posited as poetry with a feel of essay and a spark of fiction. Revolution appears in many guises, maybe shifting in the eye/I of the beholder, trapped in a bear trap, stored in a Parisienne jar since 1968, hued in the most beautiful wondrous picture that aches for a world worthy of it. This poem-rich list is thought provoking, imaginative, downright funny, deadly serious.

Ah. Literary journal bliss. Usually I dip and delve, and leap frog from one poem that takes my fancy to the next, but on this occasion I am following the reading arc shaped by the editor, delighting in the structured melody with shifting tones, keys, subject matter. I am finding tonic and uplift, bemusement and inspiration. This issue makes me want to write, it makes me want to track down more work by writers new to me and return to work by writers I already love. There is glorious traffic between the intangible and the physical. The joy of reading Medb Chareton's satisfying poem, 'In Search Of', that will fit in the palm of your hand, is a loop, a lyric, a surprise.

Such a feast of writing to linger over.

Ah. I am making way along the canals and channels of this terrific issue, eager to read new poems by Emma Neale, Gregory O'Brien, Bill Nelson, more voices new to me. Good too, to read well-crafted reviews that are thoughtful, and that open the book rather than close it down. Reading Jenny Powell's terrific review of Laurence Fearnley's Winter Time, got me tracking down a copy. Yes, Landfall 245 is a literary treat.

Lynley Edmeades is the author of two poetry collections, As the Verb Tenses (Otago University Press, 2016) and Listening In (Otago University Press, 2019), and a poetry and art picture book for adults, Bordering on Miraculous (Massey University Press, 2022), in collaboration with Saskia Leek. She has an MA in creative writing from the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University of Belfast and holds a PhD in avant-garde poetics from the University of Otago. In 2018, she was the Ursula Bethell Writer
in Residence at the University of Canterbury, and she currently teaches poetry and creative writing on the English programme at the University of Otago.