Landfall 224: Home+Building

by David Eggleton

Home is a classic Landfall 'Open House' issue, where anything and everything goes. Submissions poured in on every topic conceivable, and the result is truly a feast of good writing and imagination.

Courtney Sina Meredith, Emma Barnes, Kay McKenzie Cooke, Tony Beyer and C.K. Stead (among others) offer up new poems exploring topics as disparate as the body, the corner dairy, 'cloud' technology, silent film stars and more. All make for exhilarating reads. Be enchanted too by a wealth of short stories: Alex Wild Jespersen's deftly humorous tale of a media studies tutor's first experience with girl-on-girl boxing, Vivienne Plumb's 'The Cabin Trunk', David Herkt's story set in the rarefied world of the uber-wealthy at the height of the financial crisis and Laura Solomon's futuristic piece about a Kiwi cult that breeds 'shumans' (sheep/humans).

Nicholas Reid, John Horrocks, Peter Simpson and others offer up considered reviews of recent New Zealand books and Martin Rumsby investigates moving image installations. As for art, there's Anita DeSoto's otherworldly paintings, while Darryn George's unique blend of geometric abstraction and kowhaiwhai are present in both the portfolio pages and under discussion by David Eggleton in The Landfall Review.

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

Born in Auckland in 1952 and of mixed European, Tongan, and Rotuman descent, Eggleton spent part his formative years in both Fiji and Auckland, dropping out of school to take up performance music and poetry. Eggleton later moved to Dunedin, where he has been based since the 1980s.

He has been the editor of New Zealand literary magazine Landfall since 2010.

In 2016, Eggleton was the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in poetry.