Diane Brown. Taking My Mother to the Opera. ISBN 978-1-927322-15-4. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2015. RRP $29.95. 116 pp.
It’s nice to see another hardback poetry book from Otago University Press. Slim paperbacks are all very well, but there’s a certain heft and authority in a hardback: especially one as bright and cheerful-looking as this. Diane Brown continues to mine life writing and famly history for her subject matter in this, her third collection of poems, full of pictures which will strike a chord with many readers:
My favourite photo of Mum,
snapped at the beach,
her sensible wedding day suit
ditched for saggy togs.
Here she is, laughing at Dad,
as if nothing had ever hurt her. [p.11]
(26-30/10/15)
Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2 [Issue #50]. ISSN 0114-5770 (2014): 270.
[119 wds]
Poetry NZ Yearbook 2 (2015)
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Yes, I like a good hardback too. And this is a good hardback. In fact I loved'Taking My Mother to the Opera', from cover to credits. This is my first Diane Brown, but it won't be my last. Her running prose-poetry style, rather than a series of separate poems, works particularly well I think for life writing, in that memory sort of works in that way, in bright glimpses that run loosely together with gaps in between, to form a rough chronology. Thanks to Emma Neale (Tender Machines) for recommending it. She's another powerful life poet. Cheers, Jack.
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