Signals 5 (2018)

Jack Ross, ed.: Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018 (March 2018)

Books and Magazines in brief:

Signals: A Literary Journal 5 (2016). Ed. Ros Ali & Johanna Emeney. ISBN 978-0-473-37760-1. Devonport: Michael King Writers’ Centre, 2016. 110 pp.

Ros Ali & Johanna Emeney (ed.): Signals 5 (2016)

So Signals has reached its fifth (annual) issue! Ros Ali and Johanna Emeney have done a remarkable job of maintaining the freshness and exuberance of this journal stocked by, and for, the young writers who’ve attended and been inspired by the workshops run by the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Devonport.

The book has been beautifully – and spaciously – designed by Sarah Laing. Its real strength is the contents, though. While it’s invidious to choose particular pieces for praise, I can’t bring myself not to mention such stories as Radhika Lodhia’s ‘You cannot wear my skin’:

I tiptoe around the aggressor; as though walking on eggshells;, saying men but ‘not all men,’ saying white people but ‘not all white people,’ … I hold myself back. But I wish. God. I wish. That I didn’t have to.

or such poems as Britt Clark’s ‘Walk Me Home’:

It is 4.45 on a School day, Mount Eden
The school is called NORMAL
But we don’t feel it

This is a wonderful collection. Here’s to five more years of such treats to come!

(9-10/9/17)

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018. ISBN 978-0-9941473-3-2 (March 2018): 335.

[200 wds]


Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018


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