Taking My Mother to the Opera (2015)

Jack Ross, ed.: Poetry NZ Yearbook 2 [Issue #50] (November 2015)

Books and Magazines in brief:

Diane Brown. Taking My Mother to the Opera. ISBN 978-1-927322-15-4. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2015. RRP $29.95. 116 pp.

Diane Brown: Taking My Mother to the Opera (2015)

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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