Victoria University Press

Forthcoming titles

Please note: This is a provisional list only and all dates, prices and formats are subject to change.

Updated April 2012

Graft Helen Heath Publication: May 2012 ISBN: 9780864737762 Format: Paperback RRP: $28.00 Category: Poetry To graft something is to fix two things together like tree branches or skin to heal or grow something new. The word graft originates from the Old Norse groftr, meaning to dig, and is also linked with the verb grave, an ancient Germanic one also meaning to dig. The poems in Graft attempt to bring things together – ideas and cultures, people, sometimes to heal. Sometimes there are unlikely pairs: science and magical thinking, fact and fiction, myth and history. Sometimes there are more predictable pairings with less predictable outcomes - mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. They dig away at things, trying to find a truth or an answer or a lost person. What we find is often not what we are looking for. “Helen Heath’s poems are more than usually aware of the exits and entrances that shape us: they shuttle between past and present, shroud and wedding gown, the lives we lead and the lives we aspire to. Sometimes they do their digging in tough or broken terrain, but they are always alert for points of continuity, connection, and wholeness.” – Bill Manhire .

Graft

Helen Heath

Publication: May 2012

ISBN: 9780864737762

Format: Paperback

RRP: $28.00

Category: Poetry

To graft something is to fix two things together like tree branches or skin to heal or grow something new. The word graft originates from the Old Norse groftr, meaning to dig, and is also linked with the verb grave, an ancient Germanic one also meaning to dig.

The poems in Graft attempt to bring things together – ideas and cultures, people, sometimes to heal. Sometimes there are unlikely pairs: science and magical thinking, fact and fiction, myth and history. Sometimes there are more predictable pairings with less predictable outcomes - mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. They dig away at things, trying to find a truth or an answer or a lost person. What we find is often not what we are looking for.

“Helen Heath’s poems are more than usually aware of the exits and entrances that shape us: they shuttle between past and present, shroud and wedding gown, the lives we lead and the lives we aspire to. Sometimes they do their digging in tough or broken terrain, but they are always alert for points of continuity, connection, and wholeness.” – Bill Manhire

Common Land Lynn Davidson Publication: May 2012 ISBN: 9780864737601 Format: Paperback RRP: $28.00 Category: Poetry The children remember playing on common land with other children inside great big days. Thinking up the world. A poem is a piece of common land. You go to it to be alone, to be with other people, to be out at night, to graze cattle, to light up. This book of poems and essays includes player pianos, waltzes, green glass trees and a person sitting on their coat. I didn’t set out to tell such big stories. I was going to graze cattle, but I stopped to light up.

Common Land

Lynn Davidson

Publication: May 2012

ISBN: 9780864737601

Format: Paperback

RRP: $28.00

Category: Poetry

The children remember playing on common land
with other children
inside great big days.
Thinking up the world.

A poem is a piece of common land. You go to it to be alone, to be with other people, to be out at night, to graze cattle, to light up. This book of poems and essays includes player pianos, waltzes, green glass trees and a person sitting on their coat. I didn’t set out to tell such big stories. I was going to graze cattle, but I stopped to light up.

I Got His Blood On Me Lawrence Patchett Publication: June 2012 ISBN: 9780864737687 Format: Paperback RRP: $35.00 Category: Fiction A bloodied figure travels through time, a stepfather kicks a ball and curses a snack machine, a cranky ghost brakes a Kāpiti train. From a reimagined history to a future where holograms walk the streets, these stories traverse time and genre to explore the frontiers that face the adventurous—now and in the past. ‘Lawrence Patchett is an articulate and philosophical author who creates terrific frontier stories. His tales describe moments of conflict, struggle and human frailty and yet his characters find a kind of peace through self-awareness, human connection and compassion. This is a rugged and haunting collection which has remained in my thoughts months after its first reading.’ – Laurence Fearnley ‘… a corker of a tale by Lawrence Patchett about the lifesaving power of storytelling itself.’ – Metro (Jolisa Gracewood) ‘The winning story over 10,000 words, Lawrence Patchett’s ‘The Road to Tokomairiro’, is elegant, with a deep sympathy towards the people involved.’ – The NZ Listener (Sarah Laing) ‘The Road to Tokomairiro’ shows us how ordinary human fortitude and decency can be, even in the most troubled circumstances. The story has moral seriousness, but feels ‘lighter’ than its subject matter, perhaps because it is so beautifully and sympathetically written.’ – Judges’ Report, The Long and the Short of It

I Got His Blood On Me

Lawrence Patchett

Publication: June 2012

ISBN: 9780864737687

Format: Paperback

RRP: $35.00

Category: Fiction

A bloodied figure travels through time, a stepfather kicks a ball and curses a snack machine, a cranky ghost brakes a Kāpiti train. From a reimagined history to a future where holograms walk the streets, these stories traverse time and genre to explore the frontiers that face the adventurous—now and in the past.

‘Lawrence Patchett is an articulate and philosophical author who creates terrific frontier stories. His tales describe moments of conflict, struggle and human frailty and yet his characters find a kind of peace through self-awareness, human connection and compassion. This is a rugged and haunting collection which has remained in my thoughts months after its first reading.’ – Laurence Fearnley

‘… a corker of a tale by Lawrence Patchett about the lifesaving power of storytelling itself.’
– Metro (Jolisa Gracewood)

‘The winning story over 10,000 words, Lawrence Patchett’s ‘The Road to Tokomairiro’, is elegant, with a deep sympathy towards the people involved.’ – The NZ Listener (Sarah Laing)

‘The Road to Tokomairiro’ shows us how ordinary human fortitude and decency can be, even in the most troubled circumstances. The story has moral seriousness, but feels ‘lighter’ than its subject matter, perhaps because it is so beautifully and sympathetically written.’
– Judges’ Report, The Long and the Short of It

The Bengal Engine's Mango Afterglow Geoff Cochrane Publication: July 2012 ISBN: 9780864737618 Format: Paperback RRP: $25.00 Category: Poetry Bashö alone and walking some high path. Bashö alone and climbing the concrete steps to heaven, a flask of gin in his satchel. A flask of gin and a spring roll gone cold. The great Japanese poet Bashö is just one of the shades that haunt the vividly precise yet deeply mysterious poems in Geoff Cochrane’s new collection. Geoff Cochrane is the author of numerous highly regarded collections of poems, two novels and two collections of short stories. In 2009 he was awarded the Janet Frame Prize for Poetry. ‘One exits so many slim volumes with slim pickings. Then there are those books of poetry that seem fuller than fiction. Geoff Cochrane’s is a whole world, rendered in lines at once compressed and open, mysterious and approachable. These are poems of great formal poise and terrific candour.’ Damien Wilkins on Vanilla Wine ‘It becomes apparent that Cochrane is not merely a frugal poet, thriftily recycling anecdotal skerricks and wisps of philosophical thoughts and self-destructive deeds into highly crafted and sophisticated works of art, but also a darkly humorous memorialist: a keeper of the keys for marginal Wellington.’ David Eggleton on 84-484

The Bengal Engine's Mango Afterglow

Geoff Cochrane

Publication: July 2012

ISBN: 9780864737618

Format: Paperback

RRP: $25.00

Category: Poetry

Bashö alone and walking some high path.
Bashö alone and climbing the concrete steps to heaven,
a flask of gin in his satchel.
A flask of gin and a spring roll gone cold.

The great Japanese poet Bashö is just one of the shades that haunt the vividly precise yet deeply mysterious poems in Geoff Cochrane’s new collection.

Geoff Cochrane is the author of numerous highly regarded collections of poems, two novels and two collections of short stories. In 2009 he was awarded the Janet Frame Prize for Poetry.

‘One exits so many slim volumes with slim pickings. Then there are those books of poetry that seem fuller than fiction. Geoff Cochrane’s is a whole world, rendered in lines at once compressed and open, mysterious and approachable. These are poems of great formal poise and terrific candour.’ Damien Wilkins on Vanilla Wine

‘It becomes apparent that Cochrane is not merely a frugal poet, thriftily recycling anecdotal skerricks and wisps of philosophical thoughts and self-destructive deeds into highly crafted and sophisticated works of art, but also a darkly humorous memorialist: a keeper of the keys for marginal Wellington.’ David Eggleton on 84-484

Warm Auditorium James Brown Publication: July 2012 ISBN: 9780864737649 Format: Paperback RRP: $28.00 Category: Poetry James Brown’s fifth book of poetry moves through personal lyrics, narrative desire and short takes, before arriving at a climactic anti-poetry. Along the way, it climbs rock, reviews CDs and joins the blond revolution. Warm Auditorium is Brown at his most formally diverse, taking tea with rhyme, tongue-twisters, lists, monologues and prose poems. Several poems obey unusual restrictions. Within Warm Auditorium’s cleverness, humour and verve, lies a deep fascination with poetry: how its mechanics can be co-opted and subverted, and why it remains a vital form of expression. Warm Auditorium is perhaps the best answer to its own poetic challenges. James Brown’s first book, Go Round Power Please, won the 1996 Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award, and he has been a finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards three times. He has held the 1994 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary, a 2000 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, and was Writer in Residence at Canterbury University in 2001 and at Victoria University in 2004. He is the author behind the useful, non-fiction booklet Instructions for Poetry Readings, and editor of The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape (2005). He lives in Wellington with his partner and two children. ‘Brown is exuberant, intelligent and genuinely funny.’ Hamesh Wyatt, Otago Daily Times This is poetry that grabs hold of the world and gives it a shake.’ Hugh Roberts, Listener

Warm Auditorium

James Brown

Publication: July 2012

ISBN: 9780864737649

Format: Paperback

RRP: $28.00

Category: Poetry

James Brown’s fifth book of poetry moves through personal lyrics, narrative desire and short takes, before arriving at a climactic anti-poetry. Along the way, it climbs rock, reviews CDs and joins the blond revolution. Warm Auditorium is Brown at his most formally diverse, taking tea with rhyme, tongue-twisters, lists, monologues and prose poems. Several poems obey unusual restrictions. Within Warm Auditorium’s cleverness, humour and verve, lies a deep fascination with poetry: how its mechanics can be co-opted and subverted, and why it remains a vital form of expression. Warm Auditorium is perhaps the best answer to its own poetic challenges.
James Brown’s first book, Go Round Power Please, won the 1996 Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award, and he has been a finalist in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards three times. He has held the 1994 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary, a 2000 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, and was Writer in Residence at Canterbury University in 2001 and at Victoria University in 2004. He is the author behind the useful, non-fiction booklet Instructions for Poetry Readings, and editor of The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape (2005). He lives in Wellington with his partner and two children.
‘Brown is exuberant, intelligent and genuinely funny.’

Hamesh Wyatt, Otago Daily Times
This is poetry that grabs hold of the world and gives it a shake.’ Hugh Roberts, Listener