Edition 43
Pacific Highways

- Published 4th February, 2014
- ISBN: 9781922182241
- Extent: 300 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook
Isolated by ocean, New Zealand’s ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to introduced species. The constant arrival of new flora and fauna, via humans, wind and sea, means the biodiversity is constantly changing. Humans too have been washing up on New Zealand’s shores for centuries, leading to constant shifts in demographics, culture and economics, building on strong Māori and Pākehā traditions. Auckland is now one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. As a result, New Zealand is adjusting and evolving to create a new twenty-first century identity at the crossroads of the Pacific.
Griffith REVIEW 43: Pacific Highways, co-edited by Julianne Schultz and acclaimed New Zealand author Lloyd Jones, examines the shifting tides in New Zealand through a heady mix of essay, memoir, fiction and poetry by some of New Zealand’s most exciting and innovative writers. Pacific Highways explores New Zealand’s position as a hub between the Pacific, Tasman and Southern oceans, and examines the exchange of people and culture, points of resistance and overlap.
How New Zealand adapts to recent profound changes and moves forward is a matter of urgent consideration. The country’s economic model is generating escalating environmental and cultural strains, but also presents great opportunities. A recent worldwide survey found the NZ education system is one of the worst at overcoming economic and social disadvantage. Auckland is home to more than a third of the (increasingly diverse) population, presenting challenges and opportunities for the whole country. Christchurch is finding inspiring new ways of reinvention. Pacific Highways asks what can be learnt, and what lessons does New Zealand offer the world?
New Zealand celebrates its unique cultural heritage, but with multiculturalism comes questions of identity, which many of the writers in Pacific Highways explore. Who decides who is a ‘New Zealander’? How are Chinese immigrants accepted? Who are you if you are brought up with the strict codes and behavioural norms of your parents’ country but live in another? Does immigration offer the capacity for reinvention?
New Zealand is an island nation, and oceans and rivers imbue Pacific identities. They run paths through major cities and offer courseways for stories. From migrating eels to tasty sea grapes, castaway sailors to volcanic rafts, waterways flow through the essays and stories of Pacific Highways.
Pacific Highways also celebrates the art and literature of New Zealand looking at the country’s wealth of artistic and literary talent in critical essays, and includes short stories and poetry by many of New Zealand’s best writers, from many backgrounds.
Pacific Highways, with support from the New Zealand Book Council and Creative New Zealand, is a profound overview of a complex Pacific nation with a polyphony of voices. It will challenge what you thought you knew, and inspire you to think again.
Download the Free eBook: Pacific Highways Volume 2
It includes Gregory O’Brien’s documentary poem ‘Memory of a fish’, poet Ya-Wen Ho’s reflections on poetry as social action, and two bonus poems by James Brown.
You’ll also discover additional essays and fiction by more of New Zealand’s best writers.
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Reviews
‘Don’t miss this … it is a truly superb collection that wonderfully illustrates the hugely varied talent of NZ writers. AND in Australia’s leading literary journal ! Every serious reader/book lover should own a copy and all libraries should have multiple copies. It is an absolute treasure.’ Beattie’s Blog
‘The whole thing is terrific! … It’s just a fantastic collection … It is a really big, broad, overview… Lloyd Jones has done a terrific job pulling together this disparate group … I can’t enthuse about it enough.’ – Graham Beattie, Radio Live
‘Geologically, New Zealand and Australia are edging apart. The same sometimes seems to be happening in literature; it can be easier for a New Zealand writer to get published on the other side of the world than on the other side of the Tasman. Which makes it both admirable and generous of the prestigious Brisbane-based Griffith Review to devote its latest quarterly issue to our authors … It’s an excellent album of the ways we are, love, deny, lament. It’s also a marker in CIR (Closer Intellectual Relationships). Buy several copies as gifts, especially for New Zealanders resident in Australia.’ – New Zealand Herald
‘It’s a fascinating anthology, for all Antipodeans.’ – Martin Shaw, Readings
‘Pacific Highways is, indeed, a refreshing and intelligent rebuff of the many tired and tiresome clichés that abound – in Australia, especially – about the Land of the Long White Cloud … Pacific Highways paints a picture of a nation that has undergone – and is perhaps still undergoing – seismic change. It’s an exciting and inspiring collection of writing that takes a fresh look at the complexity of the Kiwi culture and identity.’ – InDaily
‘There is something here for everyone, a lot of it is easy to read, to understand and enjoy … it is great to see the continued respect being given to New Zealand writers and artists from outside our borders.’ – We Love Books
‘I thoroughly enjoyed the collection, enjoyed reading so much creative non-fiction. I found it inspiring; I was driven to write poetry about the Pacific. Buy the book.’ – NZ Lit 101
‘The collection gives Australian readers an in-depth look at New Zealand, as well as New Zealand readers a thoughtful reflection on their changing national identity…this collection challenges and informs through the high quality of writing and passion of its contributors. The varying lengths of pieces and the loose structure of the collection give the writers space to develop their ideas in way that a newspaper or magazine article isn’t able to accommodate. The results are often very engaging… This collection successfully takes the pulse of a nuanced and exciting country whose literary talent is given ample space to grow, thanks to the Griffith Review.’ – NZ Booklovers
‘Embraced are the austere, the erudite, the slightly sedate, the shimmering, the transient and then there are the smart renditions about very little. The extensive range, however, is strikingly realised!’ – PS News
‘For a young country with a relatively small population the number and variety of high calibre contributors to this edition is fantastic… There is something here for everyone, a lot of it is easy to read, to understand and enjoy… it is great to see the continued respect being given to New Zealand writers and artists from outside our borders.’ – KiwiFloraReads
Griffith REVIEW’s Pacific Highways ‘is like a sampler box of chocolates, you get a taste of all sorts, including people and works you might otherwise overlook, and the pieces are long/short enough to intrigue and make you go looking for more by the authors you love.’ – UBS Review of Books
‘The writing in this edition only gets better the further you read, and the more I read, the more I wanted to know. Pacific Highways strips New Zealand of its simple stereotypes and uncovers this rich, modern country and culture for multicultural nation it really is.’ – lip magazine
‘Even without the lure of a New Zealand themed edition, Griffith REVIEW is a beautifully curated quarterly – attractively presented with colour plates, excellent writing, and culturally relevant themes explored in a range of ways including essay, memoir, fiction, painting, photography, and poetry. The Pacific Highways edition however, is a real standout for me, presenting a series of perspectives of New Zealand that resist the facile and go far deeper into an exploration of both islands including the historical, the political, the aesthetic, and the personal… I could probably write a review of every single piece in this book, but this review would be as long as the book itself. Suffice to say that the variety of forms, themes, imagery and styles makes for an evocative, entertaining, and multifarious reading experience that will keep readers awake for many nights.’ – Compulsive Reader
‘We, as New Zealanders, accept that Australians don’t usually cut us the slack we might deserve. Well, the Brisbane-based Griffith REVIEW, a quarterly journal of essays, poetry, memoirs, fiction and imagery, is a high-profile exception… Pacific Highways offers more than just snapshots. Collectively, it’s an insight into where we’ve come from, what we’re doing and who’s been joining us for the ride… To those of us who don’t call New Zealand home, Pacific Highways provides a collective snapshot of what home really is.’ – Scoop NZ
Lloyd Jones Masterclass
What to write about?– On 12 April 2014, Griffith REVIEW held a masterclass with Lloyd Jones.
Griffith Review – What to write about, a masterclass with Lloyd Jones from Flying Arts Web TV on Vimeo.
In this Edition
Looking east
FOR A NUMBER of years I travelled on a New Zealand passport. It wasn't so much that I identified with the land of my birth, but for pragmatic reasons: when I first needed a passport to travel – fittingly to the Pacific – I...
At the crossroads
THE OLDEST HIGHWAY across the Pacific is perhaps as old as the planet. A jet stream circles the Pacific Rim. The amazing godwit hurtles along at an airborne speed of five hundred kilometres an hour on its journey from Siberia along the western littoral...
To a neighbour I am getting to know
Translated by Ross WoodsA UN VECINO QUE EMPIEZO A CONOCERVoy a contarte una historia de agua, una historia de olas, unas olas de piel que se desplaza y regresa, una historia que aun desconociéndola sé que sabes, sé que escuchas; sé que la palpas...
To a neighbour I am getting to know
[Spanish version]
CARTA EN SEIS ESTACIONESA UN VECINO QUE EMPIEZO A CONOCEREstimado poeta Gregory O'Brien,Voy a contarte una historia de agua, una historia de olas, unas olas de piel que se desplaza y regresa, una historia que aun desconociéndola sé que sabes, sé que escuchas; sé...
On masks and migration
WINTER, A SMALL grocery shop in suburban New Zealand: the opening stage direction of Jacob Rajan's enduringly popular solo piece Krishnan's Dairy, first performed at Bats in Wellington in 1997. A short song describes how Gobi and Zina Krishnan came to New Zealand from...
Patterns of migration
AN EEL, LIKE an artist or writer, carries its immediate past around with it: if an eel wants to know where it has been, it just spins its head 180 degrees and stares down the length of its tell-tale body. At the same time,...
Cable stations
Here in the womb of the world – here on the tie-ribs of earthWords, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beatWarning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth Rudyard Kipling, 1902 ‘WANTED, BOYS FIFTEEN years of age to learn submarine telegraphy and serve...
Primate city
NOT LONG AGO a TV current affairs program mounted a live studio debate about whether 'Auckland is sucking the life out of New Zealand'. Viewers were invited to vote and overwhelmingly agreed there was, indeed, an urban vampire in their midst. The studio audience...
Hitching a ride
IN THE SUBTROPICAL Pacific Ocean, 160 kilometres southwest of Raoul Island, Lieutenant Tim Oscar stared out of the window of the ship's bridge. Behind him were the heaving grey seas the ship had been battling all night. Before him, a vast white expanse glowed...
A Kiwi feast
Ingredients4 pāuaoilbutter6 cloves garliclarge bunch wild silverbeet16 stalks of samphire4 miniature bunches of sea grapes WORKING ON THE idea that the best rustic dishes convey a sense of place, this recipe speaks to the wider Pacific from Wellington’s wild south coast.Just ten minutes’ drive from...
Thinking about waves
FROM MY RESEARCH journal, August 2011: Our sea is made up of certain blues. Sometimes, just before the weather changes, our sea is so pale it fades into the sky. At these times, the sea is almost silent. Sometimes our sea is bluer than...
Walking meditations
MY MOTHER’S FINGERNAILSThe fumes were acid and sugary at the same time. The polish seemed to melt under the remover-soaked cotton ball. There were many stages to this ritual. The nail file, that strange shape of hash-cut metal, a surgical instrument, hook at one...
Sea of trees
An experience of remoteness, space, natural quiet and solitude isgained standing amongst the extensive dunes against the vastness of the Southern Ocean.NZ Department of Conservation It will be a long tunnel for us.Masahisa Okuyama, father of a hikikomori IN THE PHOTOGRAPH the young man is sitting...
O Salutaris
O sa-a-lu-ta-a-ris * ho-o-sti-i-aQuae cae-ae-li pa-an-dis * o-sti-umBe-lla-a praemunt * hosti-i-li-aDa ro * bur fe-er au-xi-li-um Uni-i tri-no-o-que * Do-o-mi-i-noSit se-em-pi-ter-r-na * glo-ri-aQui vi-i-tam si * ne ter-r-mi-noNobis * do-ne-et * in pa-tri-a PA HENARE TATE, the elderly Catholic priest who conducted the requiem mass for...
Pure brightness
EACH April at Pure Brightness Festival (Ching Ming) Chinese families sweep the graves and perform traditional rites to honour their ancestors. On 4–5 April 2013, a hundred people gathered in the remote far north of New Zealand to commemorate those lost when the SS Ventnor sank...
School report
LAST WEEKEND, IN a bid to compress a wet Sunday, I drove my two young boys out to the seaside suburb where I'd lived a decade earlier. At the fish and chip shop a familiar face greeted us from behind the counter; his smile...
Tectonic Z
OF ALL DEVELOPED countries, New Zealand is one of the most dependent on its natural environment for earning its living; and we have lived well, thanks to the bounty our ancestors discovered here some seven hundred years ago.Ours was the last large land mass...
We are all Stan Walker
ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH the debut series of The X Factor (New Zealand) I started making some notes about why I liked the show. I should add that I liked it un-ironically, though not unreservedly; I'm not insane. Of course the show is mostly reviled....
First, build your hut
WHERE IS OUR Marcus Clarke? Henry Handel Richardson? Rolf Boldrewood, Ada Cambridge, Tasma, Henry Kingsley, Joseph Furphy? Why don't we have the rich history of three-deckers and popular fiction that adorns the literary history of Victorian Australia? In the late 1890s a clerk on...
Simply by sailing in a new direction
IN OCTOBER 2012 several dozen writers from New Zealand appeared at the Frankfurt Book Fair where New Zealand had been nominated as the 'country of honour'. We had been gathered for a series of literary events, part of a full-throated piece of cultural diplomacy...
The lie of the land
THIS IS THE biography of a painting I've known my whole life. At least, there hasn't been a time when I can't remember the painting that used to hang in the long, darkened hallway of my grandparents' house on the farm in northern Hawke's...
An A-frame in Antarctica
AHEAD WAS A peculiar vision. Black Island appeared to levitate above the Ross Ice Shelf. A shimmering dark lake had formed below it where there had not been rain for over two million years. I rest on my ski poles and in the thin...
Reading Geoff Cochrane
WHEN I WAS a child I had two dolls in a box. Each night I placed the dolls on the floor of the box and covered them with a sheet of black paper. Sometimes the dolls required reassurance. I told them that the day...
The beach
A SWEEP OF reef, two dashing freshwater rivers and a towering mountain, the bay of Apia, on the north coast of the island of Upolu, Samoa, has seduced many a traveller. As a young New Zealand-born Samoan I used to dream of Apia. I...
Fitting into the Pacific
I MET HER mother first. Emi was head of the typing pool in a government department where I worked and, in those days, before everyone had a PC on their desks, the senior typist determined the order that work was completed. Emi was the...
Postcard from Beijing
I'M LIVING AT Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, in an extraordinary brick building designed by the artist Ai Weiwei, who lives down the road. The centre was founded by the artists RongRong and Inri, well-known for their individual and collaborative photography. This art space...
Open road
WHILE STILL A squirt, and a year or two before I started going to primary school, I often stood beside next-of-kin and others at the Caledonian Ground in Dunedin, beside adults who were shouting, 'Go, Alf!', or 'Go, Alan!' Both Alf and Alan were...
Whale Road
THERE ARE SO many reasons that, when you look at the metres-long, meaty wound in the side of a whale, you don't want to think of a vagina. Teenage you says: gross. Feminist you: offensive. Literary you: obvious. But there it is, a gaping...
Place in time
As told to Glenn Busch by Pamela 'Judy' Ross as part of the Christchurch documentary project, Place in Time.COWLISHAW STREET: I took it out on him. He wasn't even here to take it out on, but I'd go out to the cemetery and I'd...
On my way to the border
I GOT UP, dressed, and walked to the airport. Everyone else was driving as fast as they could to beat it out of the city, out of New Zealand, to catch the first flight leaving for the colonies – Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, even Darwin....
Amending the map
WE ALMOST FORGOT. The manicured gardens, the orderly course of the Avon River, the neat grid of streets – the very structure of this Church of England settlement built on the founding principles of faith and learning encouraged a form of environmental amnesia. Despite...
Portrait of an artist
As told to Lloyd JonesBefore you began writing people's stories you were a photographer, how did that happen?For part of every year now I live on a boat. Those who know about boats, particularly old boats such as ours, understand the merit of someone...
Interview with
Sally Blundell
Sally Blundell is a journalist and writer based in Christchurch. In this interview she discusses the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake – the 'environmental amnesia' that historically afflicted the city, the post-disaster renewal project, and the importance of the Ngāi Tahu culture and...
Interview with
Hamish Clayton
Hamish Clayton is a writer of fiction, essays and criticism. His first novel, Wulf (Penguin New Zealand, 2012), won the New Zealand Society of Authors Best First Book Award, and he is currently working on a second novel. In this interview he speaks about...
Interview with
Cliff Fell
Cliff Fell is a London-born poet, essayist, musician and book reviewer who settled in New Zealand in 1998. His two collections of poems are The Adulterer's Bible (Victoria University Press, 2003) and Beauty of the Badlands (Victoria University Press, 2008). The first was awarded...
Interview with
Lloyd Jones
Lloyd Jones is an award-winning writer of fiction whose work includes the short fiction collection Swimming to Australia (Victoria University Press, 1991), the memoir A History of Silence (Text, 2013) and the novel Mister Pip (John Murray, 2007), which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize...
Interview with
Bill Manhire
Bill Manhire is writer, professor and New Zealand's first inaugural poet laureate. He was also, until recently, the director of the International Institute of Modern Letters, centre for Creative Writing at Victoria University of Wellington. In this interview he speaks about New Zealand's evolving...
Interview with
Lydia Wevers
Lydia Wevers is a literary critic, editor and book reviewer. She is the director of the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, and she has published widely on Australian and New Zealand literature. In this interview she discusses...
Interview with
Ashleigh Young
Ashleigh Young is a writer and editor of essays and poetry currently living in London. Her first book of poems, Magnificent Moon (Victoria University Press), was published in 2012, and in 2009 she was awarded the Adam Prize for her essay collection Can You...
Anxiety
I'D HAD A successful trip to several South American countries and was boarding a LAN Air flight back to Auckland from Santiago, flying Economy as I always do, but reflecting that if my company, Preston Products, went on like this, bringing in new overseas...
Waiheke Island
THEY WERE WORRIED about the boy so they sent him to me. I needed a job done. You'd think he was eighteen from the way they talked but he was twenty-seven. He turned up with combat boots, shorts, a hard bare chest, those earrings...
Getting to yes
HE SAT THERE staring, the book he'd been reading forgotten on the table in front of him. He hadn't had sex for one hundred and thirteen days now and any girl was starting to look pretty good but even allowing for that this girl...
Clearing at Dawn
A Clear DawnLi PoThe bush is cool, the light showers have stopped – a panorama of Spring.The clear waters boil with leaping trout; birds chirp, the fern fronds droop.The bush flowers dapple their dewy petals; the hill tussocks give a crisp salute.Above...
Demarcations
1. The Violinist in SpringIt is not the blue notes, but the blue touch paper. It is not the short fuse, but the long memory. It is not the small bunch of forget-me-nots, but the bed of red hot pokers. It is not the...
L’Anima Verde
Selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2014I ki paki waitara rā I repa aitia Tunaroa Nā Māui, ka haea ai ia Mate ai ia, auē. – I –The green soul as Montale calls the eel, a thread of water that casts...
Whale Survey, Raoul Island, with Rosemary Dobson
Two poets on a headland, mid-survey might pause suddenly and say will this be your whale, or mine? Moving, accordingly, from one observation area to the next, a whale is ‘handed over’. Please take it. No, you first.Early morning spent ‘getting the eye in’ velocity...
The uprising
Selected for Best New Zealand Poems 201420131.Here we are a skinny country in the largest ocean on earth spell-bound, windswept, lashed.The land is like a canoe heading south to an icy continent or heading north to equatorial islands. No one seems to know.On...
Green light
In the deep south, the winter light is clear as beauty. There are no half measures – it stares you in the face until you look away. But there is also imperfection. I must insist on imperfection. I stand before the mirror freshly...
There, being Monday morning
''So why's he dead?', the reasonable and polite enough query as children witness from the distance, the body moved to a van with white sides and frosted panes.I was born, there’s no question of that.I am in a dozen framed photos on this table...
Encounter above the Hurunui
A cloud river above the Hurunuiand on the plane there are two Māori bros –one sitting with me until he could shiftto the seat just behind with his brother,long lost, of course, they’ve not met up in tenyears and now happen to clamber intothis...
Erebus voices
The Mountain I am here beside my brother, Terror.I am the place of human error. I am beauty and cloud, and I am sorrow;I am tears which you will weep tomorrow. I am the sky and the exhausting gale.I am the place of ice. I am the...
Equinoctial
Selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2014 A hand’s turn or two A hand’s turn or twoAnd my work is done for the day. ~ Behold my suit of meatsand fat tarantulas. Check out my cloak of knives and pinkest heliums. ~ Our lilies...