North & South

The saga of Tom Phillips and his children is distressing and desperate, and I’m sure far more complicated than we know, but there is something about Phillips’ flight into the Waikato bush with his three young children that echoes a peculiarly New Zealand trope of rugged individualism and self-sufficiency. We asked writer James Borrowdale to explore why it is that in our novels and on our screens we so often glorify the notion of men retreating from society to forge their own path in the wilderness, from John Mulgan’s 1939 novel Man Alone to Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and even Jenny Bornholdt’s poem “Make Sure” (“Make sure you fall in love with a man who you know will survive in the bush”). In reality, no one truly exists…

Letter of the month On behalf of TOMB (eThereals Opposed to Mortal Bigotry) I would like to make a complaint regarding Bill Manhire’s poetry column in the October issue. A number of our members were brought to a shrieking halt by a truly awful instance of spectral vilification — a ghost sneered at for being bitter and aggrieved. This sort of thing is exactly why TOMB was formed — to combat the view that if a ghost exists it can be assumed to be filled with rancour. In fact ghosts tend to be cheerful, and self-effacing to the point of literalness. Manhire includes one of his own poems and this poem itself shows the ghost’s sweet nature, remaining unprovoked despite the poet’s distinctly ill-mannered behaviour. At the end, terrified by…

Share your thoughts on something you read in this issue, or respond to this month’s prompt: What predictions do you have for 2025? Letters to the editor must include the writer’s full address (not for publication). Letters and emails of less than 400 words are preferred; they may be edited for space and clarity. Please send your submission titled “Letter to the Editor” to: North & South School Road Publishing 22 Stanley Street, Auckland 1010 Or email us: info@northandsouth.co.nz…

Sharon Stephenson would LOVE to live a bi-hemisphere lifestyle (page 28), ping-ponging between her home in Kāpiti and another hemisphere, but the award-winning travel journalist is currently constrained by her beloved rescue dogs. One day she and her animator husband hope to be able to join the exodus each winter. John Sinclair is a former novelist, yoga teacher, youth worker, prison volunteer, public servant, Churchill Fellow, and researcher of Chinese social policy. He is currently contemplating which, if any, of these identities may reassert themselves as he heads into late middle age.…

I go to bakeries there’s a lot of sweetness in my life and this is the perfect time to take a trip or get involved in talks about Swan Lake first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre or take to the air in frenzied dances. Happy Birthday Evan Dando. Amid the smoke of cities did you pass your time of early youth knowing that tools come from what exists but use from what does not. From “A Hymn to Beauty: Days of a Year” in Selected Poems: Ian Wedde, by Ian Wedde. Published by Auckland University Press.…

Tom Phillips and New Zealand’s wilderness myth Perhaps, if you share one or two of my demographic markers — male, nearing forty, irremediably urban — you too will have been targeted by the online world’s sundry algorithms with a certain genre of video: a youngish and well-muscled white man, face obscured by a thick beard, armed with the hand drill he has pulled from his backpack and the hatchet hanging from his belt, sets about constructing a survival shelter in the North American wilderness. Ghost-white birch trees lose the last of their golden leaves and snow begins to fall as the season turns; the passing days — sped up and edited so heavily as to fit the entire process within one five-minute clip — reveal the construction of some bear-resistant masterpiece…