Flora & Fauna

The Woman who Married a Bear

Sarah Jane Barnett - August 2015

Sarah Jane Barnett on the mythical animals of Fiordland

Early this year I wrote a poem about black bears being released along the Rangitata River. It was the final in a series of six poems that make up my forthcoming collection, WORK (Hue & Cry Press). The poem was sparked by an article about moose being released in New Zealand in the early 1900s.

Swamp Thing

John Summers - August 2015

Exploring wetlands

There’s a wetland near where I live, a small part of a reserve bequeathed to conservation by a local farmer. I say wetland, but I have to admit a fondness for the word swamp. It’s always struck me as onomatopoeic, the sound of a misstep into the mud.

A Kiwi in the Wild

Laurence Fearnley - July 2015

Searching for Rowi: Ōkarito, Westland

A couple of months ago I entered a competition. The prize included two night’s accommodation in Franz Josef and the opportunity to spend a day with DOC staff tracking rowi or Ōkarito kiwi (Aperyx rowi) in South Ōkarito forest.

The Blaze in the Green

John Summers - June 2015

Playing with toetoe

In Owls do Cry, Janet Frame wrote about the ‘gold tickle’ of toetoe around the town rubbish dump where her characters, four children, played. How many childhoods include that golden tickle or, as it always seemed to me, that golden blaze in the green, something mysteriously decorative like a lion’s mane, a horse’s plume, standing to attention in plain old flax.

K is for Kāhu

John Summers - May 2015

New Zealand’s birds of prey

The other day I started to read H is for Hawk, last year’s winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. It has a swag of good reviews behind it, and no doubt sits on bedside tables throughout the land. And one day, it sat in front of me as I took the train home. ‘What’s that about?’ asked the man beside me. ‘Someone training a hawk,’ I said.

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