THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

Tell the story, tell it true - charm it crazy "Sam has strong feelings regarding theories about New Zealand poetry.  He has strong feelings about academia and those who specialize in pulling apart poems, analyzing, theorizing, sumerising and surmising," writes old mate, Journo Colin Hogg, in this slim volume, compiled to celebrate 'our national treasure's 70th Birthday.  In other words, Hunt would hate this review.  Salt River Songs is Sam Hunt's latest collection of poems written over the last couple of years at his house near the salt rivers of the Kaipara Harbour.  It's a magical place to retire, if that's what Hunt is actually doing.  He's long lived near some kind of water or inlet and is most famous for his boathouse in Plimmerton.  As always his poetry reflects the rise and fall of the emotional and spiritual tides.  It's unflinchingly honest, elegiac and sometimes quiet moving.  The themes are familiar - friends (especially childhood m...

This book is a unique take on our Rugby history.  Sure the amount of published literature on our early sports years is dominated by Rugby but, as I found out when writing my own Honors Thesis many year's ago it was the great leveler, bringing men of all walks of life and class together.  It was also the sport that saw the most players enlist during the Great War.  The book is a sort of encyclopedia of players running in the chronological order of enlistment, starting with Sergeant Frederick Harold 'Skin' Masters who fought in the war and later went on to play for New Zealand in 1922.  Others, though joined after or during their All Black careers and many had potentially great careers cut short, just like many of their contemporaries.   Frederick Harold Masters MM (20 December 1895 – 27 May 1980) was a New Zealand rugby union player. A lock, Masters represented Taranaki at a provincial level, and was a member of the New Zealand ...