NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

The magazine has a dozen contributing poets, four authors of short stories, six pages of reviews, many black and white drawings well tailored to the contributions, and short notes on contributors. The balance is OK and a 27th issue probably means an audience of paying subscribers. It is loosely an International Magazine of the Arts, with USA, Australian and Irish contributors — others in the majority are from N.Z.

I think the stories would interest the younger and streetwise rather than the scholarly — bottoms get patted in front of tennis courts, bartenders fart, balls get hacked — nevertheless maybe the human warmth behind them appeals. Some images in the poems seem unfortunate, or am I some castle-in-the-air pom who is not attracted by lines in Michael Spring's BASALT:

	storm clouds rumble
	dragging their torn udders 
	over the western 
	Oregon farmlands.

 
	. . . entrance of the moonscape
	That jiggers in the mind
	Like the clown's frown.

	Not being a star hasn't stopped it being the
	star, the self-spotlight of the nocturnal 
	boards. Amidst the heaven's general purdah
	it can shine forth so lustrously . . .

	. . . they hiss "pzinnggg!" to themselves when they find
	no-one
	to talk with.
	What do they say when they introduce a new friend

	to death?

a major and substantial publication of Polynesian poetry translated to English over the past 20 years,

This issue of Southern Ocean Review contains three stories, a variety of poems from poets in UK, USA, Canada, Australia, as well as New Zealand, and there are also several short reviews of books by New Zealanders. Illustrated with Judith Wolfe's exceptional drawings, the magazine is lively and substantial.

USA writer Marlo Maseni's short story TILL DEATH DO US PART is about a love affair with a ghost called Sam. In life Sam haunted libraries. The story begins with a bang:

I took from my shoulder bag the Smith and Wesson that Myron insisted I carry and shot him dead.

The road back was very long, but I had taken the first step.

J. Dixon Hearne has also published widely and received the 2003 editors' choice award for a story in Oxford Magazine. THE HEART MADE WISE, portrays a child's eye view of the romantic lives of his two aunts. When another lady steps in, and regales the sisters with news of her love affair, mayhem breaks out. The conclusion to the story takes a neat turn leaving the reader in no doubt about the sincerity of the two sisters.

The poetry in this collection is bright, readable and communicative. The selection is characterised by cultural diversity and a global point of view, where even personal and domestic moments are connected to larger events, and a willingness to write poetry recognisable as social discourse. The editors are correct to view pluralism in poetry as a healthy sign of the times and to wish to highlight it in a culture which ignores or marginalizes the voices and achievements of a significant number of people.

The magazine is diverse in that it includes several women poets, writers from the Northern Hemisphere, and a Maori writer. Here are to be found innovation, accessibility, humour, appropriation of the vernacular, political nous and significance, even characterization and skilled narrative.

A few brief extracts from a couple of poems may serve to illustrate the above points. From a woman poet, Isha Wagner, come these lines from the poem SHE (at Byron Bay):

	A glass of water please.
	In the sweltering heat my mouth was parched
	 And then comes a woman of 20 or so
	She doesn't walk; she kind of crawls.
	A thick knitted tea cosy for a hat.

	She was the oddest person I'd seen
	And I wondered at the Creator's ways.

The Canadian poet Ramesh Dohan's poem PRAGUE 2001, with its tumultuous train journey through the countryside from Prague to Bratislava, reveals the poverty of a third-world nation where the children have forgotten how to play:

	They have forgotten
	how to eat, are unaware
	of toys and play.

	Davey roped to the tiller
	for nine hours 
	searching the blackness
	for the lights —