On the Mekong River (7/1/02)Contents:
- General Chronology (1962- )
- Chronology of Major Publications (1986- )
- Quotable Quotes (1997- )
- 1962 (6 November) - Born in Auckland (National Women's Hospital, Greenlane)
- 1967-72 - Murrays Bay Primary School
- 1973-74 - Murrays Bay Intermediate School
- 1975-79 - Rangitoto College
- 1980-81 - Holiday Job: helped to run a children’s holiday programme
- 1981-85 - Holiday Job: processed mortgage applications in the Post Office Savings Bank
- 1984 – BA in English / Italian (Auckland University)
- 1985 – (co-winner) Fowlds Prize: Best Student, Auckland Arts Faculty
- 1986 - Taught tutorials on Chaucer and Shakespeare at Auckland University
- 1986 – MA in English, with 1st class honours (Auckland University) - Thesis: The Early Novels of John Masefield, 1908-1911
- 1986-1990 – Commonwealth Scholarship to Edinburgh University
- 1989-90 - Tutored Fourth-year Honours classes on Early Modernism
- 1990 – PhD in English and Comparative Literature (Edinburgh University) - Thesis: An Elusive identity: Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day
- 1991 - Taught English literature full-time (Massey - Palmerston North)
- 1992-95 - Taught English literature full-time (Auckland University)
- 1996-2005 - Worked as a freelance writer and editor, while teaching part-time (Academic and Creative writing) on Massey’s Albany campus
- 1998-1999 - Co-editor of the Pander (with Vanessa York, Andrew Forsberg, Chris Barker et al.)
- 1999-2003 - Co-editor of Spin (with Leicester Kyle, Catherine Mair, Bernard Gadd, Patricia Prime & Tony Chad)
- 1999 – Longlisted for the Landfall Essay Prize (“The Great New Zealand Vortex”)
- 2002 – Shortlisted for the Landfall Essay Prize (“A Strange Day at the Language School”)
- 2002-2005 - Managing editor of brief
- 2003-2006 - Co-ordinator (with Wensley Willcox) of the North Shore branch of the NZ Society of Authors
- Since 2003 - Co-director (with Jan Kemp) of the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive
- 2005-2008 - Member (with Brett Cross, Scott Hamilton, Richard Taylor & Claudia Westmoreland) of the brief publication committee
- 2006 - Appointed Senior Tutor in Academic and Creative Writing (Massey Albany)
- Since 2006, co-director (with Bronwyn Lloyd) of Pania Press
- 2007-2009 - Member (with Jenny Lawn, Graeme Macrae & Eleanor Rimoldi) of the editorial board of the Social and Cultural Studies monograph series
- 2009 (June) - Appointed Lecturer in Creative Writing (Massey Albany)
- 2009-2011 - Chair of the editorial board of the Social and Cultural Studies monograph series
- 2011-2014 - Organiser of the Writers Read series on the Massey Albany campus
- 2013-2014; 2016-? - Campus coordinator for the School of English and Media Studies at Massey Albany
- 2013 (September) - Promoted to Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Massey Albany)
- 2014 (March)-2020 (March) - Managing editor of Poetry NZ
- 2018 (September 18) - My novel The Annotated Tree Worship was highly commended in the fiction category of the NZ Heritage Book Awards by Judge Fiona Farrell.
- 2019 (March 6-20 November) - Completed Te Ara Reo Māori Levels 1 & 2 at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.
- 2022 (January 14) - Took early retirement from Massey University.
- 1986 (May 3) - Victorian Dreams. Videotape written and directed by Jack Ross. Auckland University Audio-Visual Library, 1986. [20 mins].
- 1986 (April) - Guillaume Apollinaire. Aubade. Translated by Jack Ross. Illustration by Mark Haddon. Poetry Chapbook, published by Edinburgh University's Drummond Press.
- 1997 (March) - Killing Time. Poetry chapbook, published by Perdrix Press (Auckland).
- 1997 (May) - Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old.” Translated by Jack Ross. Poetry chapbook, published by Perdrix Press (Auckland).
- 1998 (March) - [co-editor] The Pander 3 (Autumn). ISSN 1174-4030.
- 1998 (June) - [co-editor] The Pander 4: On the Map (Winter). ISSN 1174-4030.
- 1998 (September) - [co-editor] The Pander 5: Pimping (Spring). ISSN 1174-4030.
- 1998 (September 25) - City of Strange Brunettes. ISBN 0-473-05446-9. Poetry Book published by Pohutukawa Press (Birkenhead), launched by Dr. Theresia Marshall at the Takapuna Public Library.
- 1999 (March) - [editor] Spin 33. ISSN 0113-8227.
- 1999 (March) - [co-editor] The Pander 6/7: Capital. ISSN 1174-4030.
- 1999 (July) - [co-editor] The Pander 8: Oceania. ISSN 1174-4030.
- 1999 (November) - [co-editor] The Pander 9: Crime. ISSN 1174-4030.
- 2000 (March) - [editor] Spin 36. ISSN 0113-8227.
- 2000 (October 1) - A Town Like Parataxis. Photographs by Gabriel White. ISBN 0-473-07104-5. Art / Poetry chapbook, published by Perdrix Press (Auckland), and launched by Gabriel White and Jack Ross in Grey Lynn.
- 2000 (November) - The Perfect Storm. Video by Gabriel White. ISBN 0-473-07350-1. Film, with poetry attachment, published by Perdrix Press (Auckland).
- 2000 (December 10 / 14) - Nights with Giordano Bruno. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9. Novel published by Bumper Books (Wellington). Launched in Auckland (at 6 Hastings Rd., Mairangi Bay), by Professor Don Smith, and in Wellington (in Newtown) by Alan Brunton.
- 2001 (February) - [featured poet] “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- 2001 (March) - [editor] Spin 39. ISSN 0113-8227.
- 2001 (May) - The Britney Suite. Poetry chapbook, published by Perdrix Press (Auckland).
- 2002 (March) - [editor] Spin 42. ISSN 0113-8227.
- 2002 (July) - [editor] brief 24 – less formal than bull (Winter). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2002 (October) - [editor] brief 25 – trains at a glance (Spring). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2002 (November 10) - Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8. Poetry Book published by HeadworX Press (Wellington), launched by Alistair Paterson at the Birdcage Hotel, Freemans Bay.
- 2003 (February) - [editor] brief 26 – Smithymania (Summer 2002/3). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2003 (February) - [editor] A brief index: 1995-2003. Auckland: The Writers Group.
- 2003 (April) - [editor] Spin 45. ISSN 0113-8227.
- 2003 (June 4) - [editor] [your name here:] Life Writing. Introduction by Mary Paul. ISBN 0-473-09551-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies. Student anthology, launched by Tina Shaw in the Atrium Common Room, Massey Albany.
- 2003 (July) - [editor] brief 27 – Season of the Remakes (Winter). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2003 (October) - [editor] brief 28 – Alan Brunton (Spring). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2004 (April) - [editor] brief 29 – more fun than you’ve ever seen (Summer). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2004 (September 19) - [co-editor] Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past & Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2. Auckland: Cape Catley. Anthology launched by George Wood, at the Takapuna Public Library.
- 2004 (October 24) - Monkey Miss Her Now & Everything a Teenage Girl Should Know. ISBN 0-476-00182-X. Short Story Collection, published by Raewyn Alexander's Danger Publishing, launched by Roger Horrocks at the George Fraser Gallery, University of Auckland.
- 2004 (October) - [editor] Kendrick Smithyman, Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian. Introduction by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-476-00382-2. Auckland: The Writers Group. Poetry translations, published posthumously.
- 2004 (November) - [editor] brief 30 – Kunst / brief 31 - Kultur (Winter / Spring). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2005 (May 21) - Trouble in Mind. Titus Novella Series. ISBN 0-9582586-1-9. Novella, published by Brett Cross's Titus Books, launched by Mike Johnson at Diamond Lil's, Downtown Auckland.
- 2005 (June) - [editor] A brief index. Supplement 1: 2003-2005. Auckland: The Writers Group, 2005. 20 pp.
- 2005 (July) - [editor] brief 32 – Joanna Margaret Paul (Winter). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2005 (November) - A Bus Called Mr Nice Guy. ISBN 0-473-10526-8. Poetry chapbook published by Perdrix Press (Auckland).
- 2005 (November 16) - [editor] Where Will Massey Take You? Life Writing 2. Introduction by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-09551-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies. Student anthology, launched by Mary Paul and Grant Duncan in the Atrium Common Room, Massey Albany.
- 2006 (June 15) - The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis: A Novel published by Brett Cross's Titus Books, launched by Gabriel White at the English Department Common Room, University of Auckland.
- 2006 (July 20) - [editor] Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance. Poems selected by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp. ISBN 1-86940-367-3. Auckland: Auckland University Press. Anthology, launched by Peter Simpson and Elizabeth Caffin, in the Hobson Room, Jubilee Hall, Parnell.
- 2006 (August) - [co-editor] Myth of the 21st Century: An Anthology of New Fiction. Edited by Tina Shaw & Jack Ross. ISBN 0-7900-1098-4. Auckland: Reed Publishing (NZ) Ltd, 2006.
- 2007 (January) - Love in Wartime. Poetry Chapbook published by Pania Press (Wellington).
- 2007 (June 6) - To Terezín: A Travelogue published by the Massey University School of Social and Cultural Studies, no. 8 in the Social and Cultural Studies Monograph Series, with an Afterword by Martin Edmond, launched by Scott Hamilton at Bennetts' Bookshop, Albany Campus, Massey University.
- 2007 (July 27) - [co-editor] Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance. Poems selected by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp. ISBN 978 1 86940 395 9. Auckland: Auckland University Press. Anthology, launched by Iain Sharp, at the Auckland Public Library (Central Branch).
- 2007 - Papyri: Love poems & fragments from Sappho & elsewhere. ISBN 978-0-473-12397-0. Poetry Chapbook published by Soapbox Press (Auckland).
- 2007 (November) - [guest editor] Landfall 214 (2007). ISBN 978 1 877372 93 3.
- 2008 (March 9) - [co-editor] Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey. Edited by Bronwyn Lloyd & Jack Ross. ISBN 978-0-473-13179-1. Auckland: Pania Press, 2008.
- 2008 (May 22) - EMO: A Novel published by Brett Cross's Titus Books, launched by Jen Crawford at the Alleluya Cafe, Karangahape Rd.
- 2008 (June 4) - [co-editor] Home & Away: Life Writing 3. Edited by Kathryn Lee & Jack Ross. ISBN 978-0-473-13539-3. Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies. Student anthology, launched by Tracey Slaughter in the Atrium Common Room, Massey Albany.
- 2008 (June 4) - [editor] Rowan McCormick, Writers of Passage. Preface by Mary Paul, with an Afterword by Eleanor Rimoldi. Social and Cultural Studies, 9. ISSN 1175-7132. Auckland: Massey University. Student monograph, launched by Tracey Slaughter in the Atrium Common Room, Massey Albany.
- 2008 (July 18) - [editor] New New Zealand Poets in Performance. Preface by Jack Ross. Poems selected by Jack Ross and Jan Kemp. ISBN 978 1 86940 4093. Auckland: Auckland University Press. Anthology, launched by Michele Leggott, at the Auckland Public Library (Central Branch).
- 2008 (November) - Minotaur. Translated by Jack Ross. Poetry Chapbook published by Pania Press (Auckland).
- 2008 (November) - Je donne à mon espoir. Translated by Jack Ross. Poetry Chapbook published by Pania Press (Auckland).
- 2009 (March) - [guest editor] Poetry NZ 38 (2009). ISSN 0114-5770.
- 2009 - (September) The Return of the Vanishing New Zealander. ISBN 978-0-9864507-6-1. Poetry Chapbook published by Kilmog Press (Dunedin).
- 2009 (December) - The Argo & The Wahine. Story by Bronwyn Lloyd / Poems by Jack Ross. Fiction / Poetry Chapbook published by Pania Press (Auckland).
- 2009 (December) - Silhouette. Artwork by Bronwyn Lloyd. Poetry Chapbook, published by Pania Press (Auckland).
- 2010 (July) - [guest fiction editor] Bravado 19 (2010). ISSN 9-771176-339003.
- 2010 (September 23) - Kingdom of Alt. ISBN 978-1-877441-15-8. Short Story collection, published by Brett Cross's Titus Books, and launched by Bronwyn Lloyd at the Alleluya Cafe, Karangahape Rd.
- 2011 (January) - [editor] Kendrick Smithyman, Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian. 2004. Introduction by Marco Sonzogni. Essay by Jack Ross. ISBN-13: 978-88-7536-264-5. Transference Series. Ed. Erminia Passannanti. Novi Ligure: Edizioni Joker, 2010. Poetry translations.
- 2011 (February 17) - [co-editor] 11 Views of Auckland. Edited by Jack Ross & Grant Duncan. Preface by Jack Ross. Social and Cultural Studies, 10. ISSN 1175-7132. Albany: Massey University. Anthology launched by Massey Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey, at the Staff Lounge, Study Centre, Massey Albany.
- 2011 (May) - Scenes from The Puppet Oresteia. Artwork by William T. Ayton. ISBN 978-0-473-18881-8. Art / Poetry Chapbook, co-published by Narcissus Press (Rhinebeck, NY) and Pania Press (Auckland).
- 2011 (November) - [editor] Leicester Kyle. Koroneho: Joyful News Out Of The New Found World. Introduction by Jack Ross. Preface by Ian St George. ISBN 978-0-9876604-0-4. Auckland: The Leicester Kyle Literary Estate / Wellington: The Colenso Society, 2011. Postmodern epic, transcribed and edited for print publication.
- 2012 (June 20 - July 21) - Fallen Empire: Museum of True History in Collaboration with Karl Chitham and Jack Ross. Dunedin: Blue Oyster Art Project Space. Art Catalogue / Poetry chapbook.
- 2012 (November 25) - Celanie: Poems & Drawings after Paul Celan. Introduction by Jack Ross. Drawings by Emma Smith. Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd. ISBN: 978-0-473-22484-4. Auckland: Pania Press, 2012. Poetry translations, launched by Michele Leggott at 6 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay.
- 2014 (February 6) - [editor] Leicester Kyle. The Millerton Sequences. Introduction by Jack Ross. Poem by David Howard. ISBN 978-0-473-18880-1. Pokeno, Auckland: Atuanui Press, 2014. A selection from the later poems of pioneering ecologist and spiritual poet Leicester Kyle, distributed free with the special issue brief 50 as a commemorative gift to subscribers.
- 2014 (March 12) - [guest editor] brief 50 - the projects issue (2014). ISSN 1175-9313.
- 2014 (October 28) - A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN 978-0-473-29640-7. Wellington: HeadworX, 2014. Poetry collection, launched by Tracey Slaughter on Monday 25th May at the Art Fusion Gallery, Waikato University, Hamilton.
- 2014 (October 28) - [managing editor] Poetry NZ Yearbook 1 [Issue #49] (2014). ISSN 0114-5770. Poetry journal, launched by Dr Grant Duncan on Friday, October 31st 2014, Drama Lab, Sir Neil Waters Building, Albany Campus, Massey University; and by Dr Ingrid Horrocks on Monday, December 1st 2014, at Meow Café, 9 Edward Street, Te Aro, Wellington.
- 2015 (August 29) - [editor] “We” Society Poetry Anthology. Preface by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-0-473-32197-0. “Stage2Page” Publishing Series #4. Auckland: Printable Reality, 2015. Anthology launched by Gus Simonovic at Te Henga Studios, Bethells Beach, Auckland.
- 2015 (November 27) - [managing editor] Poetry NZ Yearbook 2 [Issue #50] (2015). ISSN 0114-5770. Poetry journal, launched at Lounge 47 reading, MC'ed by Jack Ross, on Wednesday October 21st, at Old Government House, University of Auckland.
- 2015 (December 2) - [Six Pack Sound #02] “Ice Road Trucker.” nzepc (2015- ). Poetry audio recording.
- 2017 (January 13) - [managing editor] Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017 [Issue #51]. ISBN 978-0-9941363-5-0. Poetry journal, launched by by Michele Leggott on Tuesday, March 14th 2017, at Devonport Public Library.
- 2017 (December 3) - [editor] Leicester Kyle. Letters to a Psychiatrist. Afterword by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-0-473-41327-9. Paper Table Novellas 1. Auckland: Paper Table, 2017. A novella by ecologist and poet Leicester Kyle, launched by Stu Bagby at 6 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay.
- 2017 (December 3) - The Annotated Tree Worship. ISBN: 978-0-473-22484-4. Paper Table Novellas 2 (i) & (ii). Auckland: Paper Table, 2017. Twin novellas, Draft Research Portfolio, ISBN 978-0-473-41328-6, and List of Topoi, ISBN 978-0-473-41329-3, launched by Tracey Slaughter at 6 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay.
- 2018 (January 10) - [managing editor] Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018 [Issue #52]. ISBN 978-0-9941363-5-0. Poetry journal, launched by by A/Prof Bryan Walpert on Tuesday, March 20th 2018, at Devonport Public Library.
- 2019 (January 8) - [managing editor] Poetry NZ Yearbook 2019 [Issue #53]. ISBN 978-0-9951029-6-5. Poetry journal, launched by Prof Chris Gallavin on Tuesday, March 5th 2019, at Devonport Public Library.
- 2019 (July 31) - Ghost Stories. ISBN 978-0-9951165-5-9. 99% Press. Auckland: Lasavia Publishing, 2019. Short story collection, launched together with Bronwyn Lloyd's new gallery the waiting room on Sunday, November 17th, 2019, at 6 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay.
- 2021 (March 11) - The Oceanic Feeling. ISBN 978-0-473-55801-7. Auckland: Salt & Greyboy Press, 2021. Poetry collection, launched by Tracey Slaughter as part of the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2021 event at Poppies Bookshop, Hamilton.
- 2023 (October 5) - Mike Johnson. Selected Poems 1977-2022. Edited by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-1-991083-00-5. 99% Press. Auckland: Lasavia Publishing Ltd., 2023. Poetry collection, launched along with Johnson's novella Afterworld and another book of poems, Sketches (a collaboration with his partner Leila Lees) by Murray Edmond at Waiheke Library, Oneroa.
- 2024 (July 1) - Haunts. ISBN 978-1-991083-17-3. 99% Press. Auckland: Lasavia Publishing Ltd., 2024. Short story collection, launched by Bronwyn Lloyd and Dr. Isabel Haarhaus (in absentia) - along with an exhibition of recent paintings, The Municipal Gardens by Emma Smith - on Saturday, October 5th, 2024, at 6 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay.
Jack Ross (30/3/12)
[photograph: John Tranter]
•
The Ross Clique
[l-to-r: Hamish Dewe, Jack Ross, Ted Jenner, Brett Cross]
Quotable Quotes
(1997- )
(1997- )
- Haunts (Auckland: Lasavia Publishing, 2024):
Kittens as loss magnets and love substitutes, water always perilous, darkness predictably turbulent ... The occult as tremulous medial literary landscape writable into the kinds of otherness that suck you out of the normative into lands of fancy that bite you all around the edges ("Best Friend") without actually biting You (the 'you' focalisation getting to do that for itself).
– Lisa Samuels, Emailed comment
Disconcertingly, in this collection it is the usually comforting motifs of bookshops, cats, strolls, suburban streets and home that are the worrying sites, which shows us that it is always local and current fears that transform, trip up and haunt us.
– Isabel Haarhaus, Launch speech - Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 [Issue #58] (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2024):
With the incredible influx of first-rate poems I receive from across Aotearoa, it’s been a case of one-poem per-poet for the latest issues, as I’m keen to showcase as many voices from around our country as I can. The challenge comes when some poets send me four or five pieces, all equally breathtaking! This year my favourite poets Elizabeth Morton, Jack Ross, Wes Lee and Olivia Macassey sent me an embarrassment of riches, every single poem a knockout!
– "10 Questions with Tracey Slaughter, editor of Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024" (19/2/24) - The Oceanic Feeling (Auckland: Salt & Greyboy Press, 2021):
The poems occupy the present but they also recuperate the past.
– Paula Green, Poetry Shelf
There are skeletons here, scattered through every page. An impression of finding shelter in isolation. A sensation of limitlessness. An oceanic feeling.
– Tim Saunders, Landfall
You've got to feel for him.
– Mark Prisco, Poetry NZ Yearbook - Ghost Stories (Auckland: Lasavia Publishing, 2019):
This ‘dark, threatening land’ — a trope Ross quotes from Sam Neill’s seminal documentary Cinema of Unease — haunts its inhabitants instead of vice versa.
– Shana Chandra, Landfall
As the New Zealand writer and academic Jack Ross stated in his latest collection Ghost Stories “We’re most haunted by that which we’ve worked hardest to deny and eradicate from our lives.”
– Brooke Georgia, Aubade
a fun, quirky read.
– Jenny Lawn, SEMS Digest - [edited] Poetry NZ Yearbook 2019 [Issue #53] (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2019):
I have lain on a couch for a week and stared at the sky and after the horrendous terrorist event in Christchurch everything feels different. Because everything must be different. What happens when I pick up this journal again with a raucous bust-up of questions in my head: How to live? How to speak? How to connect? How to write a poem? How to run a blog? How to widen us and make room for past, present and future, to celebrate the good things and challenge the rest? I picked up Poetry New Zealand again and started at the first page. No dipping and diving. Just tracking an alphabet of voices and letting poetry work its magic.
– Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
From modern probes into religion, romance, love, death and loss to the inner lives of a retail worker, a refugee, a doctor, a drunk – the eclectic mix offers poems in a multitude of forms ...
– Jennifer Little, Massey News
It’s all too easy to look around at naked bachelors marrying at first sight, and clowns clowning where current affairs used to be, and despair about the state of the world and the taste of the people in it. But then, the Poetry Yearbook turns up again, to show there is still room for sophistication and quality at a reasonable price.
– Paul Little, North & South - [edited] Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018 [Issue #52] (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2018):
Poetry NZ Yearbook offers a generous serving of poems (poets in alphabetical order so you get random juxtapositions), reviews and a featured poet (this time Alistair Paterson). It has stuck to this formula for decades and it works.
– Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
Alistair Paterson said he was humbled by the poets and flattered Ross had published his poetry in the book. "I am still learning my craft and learning it from the poets of today," Paterson said. The privilege was not given by the poet, rather it was the reader who privileges the poet, he added. Paterson said the poetry in this book was as good as any one could find overseas in US or Britain.
– Laine Moger, Stuff: Entertainment
This is not, as in many anthologies, a strict record of the editor’s taste or dare I suggest it, friendships — but, rather, a clear effort to capture the diversity of New Zealand poems and thoughts on poems at the present moment.
– Bryan Walpert, Launch Speech - The Annotated Tree Worship (Auckland: Paper Table Novellas, 2017):
There’s no one in New Zealand literature exploring the dark ways of narrative with the alchemical touch of Jack Ross, and his gift of spinning tales which jump ‘from track to track on the time-space continuum’ never fails to leave me exhilarated, in outright awe.
– Tracey Slaughter, Launch Speech
I urge readers to read these two. They are very absorbing, intriguing. Not just dry academic. Mix of fast and slow pace. Good stuff ...
– Richard Taylor, Online comment
delightful — hilariously funny, but also engrossing, with a wonderful narrator who was both unreliable and oddly sympathetic.
– Bryan Walpert, Emailed comment - [edited] Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017 [Issue #51] (Auckland: Massey University Press, 2017):
The best way to take the pulse and determine the health of poetry in New Zealand is to crack open the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook.
– Anna Forsyth, The Reader
one of the best New Zealand literary journals around.
– Siobhan Harvey, NZ Herald
Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, in its revitalised form, and as a hub for poetry conversations, is now an essential destination for poetry fans.
– Paula Green, Sunday Star-Times
This belongs in the section of your bookcase you’ve set aside for quiet little miracles that we can only be grateful are still part of our literary life.
– Paul Little, North & South - A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014):
I’ve called him the King of Alt before, and no one can threaten his title - he’s a shape-shifter and a codeswitcher ... no one can jump cut from the sublime to the sub-pop in an electric instant like Jack.
– Tracey Slaughter, launch speech
My time in the Hinterland has left me more with feeling than thought, which I hope excuses this clinching review-by-analogy: picture yourself on a Gold Coast beach, the wind idly leafing through the pages of a much-annotated copy of Benjamin’s Arcades Project on your lap; as ‘Baudelaire’ flashes by in your peripheral vision, you disinterestedly observe a sleek conferential shark feeding – though far from frenziedly – on a smorgasbord of swimmers, whose names end with unstressed vowels and whose togs are at least a size too small. The water is the colour of an $8 bottle of rosé. I find reading Ross – to borrow his victims’ parlance – kind of like that.
– Robert McLean, Landfall Review Online
The poem as a coal nugget, perhaps.
– Matthew Harris, Poetry NZ - [with Emma Smith] Celanie: Poems & Drawings after Paul Celan (Auckland: Pania Press, 2012):
Small masterpieces of language hooked up to lives.
– Michele Leggott, launch speech
As a whole it is one of the most gratifying works of poetry translation I’ve seen, and promises years of layered enjoyments.
– Jen Crawford, brief
The element of obscurity in the poems is another matter, but in a strange and arresting way enhances and draws the reader more deeply into what they're saying and doing.
– Alistair Paterson, Poetry NZ - [edited, with Grant Duncan] 11 Views of Auckland. Social and Cultural Studies, 10 (Albany: Massey University, 2010):
Jack Ross promises the reader a ‘quick fix’ rather than ‘a complete immersion’, but I found it much more satisfying than that.
– Steve Matthewman, New Zealand Sociology - Kingdom of Alt (Auckland: Titus, 2010):
Ross is ... a termite, both subversive and industrious in his literary activities, I would willingly sign up for his fictitious courses if I were not about to unplug my computer and travel to other shores.
– Elmar Ludwig, brief
With their baroque structures, explicit and sometimes bizarre sex, extreme but seldom gratuitous violence, and innovative use of page layout, variations in font, and illustrations, Jack's books have all too often been easy for reviewers to ignore or to misunderstand ... there are signs now that the critical tide might be turning.
– Scott Hamilton, Reading the Maps - The Return of the Vanishing New Zealander (Dunedin: Kilmog Press, 2009):
I think it is my favourite of your poetry collections so far. There's an ease to the way the moments sit together, each as alert as the others, and there is comfortable space to move between them. & to contemplate that weirdly anguished endpoint of beauty ...
– Jen Crawford - EMO (Auckland: Titus, 2008):
EMO ... tugs at the heart strings, expressing the vulnerability of the powerless, and how power relations are misused. A lot else too, including the moons of Mars, some poignant poetry and explicit sex ...
– Brett Cross - [editor, with Jan Kemp] New New Zealand Poets in Performance (Auckland: AUP, 2008):
This series has done an immense amount of good in preserving and disseminating the voices of our writers. The value of hearing poets read cannot be underestimated. From the clipped, almost British tones of Allen Curnow in volume one, to the 'Mad Kiwi Ranter' persona of David Eggleton in volume two, each of the recordings reflect and illuminate an aspect of our history.
– Allan Phillipson, Bulletin of New Zealand Studies
Ross and Kemp’s editorial selection is eclectic, pragmatic and personal, with gems in all three books.
– Richard Reeve, Poetry NZ
This volume brings to a close the most thorough survey of New Zealand poetry ever undertaken ... Without a doubt the monumental task Kemp and Ross set themselves must have grown to something more than they imagined possible. Now however, the results speak for themselves ... As editors Kemp and Ross deserve the nation's thanks for a task completed well.
– Pat White, Wairarapa Times - [co-editor, with Bronwyn Lloyd] Orange Roughy (Auckland: Pania Press, 2008):
Better than a sausage sizzle outside the Warehouse.
– Damien Wilkins - Papyri: Love poems & fragments from Sappho & elsewhere (Auckland: Massey, 2007):
There are gems among these updates … I find Jack's procedure … for constructing a new poem out of one-line fragments, more creative than many so-called original poems …
– Ted Jenner, brief - [co-editor, with Jan Kemp] Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance (Auckland: AUP, 2007):
Contemporary New Zealand Poets in Performance is a masterpiece.
– Graham Brazier, NZ Herald
If anything, it’s even better than its companion volume from 2006: just as comprehensive and much more cohesive, it’s a joy to read and hear.
– Sam Finnemore, Craccum
As a teaching aid, this anthology is invaluable; an aspect underscored by Ross's own website, which supplies a list of approaches to using the book in classroom situations.
– Allan Phillipson, Bulletin of New Zealand Studies - To Terezín (Auckland: Massey, 2007):
I think you may look back on it in twenty years and not feel dissatisfied with it.
– Scott Hamilton
To Terezín is an entrancing model of how travel writing can encompass a range of genres – essay, verse, images – as well as wider themes of ethics, philosophy, literature, art and history ...
– Jennifer Little, Massey News - [contributor] Gothic NZ: The Darker Side of Kiwi Culture (Dunedin: UOP, 2007):
… overwrought …
– Andrew Paul Wood, NZ Listener - [co-editor, with Tina Shaw] Myth of the 21st Century: An Anthology of New Fiction (Auckland: Reed, 2006):
Ross draws together Melville and climate change crisis with considerable ability.
– Robin List, Wairarapa Times-Age - The Imaginary Museum [http://mairangibay.blogspot.co.nz/] (June 14, 2006- ):
Jack Ross is one of New Zealand’s foremost literary bloggers as a well as a prolific critic, anthologist, novelist and, of course, poet ...
– Scott Hamilton, Scoop Review of Books - [editor, with Jan Kemp] Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance (Auckland: AUP, 2006):
Who needs bedtime stories when you can be serenaded by some of New Zealand’s leading poets?
– Mary de Ruyter, City Mix
… a minor masterpiece ...
– Sam Finnemore, Craccum
For sheer entertainment value, Ross and Kemp’s anthology easily beats Murray the Mouth, let alone that Harry Potter rerun on TV 2. Who says poetry is dead?
– Scott Hamilton, Poetry NZ
For the classroom teacher, who cares about our literary heritage, this collection is a treasure trove, something to share with students or, on a long drive, to keep you company with poems that you will simply want to return to.
– Terry Locke, English in Aotearoa
Listen in the car, while you’re making dinner, or do the iPod shuffle.
– Chris Price, Dominion Post
You need to add this book to your collection.
– Trevor Reeves, Southern Ocean Review
For anyone interested in New Zealand poetry, this is a must-have.
– Iain Sharp, Sunday Star-Times
Listening to a poet reading his or her own work brings a layer of meaning and enjoyment that you can’t get from the printed page.
– Charmian Smith, Otago Daily Times
The book, and the CDs, are taonga. The result of a mission by poets Jan Kemp and Jack Ross, they reproduce the poetic voices of our past. …
But what is the bigger story of this collection? It is a treasure of voice and poem. I am hoping it is the beginning of a longer series. Every school should have one. There is much to ponder on, to celebrate here. And people searching for poems for significant occasions could do well to buy this book. It is of our people.
– Peter Wells, NZ Herald - The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis (Auckland: Titus Books, 2006):
Magic, freshness, delight in being, are captured with remarkable energy, musical fullness and courage in this wonderful book
– Patricia Prime, Takahe
Tired of airport books? Bored by Tom Clancy and Dan Brown? Wearied by puerile web sites? Seeking a challenge? Try a “novel” by Dr Jack Ross ...
– Michael Morrissey, Investigate
The Da Vinci Code gets geometric cum stain on it.
– Gabriel White, brief - Trouble in Mind (Auckland: Titus Books, 2005):
Underneath the eye of the sun, in the murky territory between Life and Death, the story unfolds like a papyrus emitting the spores of an ancient curse.
– Katherine Liddy, Landfall
Dr Ross’s writing defies you. At times one can only accept that a human mind is capable of making such correspondences. At other times the unexpected nature of his constructions impels us into new mind-spaces.
– Joe Groeningen, Titus Online - [editor] brief 30/31 (2004):
editor Jack Ross at brief, and Riemke Ensing as envoy, must share the accolade for publishing if not the best, then the most important poem this year. That prize must go to the chain of versions of Ahmed Zaoui’s ‘In a Dream’ (brief 31, Spring 2004); of which the most successful, to my mind, is the version given by Ensing herself.
– Emma Neale, Best NZ Poems 2004 - Monkey Miss Her Now (Auckland: Danger Publishing, 2004):
As postmodern as it is parochial, Monkey Miss Her Now drags a venerable tradition into the strange new worlds of twenty-first century New Zealand.
– Scott Hamilton, brief
Nobody else in New Zealand writes quite like Ross …
– Mark Houlahan, NZ Books
Outside of literati farm, this sort of thing has a very limited life expectancy.
– Joe Wylie, Takahe
Original, dense, musical; and … erm … confusing. … Reading this book is like a wild lunge in the dark – you just never know what you’re going to find.
– Sue Emms, Bravado
Woody Allen sometimes springs to mind, but so equally do the Surrealists.
– Roger Horrocks, Launch Speech - [editor] Kendrick Smithyman, Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian (Auckland: The Writers Group, 2004):
For anyone with an interest in language, Campana to Montale is a goldmine, as much, perhaps, for Ross’s contribution as for Smithyman’s.
– Joe Wyllie, Takahe
… his performance is animated by a strong allegiance to the original, not at all pious but certainly loyal. Smithyman’s versions represent a tender conversation with the Italian poems …
– Paula Green, brief
I’m hoping that this collection will revive kiwi poets’ interest in how fascinating, how sensuous, how deeply felt, how thoughtful poetry can be and how it can so satisfyingly combine the intensely personal with the world of people, creatures, forces beyond the individual.
– Bernard Gadd, Spin
Many of these translated verses are the vehicles of wonder that I expect poems to be.
– Raewyn Alexander, NZ Poetry Society Newsletter
a very nice edition
– C. K. Stead, Sunday Star-Times - [co-editor, with Graeme Lay] Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past & Present (Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004):
Call me a philistine if you like — and many of you will — but to me most of the poems in this collection, particularly those of the young contemporary poets, are utterly incomprehensible.
– Warwick Rogers, North & South - Chantal’s Book (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002):
He skilfully – and with almost an appearance of accident – lays bare the twitching nerves of the genre.
– Olivia Macassey, brief
He is a literary magpie, gathering together his shiny objects with a remarkable eclecticism ...
– James Norcliffe, NZ Books
… thought-provoking and challenging, a tantalizing maze, clashing ideas and images, mixing old and new forms, with wit, candour and self-mockery.
– Harvey McQueen, JAAM
He reminds me of the character in the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide series who talks to a table for two weeks just to see what it’s like.
– Owen Bullock, NZ Poetry Society Newsletter
… c1ear, comprehensible and irresistible …
– Alistair Paterson
Chantal the pretty, but an enigma. … Chantal, the image of eternity and universality. … Chantal moves amongst history, timeless. … Oh, Chantal is a heavenly creature.
– Trevor Reeves, Southern Ocean Review
… a charming book. I even like the strange bits.
– Hamesh Wyatt, Otago Daily Times - The Britney Suite (2001):
As the NASDAQ bleeds, we may get excited over photocopies to provide a raw visual excitement …
– Nick Alexander, Aucklandpoetry.com - [featured poet] Poetry NZ 22 (2001):
Neither his MA thesis, The Novels of John Masefield, nor his doctoral thesis, European Representations of South America, immediately suggests the kind of writer [Jack Ross] is: a poet of the avant garde with an enthusiasm for the semiotic and a natural talent readers and poets everywhere ought to admire.
– Alistair Paterson - Nights with Giordano Bruno (Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000):
… this crazy, obsessively sexual novel … an echo in Auckland of Eco. …
– Alan Brunton, JAAM
… the book itself exists like a music of the spheres that runs along the top of the pages, available only to a concentrated sense of hearing, but as real as fuck.
– Will Joy Christie
Not all the contents are evil but the spirit of darkness certainly prevails.
– Laurence Jenkins, JAAM
… diagrams of dead sciences encrust the page with the algebraic mystery of cells …
– Tracey Slaughter, Poetry NZ
… transpierced throughout with sex, suffering, and a burning joy and queerness.
– Richard Taylor, brief - A Town Like Parataxis. Text by Jack Ross, Photographs by Gabriel White (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2000):
… an author currently establishing himself as an interesting and adventurous contributor to our literature …
– Mark Pirie, JAAM - [editor] Spin 36 (March 2000):
…. languid and oddly-themed … edgy and occasionally rather harsh, Spin is an excellent starting place and sounding board for contemporary poetic endeavour.
– Wayne Edwards, Small Press Review - [contributor] When the Sea Goes Mad at Night (anthology), ed. Theresia Liemlienio Marshall. (Birkenhead, Auckland: Christian Gray New Zealand, 1999-2000):
Ross’s poems have the effect of the post-modern. Places evoke crisp images, memories, fragments of thought …
– Bernard Gadd, JAAM - City of Strange Brunettes (Auckland: Pohutukawa Press, 1998):
It’s almost as if Pope and Tom Eliot had collaborated.
– Richard Taylor, The Pander
… a very original work locked in the strangeness of Auckland.
– Hamesh Wyatt, Otago Daily Times - Ezra Pound’s Fascist Cantos (72 & 73) together with Rimbaud’s “Poets at Seven Years Old,” translated by Jack Ross (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1997):
… Ross’s versions are alive with Pound’s energy and convictions; they spark and jar ... It is a tribute to Jack Ross and an indication of his capability as a translator that these pieces stand fresh and intelligent even in their perversity, a perversity of which Ross is acutely aware.
– John O’Connor, JAAM
The Trilogy is important to literature. I ... feel that what you have done is quite extraordinary ... a "genre" of its own: in fact you have almost invented a new one
– Richard Taylor
The impression is of a private studio, reflection of the writer's mind, scattered with his influences and cuttings which have appealed to him over the years, which have formed him.
– Bill Direen
To the Lighthouse (Bluff Poetry Symposium, Easter 2006)•
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