The kōrero series

MASSEY UNIVERSITY PRESS THE KŌRERO SERIES ‘Massey University Press has taken the kind of project that might usually be found within the wonderful but enclosed world of limited edition books, and made it available to a much larger public. This may be the enduring achievement of the kōrero series, which will hopefully bring many more successful collaborations to light.’

— Artist’s Profile

One of the most innovative series of books to have been published in Aotearoa in recent years, the kōrero series, edited by distinguished writer and essayist Lloyd Jones, pairs leading New Zealand writers and artists. Jones sets them a theme and then they are free to shape it as the collaboration unfolds. The result is a series of beautifully designed and packaged ‘picture books for grown-ups’.

In High Wire (May 2020) the narrators playfully set out across the Tasman, literally on a high wire. Euan Macleod’s striking drawings explore notions of home, and depict homeward thoughts and dreams. High Wire also enters a metaphysical place where art is made, a place where any ambitious art-making enterprise requires its participants to hold their nerve and not look down.

In Shining Land (November 2020) Paula Morris and Haru Sameshima focus on the New Zealand journalist, poet, fiction writer and war correspondent Robin Hyde, exploring three locations important to her difficult life and ground-breaking work.

Exploring the lobster’s biology and its history in language, literature and gastronomy, The Lobster’s Tale (October 2021) navigates the perils of a life driven by overreaching ambition and the appetite for knowledge, conquest and commerce. It is a meditation on the quest for immortality on which both artists and scientists have embarked, and the unhappy consequences of the attempt to both conquer nature and create masterpieces.

Painter Saskia Leek and poet Lynley Edmeades’ luscious collaboration in Bordering on Miraculous (April 2022) explores ideas of the quotidian and its everyday miracles. By working with abstraction, both painter and poet meet in a conceptual middle-ground.

The fifth in the series, Little Doomsdays (September 2023), is another rich collaboration between an artist and a writer. This time legendary musician and painter Phil Dadson responds to a wildly innovative text that’s steeped in te ao Māori by Ngāi Tahu writer Nic Low.

High Wire ‘Over that winter that Macleod and I wrote to each other I had the strongest sense that he was drawing his way towards me — back to his homeland, and birthplace.

‘This brush stroke, and that very deliberate one. The struts and wires of his imagination.

‘What is it to paint your way back — or across?’

Published: May 2020 ISBN: 9780995123083 Authors: Lloyd Jones and Euan Macleod Hardback: 250 x 190mm. 96 pages. $45

Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde ‘We set off for some of the small places Hyde lived, wondering how they managed to contain her.

‘Everything is smaller in the past. Hyde bursts from it, vivid and roaring, all the time wanting too much, too wild inside. I try to douse my own wildfires.

‘Hers I fear and pity and admire, watching them there, in the distance, burning out of control.’

Longlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Published: November 2020 ISBN: 9780995131828 Authors: Paula Morris and Haru Sameshima Hardback: 250 x 190mm. 96 pages. $45

The Lobster’s Tale ‘Below the waterline, old gods still navigate time-tested stories . . .’

The Lobster’s Tale braids myth, literature, science and photography to illuminate some of the dangers awaiting those who seek to plunder nature, or create masterpieces.

Published: October 2021 ISBN: 9780995137813 Authors: Chris Price and Bruce Foster Hardback: 250 x 190mm. 96 pages. $45

Bordering on Miraculous a stripe of miraculous straining a stripe of perpendicular straining a straining bigger than the stripe a straining bigger than the stripe of perpendicular straining a stripe of ordinary perpendicular straining a straining bigger than the stripe of miraculous straining a stripe of ordinary miraculous straining Published: April 2022 ISBN: 9781991151131 Authors: Lynley Edmeades and Saskia Leek Hardback: 250 x 190mm. 96 pages. $45

Little Doomsdays ‘It’s said — in the quiet between buses, down the back of the pub, in the hushed elevator rising to the penthouse — that in the late twentieth century an unstable grouping of scholars, writers and fanatics from several Ngāi Tahu hapū in Murihiku created what has come to be known as the Ark of Arks.

‘It’s said that this project aimed to catalogue all known arks from the last five millennia. It was a failed attempt to capture previous civilisations’ failed attempts to preserve whatever was valuable to them: waka huia, time capsules, caches, burial ships, seed banks.’

Published: September 2023 ISBN: 9781991016256 Authors: Phil Dadson and Nic Low Hardback: 250 x 190mm. 96 pages. $45

‘Little Doomsdays is a tour-de-force of the power of art to capture and express complex, heavy ideas and spark deep contemplation and conversation’ — Jessica Agoston-Cleary, Kete Books ‘The standard all university presses and publishers of literary works, artists’ monographs and photobooks should aspire to’ — PhotoForum ‘The Lobster’s Tale is more than just a homage to one of gastronomy’s greatest accomplishments. It is a metonym for where we are right now as a people, and where we are going’ — Chris Reed, NZ Booklovers ‘Like the best picture books, Shining Land is short and physically beautiful; the narrative and the images are inseparable and entirely complementary; it’s a book to read in a single sitting, and return to.

And, like the best picture books, it opens up vistas well beyond its relatively modest scale’ — Sarah Shieff, Academy of New Zealand Literature ‘Presented in a slim smooth hardback beautifully designed by Gary Stewart, High Wire is a finely crafted mystery of art, friendship and human aspiration’ — Sally Blundell, Landfall ‘The kōrero series is one of the most exciting projects in New Zealand publishing at the moment’ — North & South

MASSEY UNIVERSITY PRESS MO AOTEAROA, MOA AOTEAROA

Our books reflect our core principles of ‘explore, explain, engage’. They are well published, handsomely designed, market-facing, important and engaging.