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Cold Hub Press ~ Roderick Finlayson
Publication delayed until September 2020
A Roderick Finlayson Reader
edited with an introduction by Roger Hickin
ISBN: 978-0-473-51417-4
Softcover, 272 pp, 210 x 148mm
THE SOUND OF GRIEF
When I was a child
I learnt the sound of grief.
When long ago I was a child
old women clothed in black
crouched on the parched veranda boards
keening by the old iron bed where the young man lay
encircled by pictured kin.
The old men raised shrill voices
and their black and carven sticks
above heads bowed beneath the burden.
And the toes of children
dug into the dust
under the burning sun
and in the resin-scented pinetree
cicadas burst their prison cells and sang and sang.
When long ago I was a child
I knew that most ancient lullaby
the sound of grief.
© The estate of Roderick Finlayson
Roderick Finlayson (1904–1992) was one of the pioneering New Zealand
writers who came to prominence in the 1930s. This selection of his fiction
and non-fiction––some of it unpublished, much of it previously uncollected––includes stories from his four short story collections,
two chapters from the novel Tidal Creek, excerpts from an unpublished
novel, the 1940 essay Our Life in this Land, autobiography, memoir,
articles, letters and poems.
‘If the honours and rewards now available for New Zealand writers included canonization, Roderick Finlayson would be the obvious candidate, probably
the only one.’ ––Dennis McEldowney
‘. . . our first writer to move with any ease or authenticity among the
most vital traditions this country has.’ ––Vincent O’Sullivan
‘. . . an artist whose commitment to the recognition and celebration
of taha Maori was exemplary and prophetic.’ ––O. E. Middleton
‘. . . it was he who wrote of Maori and Pakeha and the importance
of conserving the land, fifty years before there was a bandwagon
for protesters to jump on.’ ––Kay Holloway
‘I cross my heart when I say there are stories of yours, there are pages,
which I would rather have written than anything I have written.’
––Frank Sargeson in a letter to Roderick Finlayson