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At once a travel book, autobiographical novel and free-style
historical survey, "News of the Swimmer Reaches the Shore" begins
with its narrator suspended in the salty, buoyant waters of the
Mediterranean. Not only is the book a paean to the south of France,
it is a history of things that explode under water, taking the
reader by way of the trenches of World War One and the Rainbow
Warrior bombing to the writer's experiences of diving off Menton.
Adrift on an ocean of art history, literature and music, the book
introduces a cast of underwater characters including Jacques
Cousteau, Dominique Prieur, Henri Matisse and the naked
river-swimming Mother Aubert, a 19th century nun who presents
something of a role-model for the narrator as he negotiates various
streams of thought.
"Days Beside Water" is an ideal introduction to the poetry of
Gregory O'Brien, one of the best younger writers (and artists) of
New Zealand. The poems are set where sea, land and sky, past,
present and future, meet in different lights and moods. There are
lyrics, comic interludes, an imagined account of the marriage of
Samuel Marsden, the 19th-century missioner. The theme of spiritual
marriage - a union of clements in imaginary or historical contexts
- recurs in two sequences: an invented life of the Italian composer
Claudio Monteverdi, and "The Milk Horse", about a foundling and the
Mother Superior of an orphanage. The poems capture the permanent
value in moments and emotions, chiefly love. O'Brien's involvement
with the graphic arts and add richness to his imagery.
Every spring on Gregory O'Brien's front lawn, on a ridgetop in
Hataitai, an upside-down dinghy blooms with flowering clematis. In
this book, O'Brien takes his metaphorical dinghy to the edges of
New Zealand - starting with a road trip through Northland and then
voyaging out into the Pacific, to lead us into some under-explored
territories of the South Pacific imagination. With creative spirits
such as Janet Frame, Ralph Hotere, Robin White, John Pule and Epeli
Hau`ofa as touchstones, O'Brien suggests how we New Zealanders
might be re-imagining ourselves as an oceanic people on a small
island in a big piece of water. Always Song in the Water is a book
of encounters, sightings and unexpected epiphanies. It is a
high-spirited, personal and inventive account of being alive at the
outer extremities of Aotearoa New Zealand. `This is my field
notebook, my voyaging logbook,' Gregory O'Brien writes, `this is my
Schubert played on a barrel organ, my whale survey, my songbook.'
Among the many artists whose work is featured are John Pule, Robin
White, Phil Dadson, Fiona Hall, Euan Macleod, Laurence Aberhart and
the Sydney-based painter Noel McKenna, who produced numerous works
specifically for this book.
It has long been recognized that people with identifiable
congenital causes of developmental disabilities display peculiar
patterns of behavior and temperament. An explosion of new
information in the field of so-called behavioral genetics has
precipitated a need for a book describing behaviorial phenotypes.
The book consists of three parts: Part I opens with an account of
the evolution of behaviorial genetics in developmental disability.
The second part covers measurement and research methodology and
includes chapters on various types of self-injurious behavior that
occur in different phenotypes and a chapter on Fragile X--a model
for inquiry into behavioral phenotypes. The sections on genetic
analysis are particularly useful to clinicians who are unfamiliar
with contemporary genetic techniques. Part III summarizes
behavioral phenotypes of over thirty biologically distinct
conditions.
This important treatise reviews the latest clinical models for
working with developmental disability and behavioral problems. In
the first section contributions explore the causes and nature of
behavior problems among people with physical, learning, language,
and sensory disabilities, and such specific conditions as epilepsy
and acquired brain damage, while those in the second section
describe the assessment approaches for evaluating these behaviors.
The third section covers treatment strategies emphasizing the
importance of an eclectic approach. The contributors, all
acknowledged experts in their fields of pediatrics, psychology, and
psychiatry, provide a comprehensive overview of this set of major
challenges, indicating the importance of auditory detection,
understanding, measurement, and treatment.
Our mother's clouds and insects fly to embrace your clouds and
insects. Her architecture, roads, bridges and infrastructure rush
to greet yours. Her molecules on their upward trajectory entwine
with yours, the colour of her eyes, hair and skin. Her language,
with its past participles, figures of speech, the sounds and
tremors which are its flesh and bones these words go out to greet
your words and to greet you - these words which will never leave
her. House & Contents is a moving meditation on earthquakes and
uncertainties, parents and hats, through Gregory O'Brien's
remarkable poetry and paintings.
This is the story of a micronaut. Artist, designer and illustrator
Graham Percy travelled far and built a career on the closely
observed detail. Born in Taranaki in 1938, Percy spent apprentice
years in Auckland before moving to London, where with his
photographer-partner Mari Mahr he created a workshop-home, a
microcosm of the outside world. Here fellow-venturer Gregory
O’Brien presents an account of Graham Percy’s life and art, by
way of motorbike and hot-air balloon, through sketches and
bookshelves, touching on childhood losses and adult nostalgia.
Including some of Percy’s most compelling drawings, A Micronaut
in the Wide World showcases his early design work, vivid
children’s book illustration and thriving mature art. The
drawings reveal Percy’s passion for the small and hand-drawn;
convey quirky remembered and imagined histories; and feature a cast
of curious characters, from storks and trainee running targets to
Commedia dell’Arte characters and illustrious composers. In its
vivid, exuberant detail — alphabets and elephants, red lettuces
and homesick kiwi, the Hungarian navy and the starry skies of the
southern hemisphere — A Micronaut in the Wide World is a
stimulating rediscovery of a remarkable artist.
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