Publisher's Synopsis
Beginning in Northland and heading into the blue beyond, Always Song in the Water is a book of encounters and epiphanies, a dinghy ride through New Zealand's oceanic imagination.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.
