For more than three years, poet and artist Gregory O'Brien followed the migratory routes of whales and seabirds across vast tracts of the South Pacific Ocean, resulting in a collection of poems that stand as a homage to a series of remarkable locations and the natural histories of those places. In three parts, this collection stretches across the Pacific, following whale-roads, weather balloons, and sons at sea, charting historical explorations and other Pacific realisms, such as the Pacific trash vortex, the wavering democracy of Tonga, and the political history of Chile. These poems are an exploration of outlying islands, the ocean that lies between them, and the whale-species and sea birds found there. From Waihi looking east and Valparaiso looking west, O'Brien surveys the cultural heart and health of an ocean in memorable, musical, moving lines.

"In a definitive overview of Laurence Aberhart's work to date, 238 full-page reproductions of iconic photographs of churches, marae, cemeteries, Masonic Lodges and other subjects are accompanied by essays by New Zealand art writers Gregory O'Brien and Justin Paton. O'Brien pursues the motif of the horizon through Aberhart's work, considering the many journeys that his career encompasses and the shelters and structures seen along the way, while Paton focuses on the human presences that animate Aberhart's body of work"--Book jacket.

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.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.

Our mother's clouds and insectsfly to embrace your cloudsand insects. Her architecture, roads,bridges and infrastructurerush to greet yours.Her molecules on their upward trajectoryentwine with yours, the colour of her eyes,hair and skin. Her language,with its pastparticiples, figures of speech,the sounds and tremorswhich are its flesh and bonesthese words go outto greet your words andto greet you &–these wordswhich 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.

Making unexpected connections, this book collects poems written from a variety of times, locations, and experiences—from the water frontage of Fiji, Fiordland, and the Mediterranean to the built history of Moscow and Berlin. Filled with a thoughtful musicality, a shambling romance, and a sense of humor, these witty and imaginative poems tell stories that range from a mechanical rat on Raoul Island to a black negligée and an ice-cream vendor in Moscow, and from a mayor and the Mistral in France to a new musical sound in New Zealand. Engaging and lively, this compilation highlights the persistent self-consciousness about the relationship between language and the world.

A NEST OF SINGING BIRDS: 100 YEARS OF THE NEW ZEALAND SCHOOL JOURNAL by Gregory O'Brien celebrates, in lively words and gorgeous images, the publication that over the last hundred years has shaped New Zealanders - and the luminaries of New Zealand arts and letters who have featured in it.