VUP LITERARY LIVES AND LETTERS

Unquiet World STEPHANIE DE MONTALK

The Life of Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk

Poet, polemicist, pagan and pretender to the throne of Poland—and one of the great eccentrics of the 20th century—Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk was one of the glittering generation of NZ poets which included his friends A.R.D. Fairburn and R.A.K. Mason, before his imprisonment in 1932 for publishing an obscene poem. This is the first time the full story has been told, from Potocki's early years of promise to his later eccentricities: dressing in mock-medieval garb, claiming the throne of Poland, and issuing a stream of poetry and pamphlets from his base in the South of France. $39.95

Spark to a Waiting Fuse PAUL MILLAR

James K. Baxter's Correspondence with Noel Ginn, 1942-1946

In these 56 letters to his slightly older friend, then imprisoned as a conscientious objector, the teenage James K. Baxter pours out his ideas and feelings on life, philosophy and his own work. With the inclusion of the complete texts of the 255 poems written at the time and discussed in the letters, most of them published here for the first time, this is an extraordinary insight into the formative years of our most significant poet.

‘Spark to a Waiting Fuse very significantly changes the perception of Baxter's early career, and in ways that substantially affect the critical response to the entire oeuvre’—Vincent O'Sullivan $49.95

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