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    Not to exact a full look at the worst : (mis)representations of state-sanctioned violence in New Zealand poetry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025-11-26) McLean, Robert
    This thesis examines how local poetry written between the First World War and the early twenty-first century has represented state-sanctioned violence done in Aotearoa New Zealand and on the state’s behalf overseas. Although this period is marked by the emergence and consolidation of a distinct New Zealand literature and the New Zealand state’s deliberate involvement in major overseas conflicts, surprisingly few poems directly represent such violence. This thesis identifies and analyses poems written in English by Māori, Pacific, and Pākehā poets that do represent state-sanctioned violence: Donald H. Lea’s “Gold Stripe” from Stand Down! (1917); Allen Curnow’s Island and Time (1941); Kendrick Smithyman’s “Vignettes of the Māori Wars” from Flying to Palmerston (1968); Māori Battalion: A Poetic Sequence (2001) by Alistair Te Ariki Campbell; and Captain Cook in the Underworld (2002) by Robert Sullivan. I use a form of mimetic close reading to examine their sources, spatial and temporal renderings, attribution of agency, prosody and modes of representation, construal of legitimacy, and violence’s uses and effects. I determine how poetry’s conventions, licenses, limitations, and omissions have helped or hindered naming, understanding, and owning Aotearoa New Zealand’s state-sanctioned violence in these five poetic works. The evidence from this poetic archive testifies to a radical disjunction between state-sanctioned violence’s historical realities and how these examples of New Zealand poetry have represented of it. They have largely failed to give voice to what poet Geoffrey Hill called “the world’s real cries” by refusing to address directly the social, political, and legal sources of state-sanctioned violence’s meaningfulness and legitimisation.
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    Continuum: the mixture's moment : presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1993) Goodwin, Anton Peter
    This thesis grew out of a simple observation. This was that in terms of sheer numbers, allusions to the bodily, the sexual and scatological in Continuum outweighed all other references. What is the significance of so much 'body language'? Is a simple 'listing' enough to show anything of interest? Certainly the specific body allusions have several characteristics in common. They often use strong, short and sometimes 'shocking' words; they use the idea of taboo to seek out new meanings; they are often alliterative or punning (and hence literary and conscious); they may often involve pain or release and spillage. This is their emotional or immediate function. We might infer that Curnow wishes to be 'all things to all men,' to have the sort of 'inclusiveness' approved of by a critic like Eric Partridge when he discusses the imagery of Shakespeare's plays. Time after time, critics have insisted on Curnow's willingness to face the 'reality of experience' or have commented that he seizes 'the reality prior to the poem.