Skip to main content

2019 Spring

Literary Journal

Kia ora and welcome to our third issue of The Three Lamps Journal (T3L).

T3Books takes us along journeys far-flung and intimate: a road trip from Auckland to Levin, the exile of the Koryo-Saram people of the Vladivostok area to Kazakhstan, the unravelling of a marriage. It’s a stunning showcase of titles launched this year from authors Ruby Porter (Attraction), Rosetta Allan (The Unreliable People), and Heidi North (We are tiny beneath the light), who are all graduates of our MCW Programme. Read their extracts, then dive into our blog to discover the stories behind the scenes.

There’s equally exhilarating work to be found in the contributions of our other alumni, current undergraduates, and masters students. T3Stories features a family amidst the backdrop of an electric company strike in Manila, students exploring an abandoned house in Dublin, a subdivision war involving rose bushes.

T3Poets showcases three poets, T3Essays offers three pieces of creative nonfiction, T3Shorts are vignettes of our present, and of imagined futures. Passive-aggressive robots, a protest in the rain, an unflinching look into a mother-daughter relationship, and boxes and boxes of Taytos are just a few of our samplers to unwrap.

The Gynaecologist 2019 SpringT3ESSAYS

The Gynaecologist

An excerpt from Haystacks to Heroin: It’s complicated with my Mother. I used to have a repetitive dream about her. It was in my last few years at boarding school, a time when I felt very disconnected from my family. My brother was at one school, my sister at another,…
Paula Gosney
December 20, 2019
The House of Erin 2019 SpringT3ESSAYS

The House of Erin

When I was twelve Mum opened an Irish shop. Our Irish dancing teacher Clare Connolly had the idea and asked if Mum would go in with her. Mum wasn’t Irish. She was from the small town of Stratford which lay just under the ubiquitous Mt Taranaki but when she married…
Sarah Murray
December 20, 2019
​Sideways © Angelique Kasmara2019 SpringT3ESSAYS

​Sideways

All day, feeling sideways. But it’s not until ten minutes before the school bell, when I’m zipping up the North Western—and glimpse a white hull cradled on the Waitematā, which makes me think of Dad, and how he used to fish out there in his orange and white Fi-Glass Fireball—that…
Caroline Barron
December 20, 2019
Three Poems © London at night, 1930s, London, by Eric Lee-Johnson. Te Papa (O.030666)2019 SpringT3POETS

Three Poems

temporal anomalies   New York City   winking lights swimming amongst the thunderstorm will-o-wisps of comfort that linger in the thunder forked horizon this street never sleeps but turn left and find the rabbit hole to fall down   roses bloomed from graveyard lips fireworks in the midday brilliance back…
Blaine Kelly
December 19, 2019
Three Poems © The Three Fates, 1558-1559, Mantua, by Giorgio Ghisi, Giulio Romano. Te Papa (1910-0001-1/15-80)2019 SpringT3POETS

Three Poems

una planted a garden hide under tables                                     pīwakawaka flirt clutch matriarch calves                              lilting bough to bough within temple of…
Lily Holloway
December 19, 2019
Three Poems © Night sky, Waimamaku, circa 1957, Waimamaku, by Eric Lee-Johnson. © Te Papa. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Te Papa (O.009129/01)2019 SpringT3POETS

Three Poems

Goodnight each star is an unspoken apology ticket to a modern Shakespeare remake at the Civic that I couldn’t afford   the moon is a love song in a foreign language we played tug-of-war with her faces, never singing the same melody   never gave you a Saturn ring afraid.…
Zoe Webb Sagarin
December 19, 2019
Subdivision © Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash2019 SpringT3STORIES

Subdivision

Nicola heard Quinn’s car rattle into the driveway, and jolted to her feet to let him in. Her nephew, dressed entirely in black, dropped a large Look Sharp bag into her arms and shot past her into the kitchen. She stood in the threshold. Not a single trick-or-treater had knocked…
Gina Holden
December 17, 2019
Michaela’s Thread © Photo by Moodywalk on Unsplash2019 SpringT3STORIES

Michaela’s Thread

It was the seventh night of the blackout. Michaela was six stitches away from closing the hole on the sleeve of her school uniform when she gave a pull and realised that the thread was not going to be enough. Now it was shorter than her little finger and there…
Cybonn Ang
December 17, 2019
Auckland Shorts © Angelique Kasmara2019 SpringT3SHORTS

Auckland Shorts

GREEN The lichen clinging to Dominion Road's footpath has a colour that I cannot name. It is pale anaemic blood splatter, little patches of not-quite life that are not-quite green, the almost-colour of an almost-plant. KFC glows red on one corner, golden arches glare at me from another, and I…
Sonya Wilson
December 15, 2019
Auckland Shorts © Janko Ferlič - @specialdaddy on Unsplash2019 SpringT3SHORTS

Auckland Shorts

MAGIC Part of night’s magic is how it preserves possibilities day annihilates. Those floodlights, barren blare delimiting the asphalt of State Highway One from the formless darkness beyond, might be the sentinels of a robocratic regime. Those bright points shaping a hill from shadow might be the watchfires of a…
Hayden Macpherson
December 15, 2019
Auckland Shorts © Franck V. on Unsplash2019 SpringT3SHORTS

Auckland Shorts

Microfiction 3D printing only became ubiquitous once the machines could print using any materials – plastics, plants, stem cells, dreams.   Bushfires started earlier each year. Soon every month saw fire restrictions, as we tried to make sure there was something left to burn.   That robots would take our…
Jack Remiel Cottrell
December 15, 2019