Book of the Week: SLENDER VOLUMES by Richard von Sturmer

This is a significantly affecting work, comprised of mundane details noticed so clearly and described so precisely that they resonate and ‘clean out’ a reader’s perceptive and literary faculties. In 300 seven-line prose poems, von Sturmer opens his — and our — awareness to the particulars of both his surroundings and his memory, exploring insights beyond the reach of the rational mind that press at us from the quotidian world, drawing no distinctions between the beautiful, and awkward, and the absurd.

“This substantial publication with its witty and paradoxical title is a meditative poetry journal, artfully constructed to present what amounts to a series of mirabilia: anecdotes that might arouse astonishment or wonder in a spiritual sense. Richard von Sturmer’s poems seek illumination from the ordinary everyday world. Drawing partly on Buddhist teachings, life itself is here seen as miraculous. There's a dancing intelligence at work, highly alert, self aware, and fearless.” —judges’ citation, 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards

• What it means to be curious.

• Jolted into the sky.

• Although it is unnecessary to the appreciation of this book, it is interesting to know that each piece responds to one of Zen master Dōgen’s 300 Koans.

• Who ever heard of a black swan?

• A stony silence in Te Awamutu.

• Reality itself is blazing and burning.

• Some other books by Richard von Sturmer.

• RvS wrote the lyrics for the ‘national anthem’.

• Creatively wired.

• Other books short-listed for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.