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2024 Summer

Literary Journal

This is the fifth issue of The Three Lamps (T3L), an online literary journal from the University of Auckland.

T3Stories features the work of Erica Stretton, Cybonn Ang and Michelle D’costa, while T3Essays offers creative nonfiction by Rosetta Allan, Michelle Cecile and Hannah Jamieson. In T3Poets we showcase the work of Billy Greene, Yvette Thomas and Anastasia Styles.

T3Books features excerpts from three books by several University of Auckland MCW alumni: Ockham shortlisted Ngātokimatawhaorua: The Biography of a Legendary Waka Taua by Jeff Evans, NZ Book Awards for Children & Young Adults shortlisted New Dawning by AM (Melanie) Dixon, and the hotly anticipated (launching in 2025), See How They Fall by Rachel Paris.

The Reserve 2024 SummerT3STORIES

The Reserve

She once called it her sanctuary. From the huge window in the lounge she used to gaze on the paradise outside her door, like how others would stare at the cover of a monthly calendar. The land, with its gentle rises and dips, were dotted here and there with sheep—small…
Cybonn Ang
November 19, 2024
The Easter Egg 2024 SummerT3STORIES

The Easter Egg

The Nat Geo narrator’s voice is calm. He walks the viewers through different stages of the crocodile’s motherhood. She has laid her eggs in a safe place, away from predators, and now finally it’s time to hatch. Their sounds, calling out to the mother crocodile, are shrill. Baby crocodiles emerge…
Michelle D'costa
November 19, 2024
Family Trees 2024 SummerT3STORIES

Family Trees

Lorna sweeps open the curtains and gasps. Fog, opaque and oddly beautiful, has swallowed the view. Little Monroe Bay has become an island. The mist lingers in the gully below the house, wisps hiding amongst the trees, pressing in from the water. Reaching toward her.   They’d chosen this tiny settlement,…
Erica Stretton
November 19, 2024
Three Poems 2024 SummerT3POETS

Three Poems

ALLEGIANCE   It takes patience to live with an octogenarian— would have been simpler to drop her at Fairway Gardens or Coronation Lodge, let her see out her days playing bowls, watching matinees, bingo on Tuesdays.   But our Filipino roots would not allow it— our customs, chromosomes, deoxyribonucleic acid;…
Yvette Thomas
November 17, 2024
Three Poems 2024 SummerT3POETS

Three Poems

singing teacher   the red graphic Marvel tee over khakis, black rimmed  glasses strike your pale face. the scuffs on the Nike from K Rd  footpaths match those pen marks in the palm of your heavy hand. the stench of that Australian  shepherd that nips at my young knees  and…
Anastasia Styles
November 17, 2024
Three Poems 2024 SummerT3POETS

Three Poems

Gaucho    Despite the ‘Deacon Blues’ to spite                           his wife inland, Roman jams                                 with Captain Morgan & a magnet                                           bottled on his lips. He puckers at the casts                          of spray-tanners, clementine skin peelers              & their sober kids through his incantation —     I knew ya when you were this tall —…
Billy Greene
November 17, 2024
Bloody Taboo 2024 SummerT3ESSAYS

Bloody Taboo

Beyond the whirly-gig clothes line and down a grassy slope two kauri stood like a pair of giants overlooking the bay. I knelt between them, clearing a circle, feeling for the damp dark earth that lay beneath fallen branches. Dirt gathered in little brown wedges between my skin and fingernails.…
Michelle Cecile
November 16, 2024