Mister Hamilton (2017)

Jack Ross, ed.: Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017 (March 2017)

Books and Magazines in brief:

John Dickson. Mister Hamilton. ISBN 978-1-86940-855-8. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2016. RRP $24.99. 84 pp.

John Dickson: Mister Hamlton (2016)

Well, it’s been a long time. Eighteen years, in fact. I remember John Dickson’s previous collection sleeper (1998) coming to me for review when I worked at our somewhat short-lived Auckland-based Arts Quarterly the pander. It was, in fact, the late Leicester Kyle I approached to write about it on that occasion (and he was extremely enthusiastic, as I recall). Here’s the new one. Has it been worth the wait? Dickson says ‘I thank the people I know, or have met, who provided me with an opportunity to turn their speech into verse’ in his acknowledgments on page 75. That’s really what the collection hinges on: the accuracy of his ear for the different registers of local speech. And, in that, he succeeds triumphantly.

(27/8-5/9/16)

Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017. ISBN 978-0-9941363-5-0 (March 2017): 319.

[139 wds]


Poetry NZ Yearbook 2017


•