John Dickson. Mister Hamilton. ISBN 978-1-86940-855-8. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2016. RRP $24.99. 84 pp.
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
•
No comments:
Post a Comment