For many years I lived in Southland.
In fact, I am from Southland.
Some people say my speech is slow
I say it’s deliberate, just.
And my soul runs dark
like Southland’s slow intestinal rivers
laden with manuka dust.
And my detachment from anything plain.
Mister Hamilton is an appealing mix of elements: a base of South Island bedrock (granite, schist, greywacke) peopled with day-to-day working voices, shifts and narratives (sometimes comic, sometimes tragic), underlain with a quietly fiery political consciousness and a lyrical intensity. Shot-through with a vein of jazz, rock and blues and a religious questioning, this book takes a fresh look at the streets and lawns and people of urban and suburban ‘Pig Island’ and from that space offers some careful, wisely pitched and immensely likeable poems.
