Mister Hamilton

Published by Auckland University Press, 2016, 76 pages. In very good secondhand condition.

Mister Hamilton, John Dickson's first collection in eighteen years, is an appealing, questioning mix of elements. Over a base of South Island bedrock (granite, schist, greywacke), Dickson has peopled this quietly fiery collection with day-to-day working voices and narratives, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes charged with a political consciousness and lyrical intensity. Shot-through with veins of jazz, rock and blues, quizzical religiosity and a streak of the absurd, this book takes a fresh look at the streets and lawns and people of urban and suburban ?Pig Island' and offers some thoughtful, wisely pitched and immensely likeable poems. And who is Mister Hamilton? A familiar everyman, a voice of authority, a common presence, an old friend ? readers may make up their own minds after spending time in the company of Dickson and his book.