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The Stupefying
It is the time of the stupefying. Just when we least expected it, when we thought the show was over, it clonked out into the limelight, and the world was split in two. The Stupefying is a bruised arm firmly removed from its sling. It isn' t funny ha-ha but funny that-can' t-be-true-but-I-know-it-is. In poems of eavesdropping and invention, deflation and elation, Nick Ascroft' s poetic sensibilities and craft are always surprising, sometimes morally questionable, always a delight. His fifth collection may be his most personal yet, with a sweetness that stings us repeatedly. The Stupefying is not to be missed.
Dandy Bogan
Brings one of New Zealand's most distinctive poets to the rest of the world for the first time. Nick Ascroft's poems display a familiarity with the furthest reaches of the Scrabble dictionary, and even somewhat beyond. This logophilia evinces a fascination not merely with language but with the workings of the human mind. As the poems range across a
Moral Sloth
We don't need your whataboutery and moral prevarication. It's time to stand up and own your own culpability, complicity and . . . but I joke. Sit thee down. Hoist up that unethical hamburger and deploy your face into it. Some people are part of the solution and the rest of us find the people who are part of the solution to be annoying. We are the problem. We will not be moved. We will be moved if you shout at us, but we're not going to like it. These poems whistle while Rome burns. They whistle with words in a language plump with shoulds and oughts and sorries and shouldn't'ves. They whistle Beethoven so badly the old man's bones are transformed into a sustainable turbine. They only stop whistling to consider whether cheap comic cynicism is the kind of wry and arch whimsy no one needs, least of all this doomed world of human apologists. The poems lift their chins with pride. The poems remain unapologetic. No. I am mistaken. They are desperate, sickening, in their apology. 'Nick Ascroft's Moral Sloth is among other things a virtuoso display of formal skills. He does a particularly classy line in sonnets. He can rhyme as tellingly as Alexander Pope or the Byron of Don Juan - and c
Back with the Human Condition
Love. Work. Death. Complaints. It’s the human condition. Whether you wrestle with it, bear it aloft, taste a little schmeck of it on your tongue or pass it along to some other unfortunate, you can’t hope to fathom where you came upon it or whether there’s a returns policy. Some say poetry is pulled unknowingly out of us, like birdsong. These people are annoying, seeing mystery for mystery’s sake. Criticism is pulled unknowingly out of us like birdsong. Small talk is. Sleeptalk is. The first attempt at a phone message is. Poetry takes graft, craft and chisel-work. Especially limericks. 'From its brilliant, sorrowful subversions . . . to its irreverent, exuberant nonsense, the voice here is gorgeously idiosyncratic. A cavorting, satirical imagination hits levels of comedic joy that stand out from any crowd.' --Emma Neale 'Such brio, such zip!’ --Steve Braunias
From the Author of
Nick Ascroft is one of the most gifted young poets to emerge in New Zealand in recent years. He writes with astonishing dexterity in a wide range of voices and styles, but underlying the verbal fireworks is a deeply felt engagement with life in New Zealand today.
How to Win at 5-a-Side
The culmination of years of 5-a-side football experience, this celebrated manual to 'scaled-down' soccer success covers every element of the game and features expert advice on how to organise a winning team. Written with authority, passion and a sense of fun, How to Win at 5-a-side covers all of the game's essential skills, including goalkeeping, defending, marking and shooting, as well as other less conventional but still important components, such as maintaining team moral, buttering up the referee and wasting time when your team is ahead. Illustrated throughout with photographs and diagrams to show real-game situations and featuring exclusive contributions from former professional footballers and coaches, How to Win at 5-a-side is all you need to take your team to the next level.
Postcolonial Gateways and Walls
This collection of essays focuses on the evocative figures of the ‘gateway’ and the ‘wall’ – both literal and metaphorical – to reflect on the state of postcolonial studies, a dynamic discipline that may itself be seen as permanently ‘under construction’.
Nonsense
This collection of poetry includes poems of startling virtuosity and disconcerting humor. These poems are far from 'nonsense', however, as they repeatedly offer a serious message or emotional charge.
As Long As Rain
Why not just kill us all? I had asked. He tried to look unmalignant: A, Libby, we have, and B, too much smell, too much of an emission all at once./ / / | | | \ \ \The Loopies--two alien species bound to each other in a marriage of convenience--have subdued the human race. Its people sterilised, and pacified with a linguistic disease, the world is a retirement village with Comma nurses waiting on the sick of mind--and sick to the back teeth in the case of Libby Lavers.Libby alone is unimpaired, the only HS conceived after the takeover. To liberate the planet, he will escape his small-town tourist trap at the end of the world, escape the world itself, and what? Laser them all down from above? Doubtful. But McKinnon, the Comma, has a plan. In the heart of a city broken by the grammarhammer is a weapon. Surely the alien on the level, and Libby is not just his pawn like the Selkirk of the rainforest suggests.The task is impossible. Must that entail that it necessarily can't be done? Yes it must. How then does Libby Lavers succeed?'China Miéville and Margaret Atwood meet the ghosts of Philip K. Dick and Douglas Adams in a dubious quotation on a book blurb.'
Great Sporting Moments
Anthology of fiction, poetry and essays on non-sporting themes.
