Mister Hamilton

John Dickson

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781869408558
• eBook ISBN:
  9781775588863
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• The reader of hands
• Plainsong
• Spinster
• Two small girls visit ChristChurch Cathedral
• Grace Jones
• A short history of rock and roll in Southland
• The light above his head
• Doubtful Sound 1
• Doubtful Sound 2
• Dee Street, Invercargill, 1960
• The persistence of football results on Bealey Ave
• Veteran of a war one side won
• Two ways of being impatient
• Pensioner
• The smile
• Piano time with Monk
• Question
• Memory
• Do you want to replace the existing Austin Seven?
• Too late for real
• Second remembered lesson in resistance
• This is Zepf’s poem almost word for word
• The trouble with disciples
• A glimmering of grand ultimate fist
• Nail
• Her words, her vision mainly
• Something else
• My coat
• Poem for my father
• Gravity
• Roadside near Meremere
• Postcards from Dunedin
• Ringmaster
• Full moon
• The vanishing of one hundred billion thoughts without acting
• Sixties relic surveys his lawn
• Armchair
• Report
• The sound of cash
• Wasp
• Fourteen lines for Jen
• The fingers of Django Reinhardt
• A note concerning names
• Notes and acknowledgements
• Copyright Page