Nick Ascroft, DANDY BOGAN

‘I know what he’s talking about – the inexpressible stuff which fills your head with horror and joy, and doesn’t usually get talked about because it is dangerous. It lures you on like the promise of a better understanding if only you could find the words. Nick Ascroft finds the words.’ – Hugo Williams

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 dazzling variety of subject matter, Ascroft’s abiding interest and concern is what it means to be human. Who are we? How did we get here? And what in the name of fuck do we do now?

The heart of this selection draws on Ascroft’s three full collections published in New Zealand. Bookending this are selections of newer and older poems, tracing the development over a quarter of a century of a unique poetic talent.