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The world inside my head was getting overcrowded, so I’m letting it crawl out. On this web site I’ve brought together a collection of my various fictions: some long out of print, some currently available, and some not yet published. |
My first book of poetry to be published: by the Amphedesma Press in London, in 1972. This has been out of print for years. Here it is again, better than new.
My best-selling book of poetry, first published in 1973. Most of the poems from this book are now on this site - including my special favourite, the apocalyptic Great Wellington Gas Blowback.
Extracts from my latest book of poetry. The poems are meant to be read aloud, chanted, even hummed. “I liked a few of those poems,” some readers have said, perhaps disappointed that they didn’t like all of them. My hope is that you might find a single poem that speaks to you so directly that you feel impelled to read it over and over again, absorbing it almost through your skin, so that it becomes part of you, and you find you know it by heart, without ever having consciously learned it.
July 2000: A new anthology is out, including a dozen of my early poems: Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975. It was edited by Alan Brunton, Murray Edmond, and Michele Leggott, and published by the Auckland University Press. More about Big Smoke can be found on the web site of this Auckland University course on New Zealand literature, including a nauseatingly sycophantic article on my poetry. [2006: this page has gone - thankfully.]
A selection of my poetry, including some unavailable elsewhere, has been published in the Alsop Review, a well-respected U.S. online magazine.
My first novel - though it’s not really a novel. In fact, it’s not really anything. There’s no category for it, except possibly Bizarrerie. Most would-be readers have declared Return of the Triboldies to be unreadable. But they are missing the point: the words are more to be looked at than read, and whether or not you understand English is almost irrelevant.
A travel book by Edward Lear, about his visit to the island of Limbo in 1854, and how he inadvertently set off the Crimean War.
August 2006: At last I have finished this book. About time too, since I started writing it in 1997 (not to mention Edward Lear's own efforts 152 years ago). You can read it right here - for the time being.
A series of interlinked novels, set in and around Australia, exploring the peculiarities of Australians, in a near-satirical way. The Floaters are both social realism and bizarre fantasy. There’s often not much difference between the two in present-day Australia. For example, could anybody be expected to believe that I live in a city whose most famous gastronomic achievement is a meat pie floating upside down in pea soup?
Chapters of the first three Floaters are online here: the novels Midnight Deli, and Gone: No Address, and Cloud of Universal Light.
Did you expect that the earth will be taken over by little green men from Zeta Centauri? Wrong! The new colonists will be dromes: clumsily big, and hideously ugly, but with more of everything than you - except knees. To survive in the new dromeworld, you need to know all about dromes, specially if you’re under 25. I’ve written Dromeworld for you. The whole story’s here on this web site. Read it: this is your future.
A new edition of Dromeworld is to be published around mid-2007 by Original Books, Wellington, New Zealand. Nearer to that date, tantalizing snippets will be issued.
The Danish satirical classic Nicolas Klim's Underground Journey, by Ludvig Holberg, first published in 1741. This has been almost impossible to find in English. I’m translating it (as a wet-weekend pastime), adding about a chapter a month.
Mid-2006: Two-thirds done now! Slow going - not enough wet weekends.
Early 2007: No further progress, since this part of the world is having a drought.
Weird web things that have taken my fancy. If this site amuses you, so may these bizarreries.
Just as woodworkers keep scraps of old timber that might be useful some day, I have a pile of offcut words and phrases that are too good to throw away. Feel free to fossick through my junk-heap, but watch out for sharp edges. Don’t come running to me if you get hurt!
Books I wish I’d written. What greater compliment could I pay? Literary sleuths can detect influences (if they dare) while extraordinary readers may enjoy these fictions: the tantalizing, the gothic, the pellucid, and the bizarre.
An external view of the suspect - drawn in Borneo. (Can you believe that? Surely they don’t have pencils there.) And isn’t it suspicious that this is a drawing, not a photo? Could this so-called "dennislist" be yet another fiction?
You might find out more at the Ozlit site (though last time I looked, the link no longer worked). If you’re curious, you could even send a message.
Have you noticed that most so-called "site maps" on websites are nothing like maps, but more like the contents page of a book. At last this website has a site map that's vaguely like a map.