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.
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
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
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.
Exploring the unexpected twists of life, this collection presents a blend of humor that straddles the line between absurdity and reality. Through inventive and insightful poetry, Nick Ascroft captures moments of eavesdropping and emotional highs and lows. His unique sensibilities deliver surprising and sometimes morally ambiguous reflections, infused with a bittersweet charm. This fifth collection stands out as one of his most personal works, inviting readers to experience a delightful yet poignant journey.