Author Archives: colinhopkirk

I’ve had floating thoughts and I’ve been dreaming dreaming about boats many small boats and rafts and the many people in them and the way that voices carry over water

You can see from the photograph that he was at his bestone hot August day in ‘73beaming from the seatof a Fordson tractorloosened and sunlitreturned to the farm boy he knew how to bebefore the tying down of thingsbefore the holding backand the holding onthe terrible narrowings

I’ve been thinking about the seaI’ve had floating thoughtsand I’ve been dreaming dreaming about boatsmany small boats and raftsthe many people in themthe way that voices carry over water

There are places half hidden in forests easy enough to find if you follow your nose Broken buildings collapsed hangars corners where someone has lit fires or pissed or shat old oil in patches the hulls of tanks or trucks hauled into the open luminous with tags and cartoon faces places where above the soundContinue reading “Polish graffiti”

Backup! I need backup! As he leans into his commando roll emerges, excited, breathless At the count of three! Follow me men! Fire in the hole!

Mrs Woo Woo and her bloke are at it again They’ve turned up the volume so we all get a listen He’s a useless git She, on the other hand is a lazy mare who gives the dog more attention than the kids or him He is now a wanker a wanking wanker a fecklessContinue reading “Milo”

Geoff Cochrane reading, at home in Wellington, NZ.

Scaffolders in my son’s bedroomor engineers – light industrial goings onthe spinning of bolts through threada rolling and shifting of metallic partseffortful gruntings

astride his palominoa lookout on a low hillagainst a clear blue skytanned buckskins, beadsred saddle clothred buttes in the distancea world beyond the reachof our monochrome TVsa world you had to feel where every school kid knewthat in this golden hourthe desert landscape shoneand it was real

I’ve been trawling back through Geoff Cochrane’s work. Wonky Optics this time. Try ‘Television’ or ‘The View from Atlantis’, from which: ’our bodies are made of water our bodies are made of brine and fleet wee sparks, tiny electricities that flit, twitchy barbs and darts that bleep and ping’ Geoff Cochrane. New Zealand’s best keptContinue reading “Wonky Optics – Geoff Cochrane, again”