Fast Talker: paperback

A new collection of poetry by a self-confessed ‘ranter’, Fast Talker is energetic, contemporary, and filled with an emphatic, punchy political and social awareness. Some of the poems are indeed Eggleton’s well-known ‘rants’ - part showman patter, part incantation, part prophetic diatribe - that range helter skelter over the Kiwi psyche, the South Pacific, the media, the suburbs of Auckland, big business and the worlds of war and commodity. Fast Talker is, however, more varied in tone than Eggleton’s previous books and traverses a wider landscape than his usual stomping ground. Other poems, more gentle in tone, observe contemporary life in his distinctive, vivid style, building their dense lines with forceful, cumulative images, lists and inventive language. Love poems, odes, travelogues and landscape poems offer further variety in this energetic collection which constantly shifts in tone and rhythm.