nick ascroft

“Wealth” Annual 2

Nick Ascroft is a writer, editor, Scrabble champion, alternative music obsessive, a Wikipedia platypus, and an indoor soccer player. He lives up on a hill in Brooklyn, Wellington, and you’ll see him from the valley below pacing past his window, holding a baby or a cat or neither, with a confused expression as to where one or the other might have escaped to.

His latest poetry collection is called Back with the Human Condition (Victoria University Press, 2016). He’s also written a football book, How to Win at Five-a-Side (Bloomsbury, 2016). A sci-fi novel, As Long as Rain, will be out soon. Nick loves rhyming poetry, however unfashionable that is.

This is a link to my poem in Best New Zealand Poems 2016. There is a recording of me reading it and a long waffly note about why I’m afraid it might not be any good: Best New Zealand Poems

This is a link to an interview with me, where I am asked why I am sooo hilarious: V.U.P blogspot.

I loved comics when I was young. Still do. My brother would churn through large brainy doorstops of books, blitzing the bookshelves like a bulldozer. But I was a sucker for a comic. I recommend the X-Men comics from the 1970s and 1980s, when Chris Claremont was the writer. All the recent films have been mostly based on this era. You can buy them in anthologies these days. And while you’re at it, Secret Wars II was amazing. What if an omnipotent being from a universe in which only he existed burst through into ours, then tried to live as a normal guy on Earth? Great premise. Also, if you’ve read The Lord of the Rings but are afraid to read The Silmarillion because it sounds too weird, don’t be. It’s wonderful.