Leaving for the big smoke was your big idea. But everything is here, sun, fish. Everything. You can buy fish there but here You are taught how to catch them. We dance anytime not just special time. We climb coconut trees, swim and dive for free. "Everything is here: stories from Porirua East, Niue, Paris, Rarotonga, Sydney, the Kapiti Coast; stories told in spare, accessible poems that are both strongly placed, and full of people and day-to- day things. What delightfully holds everything together is Rob's easy tone and his characteristic, understated humour." - Dinah Hawken

Author Biography

Rob Hack was born in Invercargill to a Cook Island mother and a Kiwi father. He's worked as an insurance salesman, greenkeeper, builder, night shift worker, personal trainer, cattle station worker and more. He currently spends his handyman earnings on petrol to visit his grandchildren each week and on second-hand poetry books. He's lived in Paekakariki since 2005 and has performed his poems in Kapiti and Wellington for 15 years. Rob has been previously published in the 4th Floor Literary Journal, and he hosts a poetry show on Paekakariki radio called 'Not at the Table: poetry and stuff'.