Angela Frank: Self-publishing lockdown challenge

Author Dominic Hoey. Photo / Supplied

I know I do go on, but the recently published, autobiographical poetry collection by Dominic Hoey, 'I Thought We'd Be Famous' deserves a spot.

The world it describes is urban, and personal: a gritty, Auckland under-the-nineties romp ripe with political scathing and visceral hilarity.

Tinder in Dunedin, and desperate measures taken, softened with love poems that inspire envy; the girlfriends he remembers so fondly.

As a reader, it is novel-like.

You slip into its pages, remembering parties you're not sure you attended, recall all the great yesterdays, blur over the vomity bits.

It's a clever read - alarming and brilliantly masculine.

Despite its almost overbearing there-is-no-depression-in-New-Zealand overtone, 'I Thought We'd Be Famous' rips strips off Netflix; you should definitely buy a copy.

And then there's my poetry book in the so-called making.

After years of never quite finding the time, to being trapped at home with all the time to ponder one's mortality, the moment to tackle this project has seemingly arrived.

But, because trying to collate what feels like another woman's poems into an estimable read seems a most challenging task, I'm lifting advice from Hoey's poem 'How to lose money and entertain people: a manifesto'.

It espouses that poets have to 'practice enough to hate/to forgive all their words'.

Am I cheating by designing a book to house poetry and please the senses? Self-publishing is some task.

With luck on my side, we'll soon see my modest collection on a shelf rather than my bucket list.