Paneta Street

de O'Leary, Michael

Taking Bob Dylan’s 1975 album Desire as its creative starting point, Michael O’Leary’s book contains a mix of new and earlier hard-to-find poems. The first section ‘Livin’ ina Aucklan’’ contains most of O’Leary’s (now out-of-print) poems from his early Auckland days in the 1980s. The second section then moves on to Dunedin (where O’Leary lived for a decade) before finishing up in Wellington (O’Leary’s current location). Throughout the journey O’Leary’s book includes some moving tributes to dead friends such as Hone Tuwhare, Victor O’Leary and Nigel Cox.