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End of Atlantic City, The

Beach, David

David Beach was the winner of Australasia’s richest literary award — the prestigious Prize in Modern Letters 2007 for emerging New Zealand writers with his first book of poetry, Abandoned Novel. In his second book he features two urban locations that are not often juxtaposed, that of Troy and Te Aro. A chapter-by-chapter sonnet translation of The Iliad, and a sequence set in the Wellington inner city suburb, play off each other in a work where the line between the real and the imagined becomes as blurred as the poetry/prose divide.

The building’s number had come up and was coming up, a wrecking ball’s leisurely count. Punters jaded with watching their hopes skittering on a wheel could here speculate upon a roulette wall, the bet not where the ball stops but when it can’t be stopped. Evidently a rigged game the orb ranged over its quarry, high mine and prey. Inspiriting sight, a globe looping through space, before a paradoxical one, it falling on a vertical surface, masonry then began its own descent, mostly barrow rather than truckloads, the edifice at least not a house of cards.

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