Sonnets For Sio

Local Description

Scott Hamilton wrote these poems as letters to the sculptor, painter, and mystic Visesio Siasau. The poems look back on adventures the two shared amidst the jungle ruins and kava bars of Tonga, and discuss the alternately violent and beatific history of that nation. Sonnets for Sio is a book about art, goddesses, cicadas, sex, war, and intoxication. It celebrates a friendship that is intensified rather than broken by distance.

“One of the best of all our writers about the Pacific” — Philip Matthews

“Scott Hamilton is one of the best writers and thinkers in New Zealand” —Steve Braunias

Scott Hamilton’s previous books include: The Crisis of Theory (Manchester University Press, 2011), The Stolen Island: Searching for ‘Ata (Bridget Williams Books, 2016), Ghost South Road (Atuanui Press, 2018). He won the inaugural Auckland Mayoral Literary Grant in 2015 and the D’arcy Literary Residency in 2016. Sonnets for Sio is his third collection of poetry.