New Zealand Writers

COCHRANE, Geoff

Cochrane’s poetry could be described as ‘pain distilled'.

Author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998). [About the Companion entries]

COCHRANE, Geoff (1951– ), is a poet and fiction writer. He was born in Wellington, where he has lived almost all his life. One of a large Catholic family, he was educated at St Patrick’s College.

His poetry first appeared in small collections from private presses: Images of Midnight City (1976), Solstice (1979, with Victoria Broome and Lindsay Rabbitt), The Sea the Landsman Knows (1980), Taming the Smoke (1983) and Kandinsky’s Mirror (1989). Aztec Noon (1992) is a collection of twenty-seven new poems plus a selection from previous volumes, published by Victoria University Press. His poems have also appeared in Sport and Printout, and in several anthologies. Cochrane’s poetry could be described as ‘pain distilled’; spare in form and precise in language, it fixes an often melancholy mood in complex shifts of thought and imagery, usually mediated through a physical setting.

Cochrane has recently published fiction. A novella, ‘Quest Clinic’ (Sport 9, 1992), and his first novel, Tin Nimbus (1995), both describe, in precise and polished language, an alcoholic’s quest for sobriety and eventual escape from institutions that may provide it. Blood (1997) retrospectively recaptures Wellington in the mid-1970s. The fiction’s intensity and evocativeness reflect Cochrane’s experience as a poet.

AM

Updated Information

Cochrane's collection of poetry Vanilla Wine was published by Victoria University Press in 2003. His poem 'Vanilla Wine' was named as one of the Best New Zealand Poems 2003.

Hypnic Jerks (VUP) a collection of poetry, was published in 2005. He has also contributed 'Three Stories' to The Best of New Zealand Fiction. Volume Three (Vintage, 2006).

Cochrane had a poem included in Shards of Silver (Steele Roberts, 2006), a book investigating the interplay between photography and poetry.

84-484 (VUP, 2007) is a collection of poetry which takes its name from Geoff Cochrane's grandparent's phone number in the 1950s. In his review of 84-484 for the Sunday Star Times (19 August, 2007), Iain Sharpe called it '…a glorious mess of a book, packed with reminiscences of a Catholic upbringing, anecdotes about derelict acquaintances, arcana about aircraft, quotes from a lifetime’s reading and movie-going, shrewd observations, skew-whiff axioms.'