NICHOLAS HANCOCK
INTERVIEWED BY DAVID CHALMERS OF
THE LIVERPOOL DAILY POST AND ECHO
24.11.2004
|
|
Nicholas Hancock "I'm still quite a
lusty chap, you know," says the old
poet and adventurer, as a smile ghosts through
the blue of his eyes, causing a barely visible
stretching of fine lips, which should have
some kissing to do before their flame dies.
This is the man who has just published an
acclaimed novel about the love of a couple
in their 70s, described with a tenderness,
which recognises that body parts sag and
hang loose, while varicose veins swell into
view. "I need only look at my own legs
to help me with such passages," says
Nicholas Hancock, with a knowing shrug. "But
why should you hide what experience has given
you?"
Pic by Tracy O'Neill
|
|
Nicholas Hancock is one of those few writers
who is so uncannily in tune with the reader
(any reader) that one has the uneasy feeling
that Hancock is not the real author at all
- but you are. It is as if by some mysterious
metaphysical alchemy the author of Metafizzical Essays and Others* has ransacked your brain of its ideative
content, then flown off to his Liverpool
roost to commit it to paper.
Nicholas Hancock was born in Sussex in 1933 but spent most
of his youth in a Dickensian school owned
by his mother in rural Wiltshire. From his
17th to 19th year he was a peón or gaucho
in Uruguay. After his National Service, he
worked, among other things, on a farm, in
a shoulder pad factory and on a seiner on
the North Sea before studying at the Sorbonne
in 1954-55. In 1989 his novel La Béatification was published in French Canada. In 1990-91
Nicholas cycled extensively in Europe, North
Africa and the Middle East, being in Petra
for the outbreak of the Gulf War and meeting
his future wife in a Prague pastry shop.
In 1998 Phénix published his French poetry
in the collection Choses tristes while in the following year the National
Poetry Foundation published some of his English
poems in Window for a Monad. His most commercially successful novel:
Daniel and Miriam was recently published by Acorn Publications
and is available from most bookshops.
*Metafizzical Essays and Others: Available in paperback from Amazon price:
£14.50
LIVERPOOL POET, WRITER AND ADVENTURER - NICHOLAS
HANCOCk
INDEX TO MAIN SECTIONS
|
