Astonished Dice

Astonished Dice - Collected Short Stories
Geoff Cochrane
Victoria University Press - $30.00

Geoff Cochrane is the author of numerous highly regarded collections of poems and two novels. In 2009 he was awarded the Janet Frame Prize for Poetry, and in 2010 the inaugural Nigel Cox Unity Books Award. Astonished Dice collects his two slim volumes of short stories, originally published in limited editions, the early novella ‘Quest Clinic’, and more recent stories.

‘One exits so many slim volumes with slim pickings. Then there are those books of poetry that seem fuller than fiction. Geoff Cochrane’s is a whole world, rendered in lines at once compressed and open, mysterious and approachable. These are poems of great formal poise and terrific candour.’
–Damien Wilkins on Vanilla Wine

‘It becomes apparent that Cochrane is not merely a frugal poet, thriftily recycling anecdotal skerricks and wisps of philosophical thoughts and self-destructive deeds into highly crafted and sophisticated works of art, but also a darkly humorous memorialist: a keeper of the keys for marginal Wellington.’
–David Eggleton on 84-484