Sirens, drums, message sticks, trumpets, tones and pulses: David Eggleton's new poetry collection, Fast Talker, is a vivid reaction to and colourful communication with the contemporary landscape. Encompassing the tropics and the Antarctic, the New Zealand back-country 'bush paddock' and the global marketplace, Eggleton's poems are full of a strong political and social awareness, a deft comic touch and an always exuberant attention to the potential of language. Some of the poems are Eggleton's well-known 'rants'-part showman patter, part incantation, part prophetic diatribe-that range helter skelter over the Kiwi psyche, the South Pacific, the media, the suburbs of Auckland, big business and the worlds of war and commodity. Other poems, more gentle in tone, quietly focus on distinctive subjects-odes to the city of Dunedin, to the colour white, to a tooth-with vibrant images, lists and inventive language. Eggleton's unique take on the world and its expression in language is freshly displayed in this exciting new collection. Book jacket.