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JAMES BROWN was born in 1966, grew up in Palmerston North, and now lives in Wellington with his partner and two children. He was a finalist for the 2002 Prize in Modern Letters. His books to date are Go Round Power Please (Victoria University Press, 1995), which won the Best First Book, Poetry, Award at the 1996 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and Lemon (VUP, 1999). A third collection, Favourite Monsters, will be published by VUP in 2002.
Brown writes: “‘Loneliness’ was written during my tenure as the 2001 Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury, which was, at times, an isolating experience. The feeling of being on the outside, however, can be quite attractive, especially to writers, and is, more often than not, a commonly held delusion. Elvis strikes me as a tragicomic hero, someone whose myth is vastly bigger than he was. It’s the cliche pitfall of the rich and famous that they end up with many more admirers than friends and die sad and lonely. The poem tries to ‘sight’ Elvis at a point when his myth is starting to gain ascendancy.
“I should mention that I really did see Elvis out my window on a number of occasions. Apparently he works in the Psychology Department.”
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