Name: Andrew Fagan
country : New Zealand
bio: 
Andrew Fagan was the lead singer/showoff in the Wellington punk rock band ‘The Ambitious Vegetables’ circa 1978. He formed ‘The Mockers’ in Wellington 1980 whilst completing a BA in Politics. The Mockers played a lot of gigs and got well known.
NZ Vocalist of the year 1985 and five albums later The Mockers fled to the UK to try again. Trapped in a flat with everyone fucking each other’s girlfriends it all ended fairly predictably, how do you spell ‘animosity’?.
Eventually back in Auckland in the early nineties, a solo album ‘Blisters’ followed; but Bloke New Zealand (BNZ) didn’t really respond. Three poetry books further cemented his distance from rugby league audiences.
Back to the UK in 1995 and LIG was formed to carry his songwriting torch.
One critic likened Fagan’s band LIG to “a single-minded musical crusade with take a flyer myopic vision, slashing a path through the undergrowth with their machetes, heading for the high ground with no map to speak of, forever upwards, almost making it to the clearing at the top with a large audience, but not quite. Music anthropologists in time will find their bones and see how close they deserved to get."
Back again in NZ Harper Collins released ‘Swirly World, the solo voyages’ (2002) a sailing narrative that tells his story quite poignantly.
You can see Fagan and his band LIG at a gig somewhere in NZ. Adults only.
His poems here are from a new collection ‘Overnight Downpour’
Some Overnight Downpour Poems:
THE ULTIMATE LIE DOWN
(For Lee)
I saw you at your funeral
Twenty years younger
The photo on your coffin
Grinning like an Eton boy
Bow tie on a wedding high
An optimistic world ahead
I was waiting
For your funeral to start
Just like we did
So many times outside some
Inconsequential venue…
You wandering off
With the paper work
To find God or someone
Who would sign the line and
Leave me to grunt the hard labour
On another begrudging
Wet evening
It’s almost all the same
As often it was then
Except for you this time
Carried off
In a coffin
To the ultimate lie down
And me
Making sure the van
Hasn’t been clamped
OVERCAST STAY
You had gone all mopey
And no one pretended
To care why
The final stage
Of a long weekend
And late injuries
Had to be expected
Although we had no
Substitutes
To fall back on
SCOOTING DOWN THE ALLEY
The leaves pile thicker now
That British wind blowing
Them to the edge of where
You try to ride your scooter
That dangerous incline
Leading to the water…
Scoot on to your baptism
In the river
The wind must make the acorns fall
Another obstacle as you travel
Your brother’s calling out about
Something important
‘
‘Have you seen the empty trees?’
As you try to ride your scooter
That British wind blowing
The branches above our river
Into the distant future
Of our memories
THIS SHELTERED PLACE
In this sheltered place
The wind comes in gusts
Fertile thrusts
Descending with no
Announcement
Abrupt & impolite
In amongst the trees
Feeling the
Late night leaves
Touching places
You need to be felt
Through the fabric of
This sheltered place
I SET A TRAP FOR YOU
It was obvious that you needed one
All that self-consumed frivolity
You’d almost forgotten how dull
Life should have been
It was obvious that you needed one
So I did it but you don’t remember
You’d almost forgotten how remote
A life together could become
It was obvious that you needed one
So I set a trap for you
Quietly waiting for a kiss
That never came
BEFORE THE BELL RINGS
I saw you looking at me
The way I was looking at you
We should fuck right here
Except this playground
Full of children
Might see
Standing off and on
We must keep our
Playground distance
Chatting amicably
Before the bell rings
