CAREER
Highlights:
Dominic’s debut novel, Iceland, was a New Zealand bestseller, and long-listed for the 2018 Ockham Book Awards.
His autobiographical one-person show, Your Heart Looks Like a Vagina, a dark comedy about living with an autoimmune disease, had three sell-out runs in New Zealand and was performed at the Brisbane Poetry Festival in 2017.
Dominic was nominated for best new playwright at the 2018 Wellington Theatre Awards.
His latest poetry collection, I Thought We’d Be Famous, was released in October 2019 through Dead Bird Books.
Videos:
Reading Iceland (The Wireless)
Dominic and inter-dimensional witch, Drew Blood, read from his debut novel Iceland.
Press:
Reviews
NZ Herald, Booksellers, Beattie’s Book Blog, Landfall
Articles
The Pantograph Punch, The Spinoff, Radio NZ, NZ Herald, Stuff, Vice
Videos
Loading Docs, Iceland promo, xx
Books:
I Thought We’d Be Famous (2019)
Publisher: Dead Bird Books
I Thought We’d Be Famous is a line in the sand. It’s a look back on Dominic’s days pre-chronic illness, and a new life of blood tests and cancer scares. It’s about the dreams that rusted in the backyard and the ones he ended up living. It’s about the guilt in his blood after escaping a life of welfare and minimum wage. It’s about the absurdity of trying to make sense of this broken society. It’s about Channing Tatum and Edward Furlong and Chilli the Pomeranian and the teacher who beat us half to death and killing your landlord and sleeping with zombies and falling in love so hard you wake up concussed.
Iceland (2017)
Publisher: Steele Roberts
Dominic’s debut novel spent six weeks on the bestseller list, long-listed for the Ockham Book Awards and listed on the NZ Listener’s best books of 2017.
Synopsis: Stuck in a dead-end office job, Zlata hopes for a record deal so she can escape Auckland city. Then at party she meets Hamish, a graffiti artist and part-time drug dealer. Each has their own ideas about the other’s life, and surrounded by a makeshift family of friends and ex-lovers, their dreams of music, art and travel take shape.
But as quickly as things come together, they can be torn apart — unravelling relationships and lives.
I Can’t Light a Fire
A poem in the rain from Dominic’s poetry book I Thought We'd Be Famous.
Feel Like Shit, Looking Great! (2015)
Self-published
Feel Like Shit, Looking Great! spawned three video clips and the hit ‘John Key’s Son’s a DJ’.
Synopsis: Presented in the form of a lyric book, designed by delinquent polymath Roy Irwin, Feel Like Shit, Looking Great! documents Dominic’s journey through the health system, searching for meaning in a neo-liberal theme park and the quiet madness and beauty of the New Zealand countryside.
A collaboration with musical wunderkind, Abraham Kunin, the project is a mix of poetry, stories and the odd rap, over Abraham’s brilliant and often haunting compositions.
Party Tricks and Boring Secrets (2014)
Self-published
Party Tricks and Boring Secrets is a collaboration between Dominic and Auckland artist Josh Solomon.
Synopsis: Party Tricks and Boring Secrets is a pink little book crammed full of art, poetry and prose.
Hotel Room
A poem from Dominic’s upcoming poetry book I Thought We’d Be Famous. Music by Gemma Syme and Nick Harte (Shocking Pinks).
The Event (K Rd Stories)
Written by Dominic and directed by Eddy Fifield, The Event follows an exceptionally hungover Seff as he tries to piece together fragments of the night before as he is accosted on all sides by assorted locals.
The New New Zealand
Reading and video from Feel Like Shit, Looking Great!.
No Losers @ WINZ
Video from Feel Like Shit, Looking Great!
Losing (Loading Docs)
While preparing for a live performance, Dominic reflects on his losing battle with a degenerative bone disease. Directed by Stjohn Milgrew and Damian Golfinopoulos.