Mark Pirie

Search for a word or phrase in this book …

Biographical note:  Mark Pirie was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1974. Lived briefly in San Francisco (1977–1980), then returned to Wellington where he has spent most of his life. He is a graduate of Victoria University, where he where he studied Theatre and Film and majored in English, and the University of Otago, Dunedin, where he wrote an MA on the New Zealand poet and editor, Louis Johnson.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781876857240
ISBN-10:  1876857242
ISBN-13:  9781876857240
Author:  Mark Pirie
Title:  Gallery
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Jul-03
Extent:  116pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  7 mm
Weight:  174 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  

Table of contents:
1 Shoot
Progress
Shoot
Placing the Self within the Scene
Gallery
Three Short Films (with ‘Landscape’ included)
Movie Star
Venice
Journeys
2 The Highlights
The Highlights
Refugee
Call Guy
The Meeting
The Engagement
Headbanger
Hyacinth
The Memory
Beaches
‘The Big C’
Mt Vernon’s Secret (1979)
Postcards from Singapore
Six Shots to Remember You
Riverton Beach Poem
3 Playing the Game
On Trying to Define Poetry
A Day in Summer
The Tryst
The Lesson
But
handy hint no. 1
Working Out
This is just to tell some New Zealand poets
On Melodrama
On Free Speech
The Reply
Tiebreaker
Playing the Game
Sonnet from the Traditional
Easy
4 Conversions
A Proposal
Letter to Leda
Conversions
Colour
Piki Ake!
The Izu Dancer
Blue Oranges
Daffodil
The Importance Of Being Placed
At the Church Fair
The House
A Jazz Poem for Paul
At Castlepoint
Departures
Wooden Jesus
Goodnight

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample (64 KB)

Excerpt from book:  

The Lesson

When I was younger I flew
a fighter plane in the First World War.

I was tougher than the Red Baron
and a master of dogfights above the lines.

Soon though my teacher grounded me
and began to change things around.

‘Write a hundred lines,’ she’d say,
over and over again.

                 I followed her command.

I guess it must’ve been something
I did or said, I didn’t understand
at the time.

I was just happy doing what she wanted:
a close mapping of enemy lines.

Review quote:  [Mark Pirie] made me smile. It’s like a photo album of favourite pictures that you can look at over and over – except that when you look at the photo again you can see a new angle almost every time. [Poetry] is Mark Pirie’s verbal camera. And to see the world from a viewpoint other than our own is always fun, especially when it comes from someone with such an intuitive slant and obviously wry sense of humour.

NZ Writers’ Web Site

Review quote:  Twenty-something Mark Pirie is a prolific writer of competent, very cool poems. He talks of pop stars, poets, self-image, death, sports personalities and socialising in an impish way. He is often lots of fun [and] he mixes it all in a rich, playful way … [Pirie] is in a league way beyond his years.

Hamesh Wyatt
Otago Daily Times

Review quote:  [Mark Pirie] takes us … into what we might term the psychology of popular culture. By that I mean that these poems subvert standard readings in the same way that some movies and sit-coms subvert standard viewings … and to my knowledge Mark Pirie is the only New Zealand poet who has made this territory his own.

John O’Connor
Sudden Valley Press