Blog

This is Mark's blog.

ESAW publishes Mark Pirie's first art book Folk Punk

In November 2020, my first art book, Folk Punk: Selected Photos, Artworks and Drawings 1985-2020, was published by Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop.

It is in the same series as Nigel Brown, Nigel Yates, Wayne Seyb, Michael O'Leary and Margaret Jeune.

Folk Punk is the first of two volumes collecting my work as an artist and book designer. Volume One, Folk Punk, contains a selection of my photography 1985-2020 plus illustrations/artworks and drawings of Pirie’s music influences as a poet: Bono, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Anthony Kiedis, David Bowie, Sammy Hagar and Kurt Cobain.

The book complements my poetry and also gives portraits of other writers, performers or musicians who have been important to my work and life as an editor and publisher over the years, including Michael O’Leary, Alistair and Meg Campbell, Andrew Fagan, Bill Direen and Alistair Paterson.

Volume Two will be book covers and graphic designs I have done for the book trade.

Mark Pirie's poems published in Katherine Mansfield Studies (UK)

Two of my poems are included in volume no. 12 of the series Katherine Mansfield Studies.

It is a distinguished scholarly journal published by Edinburgh University Press and is an honour to be included.

My poems celebrate Mansfield, an author I have been an admirer of since student days. The issue acknowledges it has been 100 years since the publication of Mansfield’s Bliss and Other Stories, one of my favourite Modernist short story collections.

The issue was edited Enda Duffy, Gerri Kimber and Todd Martin, eminent Mansfield scholars.

broadsheet 26 features Andrew Fagan

The latest issue of my journal broadsheet, no.26, November 2020, features the Auckland poet and singer/songwriter Andrew Fagan, a former lead singer of the 1980s group The Mockers and an accomplished sailor and ocean navigator.

The issue prints for the first time 11 of Fagan's poems from his 2018 Spoken Word CD, it was always going to be like this.

I have published Fagan's poetry since 1998 in The NeXt Wave (OUP) and it's great to be able to publish some of his more recent poetry again. He continues to build a significant body of poetry and song lyrics.

Others included were: Peter Bland, Mary Maringikura Campbell, Laura Chalar (Uruguay), Bill Direen, David Eggleton, Karyn Hay, Alex Jeune, Bill Manhire, Annie Newcomer (USA), Michael O'Leary, Alistair Paterson, myself and Ron Riddell.

Here's the link:
http://broadsheetnz.wordpress.com

Mark Pirie co-authors an anthology of lockdown poetry

June 2020 saw the release of an anthology of national lockdown poems by myself, Alex Jeune and Margaret Jeune. 

I put together the sequence from our poems written during the COVID-19 national lockdown period, March to May 2020, in New Zealand.

The book gives three differing perspectives by New Zealand poets on the global crisis and is our personal responses to it. Our book is not meant to speak for everyone’s thoughts and feeling during the lockdown period in New Zealand. We hope it gives an affirming sense to readers of what we have all been through and endured during the lockdown in New Zealand.

It is published in the relaunched ESAW Mini Series (No. 39).

Here's the link to the publisher's blog:

https://michaeloleary.wordpress.com/2020/07/16/esaw-publishes-lockdown-mini-book/