Mark Pirie publishes netball poems

Saturday, October 10, 2015 by Mark Pirie

In October, I published a small booklet of netball poems in celebration of the game and some of New Zealand's finest netballers.

This completes my sports poetry quartet of writing on four major sports in New Zealand: rugby, cricket, football and netball.

It was something of a challenge writing on netball, predominantly a women's sport.

I have followed netball and the Silver Ferns since I was a boy. I played in a mixed boys and girls team at intermediate level before secondary school.

I decided to make the booklet of 12 poems available widely as an electronic pdf for free download as well as a printed booklet in a small run collectable format.

The book ends with an addenda by the Napier poet, former scientist and politician Bill Sutton in the form of an open letter to the Wellingtonian newspaper in 2012 (a poem in praise of Silver Fern great Irene van Dyk) replying to my poem on Maria Tutaia.

Here's the link: http://www.markpirie.com/books/12-netball-poems