Rock and Roll: Selected Poems in Five Sets
Mark Pirie is one of the most important New Zealand poets and editors of his generation, Bareknuckle Poets present this selection of daring and innovative work from his prolific output.
Rock & Roll features poems selected from 1992 to 2016 in the form of five set lists: Rock & Roll (music poems); Special FX (film/TV poems); Good Luck Bar (love poems); Sidelights(sporting poems); and Postcards (Australian poets/poems).
Comment on Pirie’s poetry:
There is variety here and an increasing virtuosity. Love poems, friendship poems, encounter poems, travel poems, literary poems, anecdotal poems, monologues, elegies, satires, and squibs: the reader certainly won’t be bored… A ‘stubborn integrity’ characterises these poems as it does Pirie’s admirable work as publisher and editor.” – Harry Ricketts, Foreword to Gallery: A Selection, Salt, England, 2003
“...among the most conceptually and technically interesting of our young poets...” – John O’Connor, New Zealand Books
“At his best Pirie turns the Romantic tradition, so lingeringly powerful in New Zealand, on its head...this is very much poetry of the twenty-first century mind...the persona of these poems is the star of his/her own movie...” – Bernard Gadd, JAAM