Unity Books, HeadworX & Bareknuckle Books warmly invite you to celebrate the release of
Rock & Roll: Selected Poems by Mark Pirie
and
Songs of the City by MaryJane Thomson
With guest speakers Richard Langston & Fiona Kidman
Tuesday 27 September 2016
6-7:30pm
Unity Books Wellington
57 Willis Street
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).
“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
The poems in MaryJane Thomson’s third collection, Songs of the City, continue to develop her highly original poetic since her first two collections Fallen Grace and Lonely Earth announced the arrival of an exciting new talent in New Zealand poetry.
Songs of the City features a mix of longer and shorter poems grouped by thematic links: Finding Your Light (Big Issue poems), Watch (faith and spiritual poems), Funny Sun Kissed Fantasy (love poems) and Conversations and Songs (music and letter poems).
Songs of the City explores contemporary issues and offers a generational assessment of a technologically driven world. With soul, energy and a probing mind, Thomson’s is an alert and urgent voice.
“MaryJane Thomson has a raw unorthodox voice. You mightn’t agree with everything she says in her poems but she certainly demands attention and makes the reader think. She is outspoken and direct and her poems range widely through contemporary life.” – Fiona Kidman
All welcome
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