П. O. (or Pi O, born 1951) is a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

- Australian,

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colo ...

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessari ...

poet. Born in

Katerini Katerini ( el, Κατερίνη, ''Kateríni'', ) is a city and municipality in northern Greece, the capital city of Pieria regional unit in Central Macedonia, Greece. It lies on the Pierian plain, between Mt. Olympus and the Thermaikos Gulf, a ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wit ...

, П. O. came to Australia with his family around 1954. After time in

Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre The Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre was a camp set up for receiving and training migrants to Australia during the post World War II immigration boom. The camp was set on near Wodonga at the locality of Bonegilla in north east ...

, the family moved to the

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...

suburb of

Fitzroy Fitzroy or FitzRoy may refer to: People As a given name *Several members of the Somerset family ( Dukes of Beaufort) have this as a middle-name: **FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788–1855) **Henry Charles FitzRoy Somerset, 8th Duke of Beau ...

. П. O. was inspired to start writing poetry in 1973 when he heard

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American Country music, country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later s ...

reciting (religious) poetry while tuning his guitar. П. O. thought he could do as well or better. His work ranges from standup-type rants to 'conceptual' page poetry and

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

, with a heavy emphasis on wordplay and capturing the vitality of everyday speech. Thematically, he commonly portrays the issues of non-Anglo-Celtic working class life. His first published book, ''Fitzroy Brothel'', was released in 1974. From 1978 to 1983, he was involved in producing the radical poetry magazine ''925''. After the publication of several more collections, his 740-page epic poem ''24hrs'' was published in 1996 by Collective Effort Press. He is a fixture of Melbourne's

performance poetry Performance poetry is a broad term, encompassing a variety of styles and genres. In brief, it is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe p ...

scene and has edited an anthology of performance poetry (''Off the Record'') for Penguin. He has been editor of the literary journal ''Unusual Work''. П. O. won the 2020 Judith Wright Calanthe Prize for Poetry for ''Heide'' at the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards''.'' He is a finalist for the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature.

Bibliography

* ''Fitzroy brothel: Poems'' (1974) * ''Emotions in concrete'' (1975) * ''street singe'' (1976) * ''л. 0. Revisited'' ( Wild & Woolley, 1976) * ''Panash'' (Collective Effort, 1978) * ''Missing Form: Concrete, visual and experimental poems'' (Collective Effort, 1981) * ''The Fitzroy poems'' (Collective Effort, 1989) * ''24 hrs: The day the language stood still'' (Collective Effort, 1996) * ''The Number Poems and Other Equations'' (Collective Effort, 2000) * ''Big Numbers: New and Selected Poems'' (Collective Effort, 2008) * ''Fitzroy: The Biography'' (Collective Effort, 2015) * ''Heide'' (Giramondo Publishing, 2019) Edited * ''Missing Forms'' with Peter Murphy and Alex Selenitsch (Collective Effort, 1981) * ''Off the Record'' (Penguin, 1985)

References

External links

The Poetry of Π Ο

by Billy Marshall Stoneking
visual poetry

Pi O Launches Oink, Oink, Oink
by Eric Dando
The rime of the anarchist wog
{{Authority control 1951 births Australian anarchists Greek emigrants to Australia Living people Poets from Melbourne Spoken word poets 20th-century pseudonymous writers 21st-century pseudonymous writers