П. O. (or Pi O, born 1951) is a
Greek
Greek may refer to:
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 of all kno ...
-
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
n,
working class
The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
,
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...
poet.
Biography
Born in
Katerini
Katerini (, ''Kateríni'', ) is a city and municipality in northern Greece, the capital city of Regional Unit of Piera in Central Macedonia, Greece. It lies on the Pierian plain, between Mount Olympus and the Thermaikos Gulf, at an altitude ...
,
Greece
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
, П. O. came to Australia with his family around 1954. After time in
Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, the family moved to the
Melbourne
Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...
suburb of
Fitzroy.
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 singer-songwriter. Most of his music contains themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially songs from the later stages of his career. ...
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 poetry that is specifically composed for or during a Performance art, performance before an audience. It covers a variety of styles and genres.
History
The phenomenon of performance poetry, a kind of poetry specifically m ...
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. In 2024 he won the
Patrick White Literary Award.
See also
*
Anarchism in Australia
Bibliography
* ''Fitzroy brothel: Poems'' (1974)
* ''Emotions in concrete'' (1975)
* ''street singer'' (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)
* ''The Tour'' (Giramondo Publishing, 2023)
Edited
* ''Missing Forms'' with Peter Murphy and Alex Selenitsch (Collective Effort, 1981)
* ''Off the Record'' (Penguin, 1985)
References
External links
The Poetry of Π Οby
Billy Marshall Stoneking
visual poetryPi O Launches Oink, Oink, Oinkby
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
Visual poets