Mark Pirie’s new edition of Slips: Cricket Poems published

In June 2021, my publishing company HeadworX released Slips: Cricket Poems in paperback and hardback.

The book contains 145 pages of my poetry on cricket written from 1994-2021 and divided into sections like 'Édges', 'Matches' and 'Tributes'. It captures many moments in cricket history, makes tributes to notable players (Kevin Pietersen, Joe Root, Sachin Tendulkar, Phil Hughes, Aravinda Da Silva, Garry Sobers, Chris Gayle, Kane Williamson and other former Black Caps including the ICC World Test Championship Final in England) as well as the more social aspects of the game and imaginary fictions like Outer Space Cricket.

Slips includes a nice foreword written by The Cricket Society’s News Bulletin editor John Symons, also a MCC Cricket Book of the Year Judge. John writes that: “Our summer game is fortunate to have found such a good and talented friend and chronicler in Mark Pirie.”

The book has been reviewed in Landfall online review and the NZ Listener magazine.

For more details on the book and sample poems, please visit the HeadworX website:

Slips: Cricket Poems by Mark Pirie

https://headworx.co.nz/poetry/slips

Paula Green featured audio poems of me reading on NZ Poetry Shelf:

Poetry Shelf celebrates new books: Mark Pirie’s ‘Slips: Cricket Poems’ | NZ Poetry Shelf

Here is a list of reviews for this book:

Kerry Lee, Regional News, 28 September 2021, p 26.
Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf, 19 November, 2021.
Nicholas Reid, New Zealand Listener, October 2021, October 16-22, p 55.
John Symons, Journal of the Cricket Society, Vol 31, No 2, Spring 2022, pp. 73-74
Robert McLean, Bowled Basilisk, Caught Agdistis - The Landfall Tauraka Review, 1 May 2022
Nicholas Reid, Reid's Reader – A Blog of Book Reviews and Comment.: Something New, 25 October 2011

Slips is available internationally online at lulu independent bookstore Shop the Indie Online Bookstore | Lulu.

Cricket Society Journal reviews King Willow

A brief but very good mention of the book I edited, King Willow: Selected Poems by Robert J Pope, appeared in the latest issue of the Cricket Society’s Journal:

JOHN SYMONS

Review of King Willow: Selected Poems by Robert J Pope edited by Mark Pirie

HeadworX Publishers, Wellington, New Zealand

Mark Pirie is continuing to explore New Zealand literary history both old and new and here we have a selection of poems from a writer, Robert J Pope whose life (1865-1949) covered the birth of New Zealand cricket through to Walter Hadlee’s determination on the post-war tour of England to be worthy of full-length Test Matches.

Although, well-regarded in his lifetime as with many poets, he became unfashionable although there now seems to be a reappraisal of his work. The selection from his work set out here contains only a single cricketing poem but his other work is well worth modern consideration. There is a wistful and elegiac tone to his war poetry – no drums and bugles and hurrahs – more sadness at lives lost and friends no longer to be greeted.

The only cricket poem “King Willow” was written to welcome in the 1932 season but there is a small section of cricket prose at the end of the book. I also liked his affectionate parody of W B Yeats in Billy’s Tea which made me smile.

Not really enough perhaps to convince the cricket collector to add this to his library but Mark Pirie is ploughing a singular furrow as he explores the byways of New Zealand literature and deserves the praise that he is garnering. A writer and a publisher who are always worth seeking out.

(From The Journal of the Cricket Society, UK, Volume 26, No. 4, Spring 2013, p. 69-70).

Cricket Society Journal reviews A Tingling Catch

A brief review of A Tingling Catch appeared in the Journal of the Cricket Society in London. It's nice to be among 'the better offerings' in the collection of nearly 200 pages.

JOHN SYMONS

Review of A Tingling Catch - A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864-2009, Mark Pirie, Editor (HeadworX Wellington, New Zealand)

 

This is a reprint of the book originally published in 2010 and it's fair to say that the content is a little uneven, with a too-large number of parodies of other songs and poems, most of which seem to have been gathered by Sir Richard Hadlee in an earlier book, Hadlee's Humour, which certainly sounds like a contradiction in terms.

The poems are generally in blank verse (or as we used to say at school - "Sir - Sir - it doesn't rhyme Sir") although the works from earlier times are much more conventional. Poetry is perhaps one of the most subjective of all literary forms and, with the emphasis on things New Zealand; it's hard to know if there will be a widespread appeal for this selection.

The editor, Mark Pirie, contributes a number and they are among the better offerings, but the standout poem is from Jenny Powell, with ‘Under Cover’ which evokes memories of cricket and a relationship shared at the Carisbrook ground with an underlying feeling that the relationship was becoming as sterile as some of the play. Dispassionate with a slight air of wistfulness, this is an unsettling piece and I will look to read more from Jenny Powell. Bonus points to David McGill for attempting a limerick that gets lines to rhyme with Adam Parore.

(From Journal of the Cricket Society, Volume 26, No. 3, Autumn 2012, UK)