New HeadworX Releases: Rugby Poems and Legends

Title: Sidelights: Rugby Poems

Author: Mark Pirie

Publisher/distributor: The Night Press (a division of HeadworX)

ISBN  978-0-473-26483-3

Price: $15.00

Extent: 24 pages

Format: 148mmx210mm

Publication: November 2013

Cover printed letterpress by Tony King at The Works, Cobblestones Museum, Greytown, Wairarapa, New Zealand

Featuring poems about the All Blacks, Super Rugby and Mark's rugby family, this book is dedicated to Mark's rugby playing Grandpa Tommy Lawn.

Contents:

Sidelights [Blues v Hurricanes, April 2013]

The Divided Country

At the Try Line [for Brian Turner]

The Waiting Game

Two Rugby Epigrams

Four Poems on my Grandfather Tom Lawn

My Great Uncle

The Wandering Bard

Five All Blacks Poems [includes Sam Cane, Piri Weepu, Kieran Read, Richie McCaw]

The book’s title “Sidelights” comes from a Eden Park rugby column of the same name in the Auckland Weekly News, 1938.

The poems, written between 1993 and 2013, have been widely published in journals, anthologies and newspapers such as Ron Palenski’s Touchlines: An Anthology of Rugby Poetry (NZ Sports Hall of Fame, 2013), Under Flagstaff: Dunedin Poetry (Otago University Press, 2004) and The Dominion Post.

Also available as a free ebook pdf at Mark’s website: http://markpirie.com/books/sidelights

The Night Press is a division/imprint of HeadworX Publishers and publishes the poetry journal broadsheet and occasional chapbooks/mini books.

  

About the Author

 Mark Pirie is an internationally published New Zealand poet, editor, writer and publisher. In 2010, he edited the successful anthology of NZ cricket poetry A Tingling Catch (foreword by Don Neely) and currently writes its offshoot blog Tingling Catch. More on Mark Pirie at his website: www.markpirie.com

  

Title: Polynesian Legends

Author: A. Stanley Sherratt
Editor: Mark Pirie

Publisher/Distributor: HeadworX/Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop

ISBN  978-1-86942-141-0

Price: $15.00

Extent:44 pages

Format: 148mmx210mm

Publication: November 2013

Cover art: Māui controlling the sun by Michael O’Leary

A. Stanley Sherratt’s powerful early sequence of Māori myths/legends has remained unpublished since 1924, when it was first serialized in the Christchurch Star.

Discovered in 2013 by editor Mark Pirie who has republished the text, this new publication includes an introduction by Māori literary scholar Dr Michael O’Leary, giving details of Sherratt’s life along with a brief history of Aotearoa legend telling in English.

“Earl of Seacliff and Mark Pirie are to be commended for unearthing this valuable trove of Pākehā representations of Māori mythology and legend, not merely because they have never been committed to print in any sequential book format previously, but more especially because the representations contained within are manifestly without the devious elaborations and misguided romantic capital (Curnow, 1960) of many of Sherratt's near contemporaries such as Domett. Indeed, Sherratt, for all his iambic pentameter and rhyming couplet, remains true to the Weltanschauung of the original and oral Indigenous élan of these mighty vignettes. Ka nui te pai te mahi kei konei!” – Vaughan Rapatahana

About the Author

 A. Stanley (Sherry) Sherratt b. 1891 was a Canterbury Railways clerk/official. He was educated and grew up in Kaiapoi, and afterwards spent much of his working life in Christchurch. Railways posted him to a number of places outside of Christchurch, including Invercargill, Greymouth and Kaiapoi from where he published his Polynesian Legends sequence.

During WWI, he served as a probationary officer in the territorial forces, Corps of New Zealand Engineers, New Zealand Railways Battalion (South Island).

Sherratt published the bulk of his poetry in the Christchurch Star newspaper 1923-24, and was part of the Star group of poets 1922-26. See special feature on Star poets in broadsheet/12 (http://broadsheetnz.wordpress.com)

Stan Sherratt later retired to Nelson with his family.

This book is a joint publication between Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop and HeadworX Publishers

Polynesian Legends and Sidelights are distributed by HeadworX

Email: mpirie@xtra.co.nz

4C/19 Cottleville Tce

Thorndon

Wellington 6011

New Zealand

A launch for these titles will be held at Quilters Bookshop, Saturday 30 November 2013, 2-4pm, 35 Ghuznee Street, Wellington, New Zealand.