From the electrifying, prize-winning Australian rock journalist and critic Mark Mordue, author of
Boy On Fire: The Young Nick Cave, comes a flipbook of poetry collections. These intelligence-on-the-skin experiences ripple with the same attention to context and detail, and the same utterly unique ability to catch the fleeting moment.
Darlinghurst Funeral Rites captures Sydney from its 1980s punk scene to the present.
Poems from the South Coast and
Phone Poems celebrate human and non-human landscapes fluid as cloud and rain, fatherhood, and the presence of love.
PRAISE FOR DARLINGHURST FUNERAL RITES:
"Few writers around are offering us journeys as haunting, evocative and distinct as Mark Mordue. Here is the rare poet not afraid of going his own way, regardless of fashion and convention."
—
Pico Iyer, author,
Autumn Light and
The Art of Stillness
"There is a quick mind behind these open-hearted lines, lucid poetry with dark edges and sudden downward plunges. Although Mordue's subject is love, he is writing into the uncertain future, aware and willing to say what it feels like to live in the present moment and to sing as he goes. These poems are gifts to the reader, a breakthrough into the open sky from the city's crooked back lanes and highways, a joy to read and experience."
—
Robert Adamson, author,
Net Needle and
Inside Out
"In these wonderfully generous, expansive and open-hearted poems Mark Mordue reminds us that the artist's first obligation is to make themselves vulnerable: to their pasts, to the world around them and perhaps most of all, to love."
—
James Bradley, author,
Clade and
The Resurrectionist
"Sydney's Darlinghurst, today prosperous and gentrified, was in the early '80s a jumpy skinsoup of amphetamines, sex and cacophony. The raging glory has moved on, but is preserved here much as it was, thanks to Mordue's passion and guile."
—
Douglas Spangle, author,
A White Concrete Day
PRAISE FOR DASTGAH, DIARY OF HEAD TRIP:
"I JUST TOOK A TRIP AROUND THE WORLD IN ONE GO, first zig-zagging my way through this incredible book, and finally, almost feverishly, making sure I hadn't missed out on a chapter along the way. I'm not sure what I'd call it now: A road movie of the mind, a diary, a love story, a new version of the subterranean homesick and wanderlust blues — anyway, it's a great ride. Paul Bowles and Kerouac are in the back, and Mark Mordue has taken over the wheel of that pick-up truck from Bruce Chatwin, who's dozing in the passenger seat."
—
Wim Wenders, director,
Paris Texas,
Wings of Desire, and
The Buena Vista Social Club
