Description: This flip-book gathers 3 collections of poems (Darlinghurst Funeral Rites, Poems From the South Coast, & Phone Poems) from Sydney poet Mark Mordue. From Sydney's 1980s punk scene to the present, these poems capture the fleeting moments of fatherhood, love & estrangement, & the Aboriginality of Sydney's suburban landscapes in iPhone bursts.
Brief description: Mark Mordue was born in 1960 & raised in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. His teenage years were split between the coastal steel-mining town & growing up in Nhulunbuy, Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Mark moved to Sydney in late 1981, where he launched his career as a rock journalist, enmeshing himself in the turbulent inner city music scene of the era, experiences that form the core of Darlinghurst Funeral Rites. Mark later diversified into writing about film, books, art, the outback & global travel. He has been the editor of two national arts, fashion & popular culture magazines (Stiletto and Australian Style), & has lectured in journalism & writing at UTS & the University of Sydney. He is the winner of a 1992 Human Rights Media Award & the 2010 Pascall Prize: Australian Critic of the Year.
Review Quotes:
Darlinghurst Funeral Rites concerns Newcastle-born Mordue in his 20s, from his arrival in Sydney in 1981 to the middle of that decade.
The Australian culture of the time derided tenderness in men. Mordue's vulnerability, receptivity to art & social injustice marked him as an outsider, & the resulting sense of otherness has always informed his work.
Mordue is familiar with profound & contained suffering. In this respect he is, perhaps, one of Australia's truest beat poets, shaped not only by Walt Whitman, John Keats & WH Auden but also by Bob Dylan, Marc Bolan & the Jam, & with everything that entails.
There is an integrity to the looseness [of his poems], a quality of space through which his yearning for love - can be sensed.
-- fr. Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Australian, reviewed 21 Oct., 2017
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Few writers around are offering us journeys as haunting, evocative & distinct as Mark Mordue. Here is the rare poet not afraid of going his own way, regardless of fashion & convention.
- Pico Iyer
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In these wonderfully generous, expansive & 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 & perhaps most of all, to love.
-- James Bradley, author of Clade and The Resurrectionist.
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Sydney's Darlinghurst, today prosperous & gentrified, was in the early '80s a jumpy skinsoup of amphetamines, sex & cacophony. Mark Mordue, who lived through those times, in an outburst of poetry & the fine tuning of a latter-day skill set, gets us there again. The raging glory has moved on, but is preserved here much as it was, thanks to his passion & guile. Yesterday you lived the fever. Today, since the dead & the maimed cannot, you must remember this: Darlo, Paris, Darlo.
-- Douglas Spangle, author, A White Concrete Day
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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, & 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 & wanderlust blues - anyway, it's a great ride. Paul Bowles & Kerouac are in the back, & 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, The Buena Vista Social Club, & Pina.