Pi-O wins 2024 Patrick White Literary Award
Victorian-based poet, publisher and editor π.ο. (Pi-O) has won the $20,000 Patrick White Literary Award.
Born in Greece in 1951, π.ο. immigrated with his family in 1954 to Australia, where they settled in Fitzroy. For the past 40 years, the poet has worked as a draughtsman to support his creative practice, which the judges said was ‘informed by his working-class, non-Anglo background and his anarchist politics’.
According to award trustee Perpetual, the award recognises π.ο.’s ‘achievements as a legendary figure in the Australian poetry scene’ as a publisher, editor and the author of many collections, ‘including the epic works 24 hours, Fitzroy: The Biography, and Heide’ (Giramondo), which won the 2020 Judith Wright Calanthe Award and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for poetry.
In addition to his work as a poet, π.ο. edited 925 and Unusual Work, magazines focusing on experimental literature, as well as Off The Road, an anthology of performance poetry (1985). He is also a publisher at Collective Effort press.
The judging committee, Michelle de Kretser (chair), Kerryn Goldsworthy and Sarah Holland-Batt, said: ‘A pioneering practitioner of spoken word and performance poetry in Australia, π.ο. campaigned for its acceptance as a valid poetic form. On the page, his poems continue to display a lively and witty interest in spoken language: migrant idioms, working-class speech and Australian colloquialisms jostle and unsettle standard English in his work. Similarly, an encyclopaedic range of sources—proverbs, science writing, historical documents, classical mythology and children’s games to name a few—provide disparate linguistic elements that are juxtaposed in his poems to brilliant effect. The range and diversity of his registers remind us that π.ο. is always, and foremost, an intensely political writer.
‘Along with its deployment of the vernacular, π.ο.’s poetry is characterised by the idiosyncratic use of punctuation and spelling. His concrete poems employ numbers, punctuation marks and other typographical devices in visually striking ways; see, for instance, Missing Form: Concrete, visual and experimental poems (1981). According to Andy Jackson, writing in the Saturday Paper, π.ο.’s “invigorating use of punctuation and phonetic spelling reminds us that language is always vocal, accented and political”. In short, π.ο. has always favoured a radical and experimental poetics, which for many years went unrecognised by mainstream Australian literature.’
Author Patrick White established the annual literary award—using the proceeds of his 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature—to advance recognise authors who have ‘made an ongoing contribution to Australian literature but may not have received adequate recognition’.
Perpetual national manager, philanthropy and non-profit services Jane Magor said: ‘Australian literature and Australian culture more broadly has benefitted enormously from the enduring legacy of Patrick White. For more than fifty years writers such as π.ο. have been honoured to win this prestigious award, demonstrating the enduring qualities of philanthropy and the impact that philanthropic giving can have on so many people. Congratulations!’
π.ο. will be honoured for his contribution to Australian literature at the Patrick White Literary Award celebration at an event on 13 November at Readings, State Library Victoria.
The winner of the 2023 Patrick White Literary Award was Alex Skovron.
Category: Local news
