Pi-O (π.ο.) has won the 2024 Patrick White Literary Award, the poet who was born in Greece in 1951, 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.”
In a 2021 interview in Cordite Poetry Review he recalled how when he was as student in “Collinwood Tech”, he “fell in love with Pythagoras.”
“[T]hen I fell in love with ‘the ratio of the diameter of a circle with the circumference’ and it was given the letter π and it was Greek, and it was me: my initials π right next to the circle O, the most compact of visual signifiers with symbol-mathematical-pretentious, and ½ Greek, ½ English, ½ calculation, ½ visual (later understood as ‘poem’), and ½ mine. No other name was possible for me. I will not allow anyone to ‘re-Write’ me. I alone ‘write’ me.”
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.
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 he was 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.
Again, from 2021 Cordite interview, π.ο explained his “political poetics” as coming “from life experience – from within the class I grew up in and within the suburb that nurtured me.”
“It did not come from ‘with-out’. It did not come from some kind of understanding of poetic or art practice.
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: “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.
