mark o'connor - australian poet

Pilbara

Prose and verse (mainly verse) about the Pilbara. Published by  John Leonard Press , and distributed by Inbooks.

The Pilbara is a vast semi-desert region in Western Australia. This book captures it in the round: nature, humans, geology. 
"Work of a great adventurer-observer".--Alan Gould.
"A poem about time, survival, chance, beauty, the sublime, death, unintentional human cruelty, human indifference, limitation and folly." -- Petra White.
The poem "Trucked Cattle" may become a vegetarians' manifesto, but the poetry is ever-complex:

As pure mournful epics

flow from the mouths of brutal soldiers,

so the nestling-fed butcher bird enchants

the valley of asbestos, disputes, re-flutes

Lang Hancock's millions...

Read more or order your copy now!

Overloading Australia

How governments and media dither and deny on population - first edition nearly sold out and second edition now underway.

Australia has a population problem. One our politicians and media deny. Overloading Australia makes glorious comedy with the pretentions and follies of boosters, business councils, politicians, and pseudo-greens. And shows how Australia might and must ­ become smaller, greener, and happier.

Read more or order your copy now!

The Forever Lands

A big book---A4-size---on the Northern Territory and Desert Center, The Forever Lands has just been released. It is a magnificent cathedral of a hardback book with streams and tributaries of poems cascading through the cliff-walls of John Kirk's magnificent color photographs.

Copies available from the publisher, Beyond Images, PO Box 1457, Camberwell East, Victoria, 3126, Australia. $59 post-free.

The Olive Tree

The Olive Tree (Hale & Iremonger, 2000) is Mark's collected poems. It replaces two earlier volumes of selected poems, and adds 80 pages of newer poems, including poems from books on the Snowy Mountains, and on Australia's Desert Centre and Top End.

Introduction by Dr John Leonard. 272 pages.

"Mark O'Connor is all green and gold, as befits our Olympic Poet. He is a conservationist with a scientific muse, yet he has the polished verbal gold of a classicist. And he has borne both colours throughout a career wholly devoted to poetry. It is high time for a Collected O'Connor."
Les Murray

This Tired Brown Land - now out of print

Australia is the world's driest continent. Australia is the world's driest continent. Its population, is now growing at the more than Third World rate of around 2% annually. Mark O'Connor, a former vice-president of Australians for an Ecologically-Sustainable Population, argues that discussion of population and immigration issues has been stifled by ideology and vested interests. Though widely available in libraries, this book is now sold out.  Its replacement, to be called Overloading Australia, should appear in late 2007 or early 2008.

"The most important Australian book of recent times."
NSW Premier Bob Carr in
The Sydney Morning Herald

See Reviews

Two Centuries of Australian Poetry
Edited by Mark O'Connor

Two centuries of poetry reflecting the Australian experience, vernacular and landscape have been arranged in sections which focus on varied themes such as the Aboriginal world, European contact, nationhood, the migrant experience, war, urban life, women's experience, life, love, and the future.

Published by Oxford University Press.

"In a word---wonderful! (and long overdue!) I've bought 25 copies for my school, and I expect it will become a much-used anthology."
Deborah McPherson
Review in English in Australia

Poetry in Pictures: The Great Barrier Reef

Mark O'Connor first fell in love with the Great Barrier Reef when he worked as a diver on One Tree Island in 1972. He has returned to the natural paradise many times---causing fellow-poet Les Murray to describe him as "the man with a muse a thousand miles long."

Firestick Farming: Selected Poems 1972-90

A collection of Mark O'Connor's best poems celebrating the Great Barrier Reef (1972-77), his journeys in Europe (1977-1980), Australia's Blue Mountains and national parks (1984-88), and remote regions (1987-90).