[Originally published 19 March 2022]

March 2022 sees the release of Michael O’Leary’s new poetry collection The Ballad of the Triple Track with a Foreword by New Zealand Poet Laureate David Eggleton.

Book Info

Title: The Ballad of the Triple Track and Other New Poems

Author: Michael O’Leary

ISBNs  978-0-473-61784-4 / 978-0-473-61785-1 / 978-0-473-61786-8

Price: $25.00 (pb) / $35.00 (hb) / $8.99AUD (ePub)

Extent: 72 pages

Format: 152mm x 235mm (paperback & hardback)

Publication: March 2022

Publisher: HeadworX

The Ballad of the Triple Track

The Ballad of the Triple Track collects together all of Michael O’Leary’s poems written since the publication of his Collected Poems 1981-2016. O’Leary’s poems continue to show linguistic departures. Sonnets, tributes and ballads to friends and family and musical influences are complemented by two longer poems. The first, The Ballad of the Triple Track, was written on the Paekākāriki Escarpment Walk, while the closing longer poem Yradeceba, is a long meditation finding O’Leary at his punning Joycean-best and draws on a wide-reading knowledge forming a 21st century prayer for the times we live in.

About the Author

Michael O’Leary is a poet, novelist, publisher, performer and bookshop proprietor. He writes in both English and Māori; and his influences are both inspired by Māori and Polynesian aspects of living in Aotearoa New Zealand as well as his Irish Catholic heritage on his father’s and his mother’s side. Born in Auckland in the year of the Tiger 1950, he was educated at the universities of Auckland, Ōtago (Dunedin), and Victoria University (Wellington) where he completed his MA and PhD theses. His Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop imprint (inspired by Andy Warhol’s ‘Factory’, the Beatles’ Apple label, and John and Yoko’s ‘Plastic Ono Band’), which he founded in 1984, has published some of his own prolific output, as well as many other New Zealand writers. Michael O’Leary is a trustee for the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa (PANZA), a charitable trust dedicated to archiving, collecting and promoting New Zealand poetry. He now lives in Paekakariki, north of Wellington. Website: https://michaeloleary.wordpress.com

Comment:

“Without contraries there is no progression, wrote William Blake. Michael O’Leary’s poems are by turns bold, irreverent, winsome. A middle-of-the night housefire, an Australian bushfire, a wedding, a pandemic, the imminent destruction of a vast collection of old library books, birthdays, his father in prison: the whole of life is here. Indeed, the whole shaky motu is here, rattling like a line of train carriages: those old red rattlers pulled by a steam locomotive, the furnace of which is stoked by Michael’s exuberant word-play. Into your hands I commend this book, for the good of you and yours.” – David Eggleton, from the Foreword

Links for the new book live on Lulu.

eBook

The Ballad of the Triple Track (lulu.com)

Hardback

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Paperback

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