Pi O

П. O. (or Pi O, born 1951) is a Greek-Australian, working class, anarchist, poet.

Born in Katerini, Greece, П. O. came to Australia with his family around 1954. After time in Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, the family moved to the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy.

П. O. was inspired to start writing poetry in 1973 when he heard Johnny Cash reciting (religious) poetry while tuning his guitar. П. O. thought he could do as well or better. His work ranges from standup-type rants to 'conceptual' page poetry and concrete poetry, with a heavy emphasis on wordplay and capturing the vitality of everyday speech. Thematically, he commonly portrays the issues of non-Anglo-Celtic working class life.

His first published book, Fitzroy Brothel, was released in 1974. From 1978 to 1983, he was involved in producing the radical poetry magazine 925. After the publication of several more collections, his 740-page epic poem 24hrs was published in 1996 by Collective Effort Press.

He is a fixture of Melbourne's performance poetry scene and has edited an anthology of performance poetry (Off the Record) for Penguin. His most recent book is Big Numbers: New and Selected Poems (2008). He currently edits the literary journal Unusual Work.

Bibliography

• Fitzroy brothel: Poems (1974)
• Emotions in concrete (1975)
• street singe (1976)
• л. 0. Revisited (Wild & Woolley, 1976) ISBN 0-909331-23-5
• Panash (Collective Effort, 1978)
• Missing Form: Concrete, visual and experimental poems (Collective Effort, 1981)
• The Fitzroy poems (Collective Effort, 1989)
• 24 hrs: The day the language stood still (Collective Effort, 1996) ISBN 0-646-26903-8
• The Number Poems and Other Equations (Collective Effort, 2000)
• Big Numbers: New and Selected Poems (Collective Effort, 2008) ISBN 978-0-9587726-6-2
• Fitzroy: The Biography (Collective Effort, 2015)

Edited

• Missing Forms with Peter Murphy and Alex Selenitsch (Collective Effort, 1981)
• Off the Record (Penguin, 1985)

External links

• The Poetry of Π Ο
• Pi O - An appreciation by Billy Marshall Stoneking
• visual poetry
• Visual Poetry by PiO
• 925 magazine
• Pi O Launches Oink, Oink, Oink by Eric Dando
• The rime of the anarchist wog