Oscar Mardell, Great Works

Great Works consists of thirteen poems, each about a different freezing works in Aotearoa New Zealand. Satirising the colonial-pastoral mythologies through which the local landscape has often been interpreted, the collection gives due attention to an industry which, in spite of its centrality to the nation's economic history, has remained conspicuously absent from its art and literature. Here, as in Batailles, 'the slaughterhouse is linked to religion': Great Works offers a darkly-comic view of sacrifice and slaughter in 'God's Own Country'.

Oscar Mardell is a writer and poet based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Books:

Rex Tremendae published by Greying Ghost
Housing Haunted Housing published by death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

 

Selected writings:

'The Ecstasy of Saints Camilla and Nicholas: Jesus is Just Alright with Me' [March Faxness]
'Down To Earth' [Metro Magazine]
'Merry Gentlemen: On Christmas Evil' [Berfrois]
Ghost Story: Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil/Gæsterne [Bright Lights Film Journal]
'Hunky Punks: On Alex Garland's 'Men' (2022)' [Horror Homeroom]
'I, Nosferatu' [Periodicals]
'F.A.B.' [Lost Futures]
'Bringing Up Baby: On Mother Earth's Plantasia' [Spam Zine]
• 'The Meaning of Life and The Daddy of The Internet' [Berfrois]
• 'Toys' [Queen Mob's Teahouse]
• '"They're Talking About Slavery": An Older Legacy in Space Jam 2' [Bright Lights Film Journal]
• 'The Exorcist' [Wig-Wag]
• 'Shock Treatment' [Berfrois]
• 'The Church of Truth Without Christ" On Ministry's 'Jesus Built My Hotrod' [March Plaidness]
• 'Zahir: Desire and Eclipse' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Sheer Folly: The Court in The Castle' [Berfrois]
• 'Folk Horror and 'The Lighthouse' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Maybe The People Would Be The Times: An Interview with Luc Sante' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'A Greater Incompletion: An Interview with Will Eaves' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Terraced' [Death of Workers:Periodicals]
• 'A Twenty-First Century War and Peace' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Michelin House' and 'The Fiat Lingotto Factory' [Misery Tourism]
• 'Thieves in the Night' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Strange Beast: On Welsh Rarebit' [The Inquisitive Eater]
• 'Chocolate Concrete' [The Inquisitive Eater]
• 'The Horns of Jericho' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Not Neufchâtel' [The Inquisitive Eater]
• 'What the Sirens Taught Us: An Elegy for Mermaidens' [PopMatters]
• 'Cathedrals of Sewage' [Misery Tourism]
• 'CHOWDER' [The Inquisitive Eater]
• ''Alive and Sane': an Interview with Alex Niven' [3:AM Magazine]
• '(Un)Settlers: on Earth Tongue's 'Floating Being' NZ Tour' [Queen Mob's Teahouse]
• 'Keep Yer Big Apple' [3:AM Magazine] • 'Glitch' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Style Wars: The Conquest of Gaul' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'presently' [RIC Journal]
• 'AfroGoths' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'Goodbye, Beautiful: Iris Origo's A Chill in the Air and War in Val d’Orcia' [War, Literature, and the Arts] • 'Love Bites: Fiction Inspired by Pete Shelley and Buzzcocks' [3:AM Magazine]
• 'The Bargain Basement' [RIC Journal]
• 'The Most Beautiful Petrol Station in the World' [Terse Journal] • 'Ein Feste Burg' [RIC Journal] • 'Loudhe Sing Cuccoo: Folk Horror and Water Shall Refuse Them' [3:AM Magazine] • 'You Still Can't Win' [3:AM Magazine] • 'Sage of Discord; or, Melville at 200' [3:AM Magazine] • 'First as Tragedy, Then as Tragedy: On Christian Petzold's 'Transit'' [Terse Journal] • Walter Kempowski's Final Novel Finally Gets an English Translation [RIC Journal]
• Goth-ish: 3 Covers by Marilyn Manson [March Vladness]
• Sixteen Again [Queen Mob's Teahouse]
• Etymology and Extracts [Terror House]
• A Real Phoney: Wartime London in Henry Green’s 'Caught' [The Literary London Journal]
• Greener Pastures [War, Literature, and the Arts]
• Walter Kempowski's 'All for Nothing': An Unlikely Comedy Set in the Collapse of the Third Reich [3:AM]
• The Limits of Suspense: Anna Segher's 'The Seventh Cross' [DIAGRAM]
• On Yukio Mishima’s 'Star' Being Made Available For The First Time In English [3:AM]

 

 

Good Press, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Volume Books, Auckland, New Zealand

Timeout Books, Auckland, New Zealand