Image of Mark Young

Poet Mark Young was born and raised in New Zealand. His visual poetry often enacts language as a field with many possible paths. Playful and allusive in both his vispo and text-based poetry, Young engages words as both sources and objects. In Jacket, Nicholas Manning admired “what Mark Young … is able to reconcile: form and occasion, procedurality and experience, visual constructivism and sonic play.”

Young is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including Genji Monogatari (2010) and Pelican Dreaming: Poems 1959-2008 (2008). With Jean Vengua, Young edited The First Hay(na)ku Anthology (2005) and The Hay(na)ku Anthology, Volume II (2008). Hay(na)ku is a poetic form invented by Eileen Tabios that consists of tercets with successive line lengths of one, two, and three words. Young’s work has been included in the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975 (2000). He edits the online journal Otoliths and its paper-based companion press.

Young lives in Rockhampton, Australia.