Windows & Doors
Windows & Doors
My poetry is about observation and story-telling. The poems in this collection have been selected from a daily output written over the last year. The seasons unfold against a backdrop of local and international events. Scandal, debacle, the Jubilee and the London Olympics are juxtaposed with more personal histories. The words of participants and of detached observers, find the tramp in Hyde Park valuing the broadsheet for its thermal quality and the young boy experiencing his first football match just after the publication of the Hillsborough Report. The collection provides poems that are structurally diverse, but common to all is a truth seen from the perspective of the persona, both public and private.
Mrs Godbothers and other Musings on the Seven States of Man
The collection is based on the Seven States of Modern Man – a modification of Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages” from “As you Like It”. In turns lyrical and wistful, juxtaposed with the harsher realities and bitter ironies of today’s society, they are about someone, no-one, everyone…
Poetry, more than prose, is by its nature personal but this collection is more a universal comment on the sometime hypocrisy of the modern age. ‘Twas ever thus…as well as on the human condition of growing up and growing old and occasionally slaying dragons. In addressing the cynical perspective of the older generation’s take on ‘yuf culcher’ and on society’s flaws as well as recognising the eternal optimism and honesty of the young, we hope to catch the reader’s imagination.
The short stories extend and build on the ideas in the poems and vice versa.
With inspiration taken from history, literature and experience, many of the stories focus on the female condition as mother, lover, daughter, sister, friend and confidante and the inherent highs and lows that accompany such roles. This collection has been created over 20 years of observation of and participation in the human condition. This is the first collaboration between the writers, who are friends.