Beats! Ballads! Blank Verse!: From Long Ago (Paperback)

The key to this collection of poetry lies in the title: From Long Ago which works as a theme. The poems explore age old concerns, often articulated through myth and legend but importantly how it is now. How it was once is brought up to date. The references are accessible and mediated with the issues of love and longing. Some of these poems can be seen as concentrated stories. And details lie in familiar locations, coastal liminal zones are frequent and on the edge of here and there. The future, the past and the present in an immediate array. Places in Cornwall and Birmingham are explicit and named and recognisable but still speak a universal truth. The understanding between lines and spaces between words move on.(with a cover by Adrian Baldwin)