THE AUTHOR

Who am I?

I am a Birmingham born poet now living in North Warwickshire. I am a keen student of life in all its forms and guises. My later life has given me the opportunity to more fully explore the only talents I had ever possessed at school, those of expression of thoughts and feelings by means of the written word, in particular poetry.

What do I do?

Anything to satisfy my ever present search for self expression through properly constructed, rhyming verse. My first offering was a small anthology entitled “Brummy Gems” which reflected my early life with all its ups and downs in eighteen poems ranging from the humorous to the tragic. Having learnt my craft in the production of this volume I became obsessed with the idea of attempting to portray other people’s feelings in the same way and, during this process I became keenly interested in the period of our history known as the Great War although I cannot imagine how any event which resulted in such wholesale slaughter, destruction, human misery and suffering could possibly be called “great” but I surmise that the greater the suffering, the greater the feelings and these are what I am trying to portray in my work, so perhaps that is why this period has such a hold on me.

This resulted in my visiting the battlefields of Belgium and northern France on many occasions and my walks through those now silent fields resulted in the production of a small anthology entitled “Front Lines” which was extremely well received on local radio and in my home city. The confidence that this success gave me meant that my visits to the battlefields and the area of the Somme in particular increased as did my poetic output resulting in the thirty one poems contained within my successfully published illustrated book “The Going Down of the Sons”

What I do

I believe that the messages contained within my book “The Going Down of the Sons“ are so important that I have prepared an illustrated talk telling of its inception and containing selected readings from it. It is of around fifty minute’s duration and I have, to date, delivered it approximately fifty times

I am happy to deliver it within a 50 mile radius of my home free of charge but I do bring along copies of my book at a heavily discounted rate of £5.00 per copy which I am happy to sign after my talk for any of the audience who may wish to purchase one.

I do this in the hope that my book, which was brought to life during my talk, can be fully explored and appreciated long after it has ended and that the talk and my work may gain increased acknowledgement and uptake. In this way the sacrifice of those in whose memory the book was written will, hopefully, be perpetuated