One of the more surprising thing for me that has arisen in recent years is the desire, and maybe even a bit of ability, to write poetry.  I know exactly when this happened – it is one of the fruits of attending the Men’s Rites of Passage event.  It introduced me to accessible poetry again, having been put off ever so slightly at school.  The poetry I discovered was soulful and almost mystical, and it gave me an insight into explaining things, or expressing things in less linear or black and white ways.  Communicating feelings, emotions, sensations as word pictures instead of just ‘as it is’ gave the opportunity to work things out.

So, my little voyage into poetry has been one of surprises.  I’ve written several which have helped me process things from earlier life that had been a part of me getting ‘stuck’.  The literal writing of the poem helped to recognise and mark the event/experience as an aid for both moving on and remembering.  Remember literally means to put things back together.

I’ve occasionally posted the odd poem to Facebook, and folks seem to appreciate them, so I decided to publish a little volume of poems called ‘Faintest Glories.’  These are poems of things I’ve started to see in sharper focus amidst some confusion and uncertainty, and even amidst diversity.  ‘Feet Like Lead’, for example, expresses a low day during my most recent major depressive episode.  There, I tried to capture both tiredness and weariness, but also the sense of hope and desire for release that I was feeling at the time.  ‘Tea and Toast’ is simply a word picture summarising the life of my grandmother, who was the great matriarch of our family who I miss dreadfully.  ‘Faintest Glories’ and ‘Essense’ talk about increasing spiritual awareness, and ‘Latesummer’ talks about discerning when things are fading away from us but embracing what will come in its place.

This little volume of 24 poems will soon be complete and available, its currently in the final stages at the publishers/printers, and can soon be yours for just £5.99.  I’ll publish more details when they’re finalised.