Looking Back

Whilst waiting to hear from the flurry of literary agents I have contacted so far with my first novel ‘Carrick and Trispen’, I have been reviewing old writings and more recent shorts and poetry.  I have been surprised at the things I have forgotten about.  Bold, profane, obscene sometimes, but always honest.  I have the makings of a small volume of poetry. 

I have also been editing my father’s poetry. He left a collection in various forms, some of it on the reverse of pieces of old Admiralty drawing papers marked ‘Top Secret’ – he was an electrical engineer working in the Admiralty drawing offices in Bath.  He always had an interest in poetry and read and collected poetry until his death in 2024.  His is mostly verses, or snippets, themes that re-appear in longer pieces that he had been developing.  If I put a volume together I will include his works as a Coda to my own.

I will compile and order my ideas and think of thematic ways of presenting them so there is some coherence that I at least could recognise.  I used to say that I wrote ‘bad poetry’ in prose form and still do in my journals.  But the actual poems are better conceived and balanced.  Undoubtably not to all tastes and probably owe more to Walt Whitman’s approach than typical English poetry.  I have always been influenced by modern American Literature and rate Henry Miller, Alex Baldwin and Hunter S Thompson as the influences for my casual writing.  That writing will never see the light of publishing in my lifetime but, vainly, I would hope that some poor editor would have the unenviable task of trying to make sense of all the undated papers and journals which are dated but intermittent plus dozens of notebooks full of observations and rants.

It is reassuring to find that earlier work has some merit to my older and wiser eye.  It all gives hope to the venture into writing full time.