Poetry

John Waddell comments on the events of daily life with a dry humour. He loves his garden and is passionate about his native Scotland, but deplores the blight of modern town planning and the litter in the streets. His comments on human nature - not excluding his own foibles - show a wryly comic insight.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT is a well known phrase, often used - and this time Beth Richards hopes her latest title will give some readers just that - Food for Thought! In our present generation of the 21st Century folk are living their lives as though on a treadmill. They may be going faster and faster - but, like a treadmill, they are going nowhere fast. Time and money seem to be of the essence in everything. Primary Care Trusts are only interested in their target figures!

Beth Richards has written many of the poems in Food for Thought relating to everyday life - life in this hectic 21st Century. She hopes that in this book many readers may be helped to live life to the full - to live in the present and not wish the precious gift of life away. The last poem `Final Curtain Call' comes to us all one day. We should make sure it's later rather than sooner!

Gleanings, observations, some triggered by life’s occurrences and the poet’s affection for Scotland and Northumbria comprise this small volume. In the author’s words, “Poems started ‘coming through’ when I was just over forty. One never quite knows when this will happen—but Scotland was often responsible.”

A new collection of Beth Richards' inspiring poems and prose pieces.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

My aim in this book of poems and prose is to reach out to a number of readers – therefore I’ve written about many different subjects, which will almost certainly touch the hearts of many.  Maybe some of the subjects will even help someone with a similar problem in his or her life to find a solution – a form of self-help!

Book Description

Alone in the chasm of a fractured mind, sits a solitary figure. This man has seen beyond the horrors of madness to a place where shadows have a voice. That voice is heard only by those who are lost to reason. That voice is A Scream, from the Shadows.

Nomadic Inspirations from the Rear-view Mirror is your guide to the journey of your life. If you ever had any questions that were never fully answered, then get ready to experience the ride that is your life.

Two poets - two worlds: poems of deep and humorous reflections (set in England) contrasted with poems of stark reality (set in South Africa and elsewhere).

This is Nick Armbrister’s third collection of poems and his fourth book. It has poems that didn’t make his first two collections due to a variety of reasons. He didn’t think some of his early poems were up to standard; these he edited and rewrote; some poetry was too personal in nature, like relationship ones. Also, poetry that repeated the same subject matter never made the first two books. In later years, after re-reading his poetry, Nick decided to bring all of his remaining unpublished work together in this new volume – poems written during the years 1996-2008. The work changes in depth, quality and subject matter and most of the poems have never been published before. Nick continues his passionate, multi-emotional and often left-of-centre work in these poems. Nick has always been drawn to the weird and wonderful. While his poems are often simple and brittle, they make a graphic and powerful impact that cuts like broken glass.

limb Aboard My Bus is a guided tour through the poet’s imaginative mind. It is a potpourri of vivid pictures, moods and emotions. The poems are gems that sparkle with pleasing rhyme and vivid life!

Read the author's latest blog entry! Click here.

The second volume of contemporary poetry on various subjects from poet/writer Nick Armbrister for an uncontemporary world: startling and imaginative themes and images.

Other Formats: Hard Cover (£13.00)| Adobe eBook

Cover shows Jesus Christ as depicted by Saint Sister Faustina – a Catholic Nun whose vision of Christ was given to her by JESUS himself.

The book brings together devotional poems inspired by Thomas à Kempis and a cover picture of Christ as seen by Sister Faustina in 1931 with the following promise of Our Lord: “I promise that the soul that will venerate this picture will not perish. I further promise to that soul victory over its enemies."

Love Songs to Jehovah is a collection of deeply personal and spiritual poems that show how God’s mercy and love brought about a revolution in the author’s life, from unrequited earthly love to the deep fulfilment and joy of divine love through the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Contemporary poetry on various subjects from poet/writer Nick Armbrister for an uncontemporary world!

A collection of life-pictures in words. Warm, funny, poignant and well-observed.

In this intriguing collection of sincere and heartfelt poems, Beth Richards, the “Wise Owl”, brings us more gems of wisdom that become beacons for guidance through the everyday problems and joys of life. Writing of friendship, dreams, love and destiny, her overall message in is to be positive and to appreciate the wondrous gifts in our lives.

Inspirational poems in two parts—deep, honest thoughts and feelings, and humorous insights from chocolates to supermarket trolleys that will strike a common chord!

Chill Out With Beth combines an enchanting fairy story for children with poems that are gems of wisdom and insight relevant to both young and old in the journey of life. Writing of friendship, dreams, love and destiny, her overall message in is to be positive and to appreciate the wondrous gifts in our lives.

For this slim volume of poetry, Beth Richards has drawn inspiration from her own experiences to produce a thoughtful collection of verse. Although the topics vary, the over­riding message is be positive and don’t overlook, or take for granted, the many wondrous gifts in your life as you struggle over the obstacles that fate places in your path.

Lewis Carroll's long nonsense poem, “The Hunting of the Snark”, about 10 bachelors on a journey of discovery, is here depicted as a sexual journey of discovery, darkly overshadowed by the danger of AIDS. The amazing pictures by Allan Williams— recording every strange experience and exotic encounter the poem contains—are full of ingenious surprises, plentifully supported by his annotations of the text. The Bellman is tingling his bell. Dare you come on board for the journey of a lifetime?

Mary Jamuna's terse and concise poems make a much-needed statement of universal love and acceptance in a world in the grip of materialism and institutionalised beliefs, thinking and prejudices. The poet has been true to her Great Spirit muse.

This is the third book of poems by John Waddell, following the publication of his first very successful collection, The Flying Snail and his second book, A Glimpse of Eden. This time all the poems are written in the beautiful, rich, and descriptive Scots language familiar to all brought up north of the border.

This collection of simple and honest poems will scream out in self-validation as it tracks the author’s ups, downs and observations through a wide range of human experience and emotions.

Inspired by the landscape, spirit and way of life of the West Highlands and Islands of Scotland, these poems question, delight and entertain. Absorb, enjoy, then read again.

These poems by Peter Finch reflect a wide range of human experience—love, anger, comedy, war and remembrance, some of the most moving being his response to nature.

Every Emotion: Hebridean Poetry. Poems by George Carle.

(Writers Club Press, 2000.)   

Sample the magic of the Hebrides and share the emotions and insights of the doctor-poet George Carle in this, his first poetry collection.
US price: $11.95    U K price: £9.99

Unsophisticated Verses and Lyrics                 
by Filton Hebbard   

US price: $19.95      UK price: $16.99
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 366
ISBN: 0-595-25627-9
Publication Date: Nov-2002         Other Formats: Hard Cover  $29.95
 

The verses and lyrics in this collection, by an Australian author and poet, are refreshing, being sincere and direct expressions of feeling and meaning in an age where poems and songs so often fail to communicate by being pretentious and self-conscious.

Just before I say “I do”
Inspirational poems
by D E Rollins   

US price: $12.95      UK price: £10.99
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 154
ISBN: 0-595-26264-3
Publication Date: Dec-2002

The colloquial immediacy of these poems in free verse convey the stark anguish of the poet’s soul and earthy yearnings as she encounters pre-marital tensions, made all the more poignant by her overriding love of God, her constant companion and provider.

The Half-Closed Eye. Poems by Maria Katrakis

                           Johannesburg: Justified Press, 1994.  52 pp.       £9.50

(STOP PRESS: this anthology is currently out of print. A new anthology is being compiled. Notification will be given here as soon as new stocks are received!)

Although concerned with time and memory, many of the poems in this anthology focus on people. Maria Katrakis sketches their joys and their sorrows in splinter-sharp, lyrical poems which universalise the human situation. She is not a detached observer but a centre of consciousness, fully a part of the suffering or happiness she depicts. If unrequited hope is the main theme linking her poems together, it is because the 'half-closed eye' does not evade the realities of modern life.

Maria Katrakis has written numerous educational articles and various study guides. She is the author of radio plays and has been a finalist in both the Amstel Playwright of the Year and Young Africa Award literary competitions. She is the first woman to win the Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award from the University if the Witwatersrand, for a poetry anthology. 

Maria Katrakis is a founder member of the Hellenic Ladies Association and of the Students Hellenic Association.

Here is a sample poem from this excellent anthology:

Spiderwise

                                                                                                                 Maria  Katrakis

Insights and Outsights.   Poems by Roy Holland.                                                                                       Cape Town: David Philip.  39 pp.    Other works by Roy Holland
 

  ISBN 0864861214   £5.95                     

 

This is a selection of the work of a mature poet, spanning poems written in his youth in England and later in Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Greece and South Africa. Many have appeared in journals in England, the USA and South Africa.

"The poems cover a wide range of topics and continents and are almost without exception filled with memorable images ...    Insights and Outsights is an impressive collection and one to which readers will often return, not only to enjoy the product of a writer at home with his gift but for the incisive dissection of subject matter."  EH, Cape Times.

Here is a sample from this anthology:

                                        Mantid

                                Outside, musty as damp wool scarves,

                                 The dark coiled back on itself

                                 Like life mouldering in a plumstone.

                                But she was alive there,

                                Transparent on the window-pane,

                                Insatiate with her own green light.

                                At the angles of her head

                               The bald green eyes looked inward,

                                Outward, watching the juices

                               Of divination run through her long flanks,   

                                Her two razors of supplication

                                Hone themselves on prayer.

                                How her angled-backward legs,  

                                Thin as fuses, kept her steady on the glass

                                I do not know. It was clear

                               Her meagre wings held no notion of flying.

                               And her triangular head, though tilted, was still.   

                               But her body was swaying.

                               It must have taken skill  

                               To reach the fused wire of her mate's claw

                               Twitching out its voltage in her mouth.

                               She seemed to have no sense of loss,

                               Regret. No salivation; an appetite merely.

                               Something to satisfy. I moved my eyes.

                              The sad attenuations of the willows

                               Leaked palely under the electric lamps.  

                              The dark was chilled below their griefs.

                              Her breath is a green frost; famine her mandibles.  

                              And time is browsing, mantis-jawed, on the delicate

                              Distal of my foot.  I am digestible.

                                                                                                 Roy   Holland