In December 2020, my first collection of poems was published. It's actually much more than that - poems - for it is a joint creation with my great friend and photographer, JF Robert, so contains a selection of his beautiful pictures as well.
As it explains in the Introduction, the poems and photographs are each drawn from two worlds. Here, in New Zealand - in the Top of the South - where we both now live and where we got to know each other. And from our other lives beyond, in Britain (me) and in France (JF).
Their subject is reflections, in all their different forms. Reflections in nature, reflections in thought, and the transmutation that each implies, one thing reflected by another. The poems and pictures are about the beauty of nature, and its ambiguities. They are about life and the things it brings and takes away, and the patterns it makes. And they are about art and the need to listen and to see, and never to give up on that search for understanding.
Words and pictures may seem different, yet at heart they are one. Each is a means of communicating, remembering, knowing. They speak in different languages, yet they speak of the same things. They do not tell the same story, nor follow the same path. Yet they talk to each other.
On this page I give a few brief extracts from the book. To purchase a copy, visit the CopyPress website, or contact your local bookseller.
As it explains in the Introduction, the poems and photographs are each drawn from two worlds. Here, in New Zealand - in the Top of the South - where we both now live and where we got to know each other. And from our other lives beyond, in Britain (me) and in France (JF).
Their subject is reflections, in all their different forms. Reflections in nature, reflections in thought, and the transmutation that each implies, one thing reflected by another. The poems and pictures are about the beauty of nature, and its ambiguities. They are about life and the things it brings and takes away, and the patterns it makes. And they are about art and the need to listen and to see, and never to give up on that search for understanding.
Words and pictures may seem different, yet at heart they are one. Each is a means of communicating, remembering, knowing. They speak in different languages, yet they speak of the same things. They do not tell the same story, nor follow the same path. Yet they talk to each other.
On this page I give a few brief extracts from the book. To purchase a copy, visit the CopyPress website, or contact your local bookseller.
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Winter morning
Winter morning, frost barely a degree away. The grass is grey, gaunt trees stilled. At the edge of the lawn a large buck rabbit sits motionless; and the air catches its breath as if waiting to see which way the day might go. 
Time
Time drags her heels so slowly, early on, then all too soon picks up her skirts and hurtles to oblivion. |
A day for poetry
This is a day for poetry The land is wistful the sun misty-eyed the flat and silent sea reflective and at its edge a heron stands pen poised waiting for inspiration but the dun sands remain blank until at last an ambling mongrel obliges and dashes off a quick verse of doggerel. |
Kaikoura earthquake, November 14th 2016
In those moments when the land heaved and the house shook like an old man with palsy and at the bottom of the hill the water slapped and slopped in the lake like a child in a bath, it was not the earth that seemed to tremble but life’s more cosy certainties those things we knew would endure and be with us always: tomorrow’s sun and the winter’s rain blood-red wine in the glass with the flicker of firelight in it and in the spring the gleeful return of the godwits; the laughter of friends the dog’s welcome wag and you at my side for ever 
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