From the Mountain to the Waterfall

Come one, come all

Lace up your boots

It’s time for the hike

Side by side

Or single file, if you like

Pack your bag

With new & the old

The familiar, yet unfamiliar

Dress for the cold

Off on the journey, sticks in the ground

The guide leads the way

No map to be found

One foot in front of the other

The sun up ahead

The path unfamiliar

Companions, friends, lovers

Waiting to be led

From Inside The Beast

'The wild waters
Spoke in frenzied sounds
The thunder about a mile away
Barrel staves from the bayside
Broke through the Beach
Finally free
When the water and the wind
Swept the sand away...'

This is a collection of 100 poems and appropriations of the many hundreds Salander wrote while serving time in the New York State Department of Corrections.

From Heart to Mind to Words

Indulge in a poetic journey that unravels the essence of self and the enigmatic human conundrum, beckoning you to embark on a path of profound self-evaluation. These poems serve as mirrors, reflecting perspectives uniquely tailored to each reader’s individuality, fostering non-judgmental introspection on a deeply personal level.

The author draws from life’s observations, ingeniously crafting verses that encapsulate universal questions and fleeting glimpses of potential answers – questions that resonate with every soul who encounters them. With each verse, the reader is compelled to transcend the ordinary negativities that shroud their true selves, paving the way for unhindered and retrospective analysis of their actions and motives.

The fluidity of the writing beckons the reader to be wholly present, free of distractions, and beckons them to reflect with unfiltered honesty. Each piece becomes an invitation to explore profound inquiries: Is this me? Do I recognize myself in these lines? Should I take action? Or, at the very least, can I become better?

Fox Spirit

In his third book of poetry, Wilson relates stories and dilemmas that grow out of the hidden tracks of everyday life, as they take us in time and outside of time.

In Fox Spirit, words are at play and hopefully even in the hardest poems we will still find happiness. From darkness they follow a light towards new understandings and discoveries.

Foraging

She can be found anywhere – sitting in a café, walking along a rocky beach, cramped in coach class, or bored at her desk. Heartbroken and lonely, she seeks solace, another chance, and redemption in snippets of words, phrases, and puzzling rhymes. These missives to others capture her passions, grief, and bubbly glee. Her mind fades in and out at these moments, almost drunkenly grabbing any napkin to jot down cryptic notes in pencil or pen before folding it haphazardly and shoving it into her wallet.

Years later, she retrieves these tattered memos and in the quiet of early morning coffee or late evening wine, she writes, drafts, edits, and trims, perfecting the feelings, capturing the place, time, and emotions that were almost lost.

For The Love of Poetry

John Butler-Hopkins’ For the Love of Poetry opens, appropriately enough, with a sequence of poems about romantic love in all its aspects: the dizzying ecstasies of infatuation and first love, then the brutal lessons of rejection and betrayal, and finally the discovery of a soul mate and the development of a true, long-term relationship.

By contrast, the book’s second half is concerned with the tragedy of young men going to fight in the First World War. Within this, the section ‘The Lost Letters’ combines the subjects of love and war as a soldier and his lover share memories of happier times while they live through the horrors of their current situation.

If you love to read about deep and powerful human-centred emotions, this is a book for you.

Follow The Wild Sky

Divided into six categories, the poems in Follow the Wild Sky reflect the author’s priorities, with his family coming first.
After poems about the family, the time and place poems react to events, including climate change and pandemics.
The island narrative poems probe some of the historical background to the shifting identities in Ireland and England. They dip down into pre-history and up again to the present day.
The commentary poems range from the serious to the frivolous.  The author hopes they are not too lecturing!
The poems of possibility attempt to wrap some metaphysics around the real world.
The science-fiction poems have been written as forerunners, in the style of treatments for a possible film script.
One of the reasons for the author’s writing is to exercise demons.

Finding God In The Midst of Depression

Have you ever felt so low and had no one to turn to? Or felt like this was the end but were still so afraid?
Do not fear, because there is someone who is always listening... GOD. Whether you believe or not, trust in Him and He can help you.
The poems in this collection were inspired and written through me by God. My story tells of how I became a Christian, enjoyed the highs and survived some very dark times. All thanks to God.
Asking for help, He healed me whilst I was in the midst of depression. He can heal you too.

Falling Leaves

The driving force of this book is the author’s lifelong fascination with human nature. Forty years in the law brought him into contact with a broader cross-section of society than most people would normally experience, or even wish to, and it is their strengths and weaknesses, values and doubts that shaped these poems.

The majority of these poems were written well into the author's retirement. As we know, the ageing process involves a shift in values, priorities and challenges. He faces these head on: dementia, faith, physical decline, even falling in love. Nothing is spared.

A word of caution. Many of the poems are simple and straightforward. And why not? Poetry is for everyone. Some appear simple and straightforward but have a twist or secondary current below the surface. Look out for them. In others the author sets out his views and throws down a gauntlet. In doing so he commits the cardinal sin of the modern age: he asks us to think.

Fall in Love with Your Mind

Fall in Love with Your Mind is a collection of poetry about the wayward notion of creativity as a force to combat darkness on the journey towards self-discovery. It is divided into sections dictating the continuous and frustrating feeling of time slipping away all too quickly on the path from mindless self-destruction, to heartbreak and hopelessness, to learning and growing.
Read each section whenever you feel you can relate to it the most, or when you feel you need it the most. That’s the thing about words on a page – they’re always there. Even if you burn them, the most important ones always remain safe and sound in your mind. Falling in love with your mind is the key to brighter days.
Make a coffee, light a cigarette, do whatever warms your soul; read and be present. You are right here, and that is always enough.

Fairy Tales of the Mind

Every story has a beginning, but what happens if you don’t remember that beginning? What if you realise that the few memories you have, are only of violence and neglect?

Anxiety rises, fear of abandonment is constant on your mind, fear of being unloved is eating you up, and the world you envisioned to be a fairy tale is destroyed. So, you comfort yourself by letting your mind wander, and you wait for someone to save you even after the abuse, despite knowing full well that it’s unhealthy. Knowing that those daydreams you have of dying are unhealthy.

You survived the physical abuse and the neglect by escaping reality and continually dreaming of fairy tales, but you became too engrossed in those dreams. Those dreams resulted in you creating an alternative world in your mind in which you craved to stay in – like an addict, forgetting entirely that there existed a world outside of those dreams.

This is a collection of poetry about mental illness and the impact of child abuse in adulthood.

Facing East at Sunset

Do you want to return to a time in your life when things were wonderful, filled with people you loved, with dreams that you had, when the world was simpler and the future glistened?
And do you wonder what happened, where did those years go?
The answer, my friend (no, not with Bob Dylan), is with you inside your head, all the good and some of the bad. The answer is writing it down – it’s still there – in poetry. Reading others, writing your own. Think back – it’s still there – look back, look forward… poetry. Do you recall those violet-infested walls of that old English church; that girl you saw and never forgot in a tavern once visited; that old town you first taught in and that noisily funny dunny-cart man; the fear of being trapped in a crashed car with petrol dripping; resting in love with a beautiful partner; dangling a line in a beautiful river with beautiful sons?
It’s all there, deep down, relived and reloved, in poetry.