Outside Looking In

“A characteristic of autism can be a difficulty using speech to express thoughts, feelings, and experiences. However, there is often an eloquence in self-expression using the arts, including poetry. Clare’s sensitive and engaging poems provide an insight into her mind and her autism.”
Professor Tony Attwood, author of The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome.
What if you were given a life-altering diagnosis at 57? One that meant you aren’t who you thought you were? But one that explained everything?
These poems vibrate with intensity and curiosity about life, and because she came to this knowledge so late in life, many of Clare Smith’s poems focus not so much on what it means to be autistic, but on what it means to be human.
Throughout her life, as she struggled to fit into a world that to her was utterly strange, she poured her hopes, her joys and at times her despair into words.
She trained as a journalist, taught to cut out all emotion from her reporting, but her private writing is different – she created poetry that spoke to her deepest needs. There, exposed in her writing, is her yearning to belong, her astonishment at the physical world, her knowledge – decades before the doctors confirmed it – that she is different.
She’s spent a lifetime trying to make sense of her life – a journey that many of us, whether autistic or neurotypical, are on, and one in which we all face the same questions.

Out Of 2020

2020 was different for all of us. It may have been difficult but if we look at it through a different lens and see how we can grow then it becomes a new experience – a way “Out of 2020.”

It is only when things become a challenge that we learn to grow and evolve. The last few years have become the start of a new revolution towards an experience we all need to achieve our purpose.

Ottilie Rose, A Collection of Poems

This book is many things but firstly it is heartfelt. It is about a father, a human observing life in every way it presents, through his personal struggles and the struggles of the world. The many big questions posed are underlined by the hope that the world can be a better place for his young daughter for whom this book is titled and all the children of the world and the future. Many books will be written about this world, its challenges, and its complexities. Ottilie Rose attempts to wade through all that through poetry such that through the artistic exploration of the human condition we might discover something more beautiful about us.

Oteng's Poems: Files of Wisdom Dialogue

Oteng's Poems: Files of Wisdom Dialogue; a collection of poems penned in a vibrant notion of an intuitive poet in an intrinsic verse... Conspired to inspire every reader to find solace in all emotional moments and events - only poems can do.

These wise words of wisdom are a mirror to reflect and a chance to resonate to all the inner thoughts and feelings within, relating to general life ordeals and experiences as well as nature as a whole.

Only Eternity Is Forever

There are many ways when sitting quietly whereby our emotions may be stirred. By pictures, static or moving, by sound, recorded or natural, by smell and even touch. However, the medium by which our minds have most latitude to wander is the written word. This can be in many forms but the one which arguably makes the lasting impression is poetry.

Circumstances may change but the memories live on.

One Year on My Hundred

In the vibrancy of nature’s year, the author dances through fields of flowers in his wondrous relationship, ever-thinking to be married. Smiles and fast pace leave little time to pause and to just be. After the death of his father, he realises that the very things that make him so happy have become scars to his thoughts.

His mind’s comfort zone throughout is under the protective canopy of the trees. Every day, the changing skies affect his well-being, and by looking upwards, he wonders of the liberty of flying and what lies beyond. Maybe there is a heaven.

Set to the backdrop of Hazlemere and the Buckinghamshire landscape, the book allows the reader to realise the beauty of life; however, each person needs an angel, whether religious or not.

While in Barbados, he walks happily on beaches, yet the sands hold the sadness of the death.

Sewn through the pages are ribbons that are his show of emotion and pride.

This is a book where each poetic piece is complete in its own right but it needs to be read from page one to the end to appreciate how the common themes pass through.

One Journey Tells a Thousand Stories

This book is filled with poems that will speak to the individual’s soul. Words coming from experiences that many have been through. From a person’s darkest times to their brightest days, their lowest moments to their highest points – a book of truth that’s refreshing to the mind. A book that shows courage, strength and spirit from each story that is hidden between the lines of every poem that is read. From tales of love to the fights a person is forced to face, the wars inside a person’s mind to the friendships formed along each journey, a troubled past to the future that can and needs to be, a child in its first days on this earth to the time that child is ripped away.

A relatable collection that will take your mind to its most vulnerable points and open your eyes to feelings that many have felt but have never understood. 

Old Jim's Poems for Kids, Young and Old

James Tweddle has composed poems of wide appeal.  Whether the readers are nine years old or even younger, or eleven years old or even older, this book contains many poems to capture and hold their interest.

'Are you interested in conserving our natural resources? .... or satisfying your curiosity about natural phenomena? ..... or wondering how it was possible for a shark to have a pirate's leg growing out ofthe top of its head? .... or enjoying reading of conversations between animals? ... or heeding warnings about catching crabs? ... or going fishing? .... or watching fairies in the back garden? ... or nonsense poems about imaginary creatures?........... then this book is for you!

Whatever your interests, it is to be hoped that you have been lured to dip in, become immersed, firmly hooked, and well and truly caught, by reading or listening to this illustrated book of poems, which is available in paperback, hard cover or e-book editions.

Off my head, love and other excuses for poetry

'This book covers the beginning and end of a close friendship. Some of these poems were very hard to write, but I used them as therapy. I hope that other people can relate to these poems as words they found hard to express themselves.' Julie Tsiricos

Of Masks And Mirrors

Of Masks and Mirrors is a collection of poetry written over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. A year that has struck the entire world deeply but has more than ever taught us the value of art – be it literature, music, visual art, or poetry.
This collection has sought to combine reverence for the past greats and the long-standing tradition of English literature with a sense of actuality and innovation. Traditional form and meter are indispensable to Capelle’s verse and style of writing.
This work is to be a journey through a world where the territory is not always tranquil and safe, at times even treacherous and completely lost in archaism. This journey, however, will always find herself back in the marvels, wonders and miracles of (human) nature and whatever beauty it is that we have been granted possession over. Its purpose is very much to console, reassure and comfort every soul that comes along, as literature has always managed to do. 

Observations

These poems are observations on personal experiences, memories, philosophy, mental illness, and other topics. They are an attempt to express myself despite a long struggle with depression. They are short poems, designed to convey themes and ideas concisely. Topics covered span from reflections on spirituality, to childhood memories, to historical figures and more.

Nomadness

Always visions of other lands haunt my ravaged mind and the ghosts of old lovers swirl in the fog of my brain. Habits and routine are my captors, the jailers that speak to me of bounds, fences and walls, yet my soul flies on the wild wind, searching for a home. I long to burn across new terrain like a meteor crashing through the dull and nebulous layers of this tired earths’ atmosphere. When shall I walk among the foothills of the Old Gods and feel new breezes blow through this shattered mind? To set the senses reeling and lose myself in the swirling fog of new emotion.

Everything is growing, bursting out of itself like an explosion and creatures mass and swarm at some silent command. Is this the hand of God stirring his pot of wonders?

And then the storms and the wild winds, the constant rains although warm- still crazy and without reason. All of nature here spinning and weaving, screaming in the minds of men. Here is the torrent,  the onrush of life, the lesson to be learned, easily given and so readily taken up by poets and dreamers. Wild living, careless exaggeration, wonders of creation, the Psalms of the fields and forests.

Listen then, listen to the songs and hear their frantic message, for there is a force greater than any man can know that is flowing faster than an avalanche. Eye and limb, branch and spore- nature has gone mad and man is afraid because the spirits of old lives are whistling in the wind.