I hope over the last couple of months many of you have had the chance to read my first poetry book – ‘It’s a Funny Thing, Life‘, and have been looking forward to some more. I am exciting to announce that today, my second book of poetry has been released, it is called “Rioting Against The Odds.” With this new release, I thought I would give you my customary blog about how I ended up here with this book.
Note: This book in a later edition became ‘Moon Dreams‘.
I have always loved writing poetry. As I write it seems to stir into being deeper emotions and fire up feelings from places within that aren’t usually reached. It is a joyful aesthetic experience which is like no other.
It started some years ago when I joined a website to show my poems to readers and fellow poets. I joined for three reasons, first was to get a better idea of how my poems would be received. Second was to enjoy other poets’ work, and lastly it was to measure their standard against mine in order to improve my writing. Each poem would get a rating out of 5 stars and comments could be left. It was a very good way to see where my poetry skills stood and to see how I could improve.
At first, I received 3-4 stars and nice comments. A little later I received my first 5-star review and feeling pretty chuffed about that I continued on. Later as I progressed in skill, I thought to mix my second love, writing stories with my poetry writing! I decided to write a short and dramatic adventure story in the form of a rhyming poem.
To my delight it was very well received. In fact, better than my usual poems! I had managed to satisfy together both my urge to write a story and to write a poem.
These adventure poems take me longer to compose than my other style as there is always a beginning, middle and an end to a dramatic story and my game was to make it rhyme! I never minded though as I always enjoy writing these stories. I find that during that time I get to live in the world of that poem – lots of fun!
Through that gradually emerged what came to be known as my poems of dramatic adventure. Of course, I love writing about love, life and the wonders of nature and man in general. However, I found myself really getting into the drama of men and woman’s heroic struggles against the trials and tribulations of life. The contest of life against other people and and whatever nature can throw against them.
Now, with my first book of poetry ‘It’s A Funny Thing, Life’ doing well, I am excited to be able to put together a book of the all these gritty adventure poems of living life against the odds in combination with some beautiful illustrations in, “Rioting Against The Odds.”
I do hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
