I’ve been making occasional poems for around fifty years. I’ve intermittently had a few published in local poetry magazines but really without much success. I suppose this is due to poor quality, a lack of interesting content and the multiplicity of talented poets out there who are engaging and have something important to say. My poems are usually introspective, with a penchant for self pity, so it is not much wonder they fail to meet the mark.
I’m publishing these pieces in no particular chronological order but they range in date of composition from around 1970 until 2020. Many are autobiographical in conception but often veer away into fictional development. Some deal with family, others are love poems; there are political themes and they sometimes deal with disillusionment and lost dreams, whilst others are satirical or polemical and there are occasional attempts at humour.
I’ve had a varied working life, doing all kinds of jobs including labourer, bin worker, bus driver, railway worker and trade union official. I’m now retired and looking to amuse myself through this Covid19 lockdown. Hence this project to publish online a few of these poems that have been sitting in files, fading to dust in some cases, over the last five decades.
Poems, Polemicks and Licks 