Village of Stones

Now available as an e-book, Village of Stones was first published in 2007, distilling twenty years of poetic endeavour. There are also serious poems with a humorous twist, humorous pieces with a serious twist. There are love poems or rather, poems about love. There are poems about death, about the natural world, about life in the city. They have been described variously as surrealistic, shamanic, imagist, mystical and ‘imbued with a restless modernism’.

There are also salutations and memorials to a couple of my favourite poets: Vasko Popa, a Serbian poet of the last century whose work is a marriage of traditional folklore and modern surrealism; and Li Ho (aka Li He), a poet of Tang dynasty China, described as a demonic genius.

The pieces vary from haiku-like to jazzy with imagery from city life with touches of classical culture, echoes of bible stories and the life of the wanderer. Readers can spot influences including the poetry of Ezra Pound, the lyrics of Cole Porter and Captain Beefheart, and also the poetry of folk traditions and indigenous cultures.

Some of the poems in this collection are available as a spoken word album here on nakedlight.co.uk. Some are set to music and sung by Claudia van Buren. Some are supported by the music of Paul Cheneour. The music ranges from Delta blues, to Sufi, from atonal to jazz. Village of Stones was also published in a bilingual edition by Editorial Ultramarina of Seville with the Spanish translations by poet, José Manuel Camacho.