Poems on the Dee
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A collection of poems inspired by Chester's River Dee, commemorating a period when the author had accommodation 'worthy of a poet' in an old villa commanding a fine view of the Dee. Price of book: £7.00
28 Pages Published by The Friarswood Press in 1997 ISBN: 9780952583523
Extracts
QUINTET
Amazons five today took to the water
Four rowers and their stroke
Bore their slim vessel forth
floating on shapely limbs,
Then set her gently down ...
AUTUMN ON THE DEE
Summer's cheeks have paled
Her heart's pulse falters
And her tresses fade...
FIRST SIGNS
...Not so long now before the first faint engine
Popples and coughs, half-choked, into the tide.
And the first whey-faced couple limp aboard
To steer their dead-slow carefully fool-proofed craft
That never lifts its voice to the neutered pedal.
CORMORANT
...Silently preparing For new dark deeds below.
Suddenly his plans erupt:
His whole black body tilts into a lunge
That plunges him from view
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This illustration volume of poems commemorates a period when its author, a hard-working lecturer in Chester (mainly on the Renaissance) beside being editor of the Chester Poets anthologies for nearly twenty years, had accommodation 'worthy of a poet' in an old villa commanding a fine view of the Dee. The remarkable effects of light and atmosphere apart, which as a frustrated artist the author has recorded here with some ecstatic word-painting, a number of dramas occurred during his period by the Dee which have also left their mark, not least the gradual freezing over the river in the harsh winter of 1981-2. Several poems in the collection have won more than local acclaim, and one figured in the author's recent prize-winning volume, Sonnets to my Goddess, about the great love of his life whom he met in Chester. Being a 'civic patriot' of the Renaissance type, he wanted to give back to the City something of the enrichment he has derived from it. Hence this little volume.