Poems: Present and Past

It was the passing of my partner Carol in mid-March 2026 after almost seven years together that prompted me to put this small collection of poems and one piece of prose together. It is divided into three parts.

The opening section is ‘For Carol’, a set of nine short poems that draw together my grief and feelings that our journey together could not have gone on longer. The second part is a piece of prose. It is one of the few pieces of fiction that I have written and the only one to survive the ravages of time. Originally composed in May 1972, I have tinkered with it on several occasions over the years.

The final and longest portion of the book ‘Poems from the Past’ is a selection of poems written largely between 1970 and 1976 when I was in university at Reading and in my first teaching post in Bury St. Edmunds. It is about half of what I wrote in these years and I have chosen poems that I see as most relevant to my life then and my life today.