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The Beginnings
From being very young I enjoyed words. It was probably at primary school that I was encouraged to put thoughts into rhyme, but my father was also "well versed" and apart from a love of Lancashire dialect, including many poems, he used to write verse on birthday cards and other greetings. That made rhyming seem normal and he encouraged my early efforts.
Before age nine I too had put pen to paper and must have been pleased simply to make lines scan and rhyme. I was interested in "Nature Study", as we called it, and built up my own collection of nature books out of which I gleaned facts that worked their way into my verses. Therefore many of these early rhymes related to birds, animals and the countryside. But there were other "poetic" themes that it is interesting to identify now, and that probably begin to give insights into the development of one small boy in the 1950's.
After the early efforts, there was a long gap before I resumed writing late in my school life, and a little at university. Most of my output, though, comes from the early years of my professional life, when I was young, single and travelling. I always wrote to express inner feelings, and those feelings often included loneliness, relationships with girls, thoughts about society and (I'm glad to say) some humour. I can imagine the reader experiencing a variety of emotions, including embarrassment, but hope that he or she will also find some entertainment and occasionally be moved.
Because my efforts in verse always gave me some satisfaction I preserved a good number of them on a variety of single sheets of paper. My father typed-out most of my childish efforts and I still have the manuscripts and his typed versions for those. I've now decided to publish these efforts on the internet, and though I've called this section 'My Poems it would surely be more accurate to describe most of my output as 'verse' not 'poetry'. |
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