When I first started work on my seasonal themed books, The End of Summer back in 2011 I never thought it would take 5 years to write telling myself it likely would take a year maybe two like my first debut book ‘Return to Kemptown’ took.
This was far from the case of course and I told myself with what became my third book ‘The Birth of Autumn’, I would never spend five years working on one book and was quietly proud of myself I managed to write that book in a little over 2 and a half years and thought to myself if I was lucky, I would get the third of my seasonal books ‘In the Midst of Winter’ done towards the end of 2020.
First of all, we had a number of emergencies to deal with including nearly losing my father to a heart attack at the end of 2019, Amanda (my now wife) moving in with me when her flat got swamped by mice and then my mother getting rushed into hospital not long after my father and by the time we got them both out and home, the country then went into lockdown which delayed everything and saw me write loads of haikus, Tankas and Sonnet trying to keep my head fresh while everybody else lost theirs.
The Midst of Winter was designed to be a follow on from The End of Summer and The Birth of Autumn as a rest after suffering a trauma (which was of course dealing with Diabetes) before being able to carry rebuilding yourself into Spring (Which I still want to write it has to be said someday).
The book however changed a lot over the four year period it got wrote (like both with the Summer and Autumn books) with dozens of poems originally designed for the book not ending up in there atall and in surprising ways too with how short some of the poems that got wrote that appeared in the book.
In the Birth of Autumn, there are quite a few really short poems but there are certainly not Haiku sequences such as “4 Haikus outside at Christmas in Yorkshire” or the 9 Haiku sequence “Winter Haiku”, all of which were inspired by learning how to write Haiku over that summer of 2020.
Other changes which happened over this period was the 4 part sequence ‘4 Endings’, earlier examples of which featured in my 4th full length book ‘The Streets were all we could see’ where I started experimenting with flash fiction in the form of Poetry where instead of writing full length poems or flash fiction (which if anybody knows me now would know has being a major part of my writing over the past six months or so) I simply wrote the endings of 4 poems / pieces and let the endings tell the story.
In the Midst of Winter upon reflection displays a massive change in gears of me as a poet and a writer showing sides of the three books ‘The Streets were all we could see’ right through to ‘Haiku of Life’ as well as pieces which actually pre-dated Return to Kemptown and The End of Summer which only kinda made sense upon reaching this book.
Like with The End of Summer more than any book wrote before, this likely was my hardest book to write to date only really making sense to me from about November to January or February every year teasing itself out piece by piece until like I said before felt like a completely different book by the end off it.
Something I wouldn’t have had any other way.
Videos for several of these poems in these book are:
In the Midst of Winter 1 Here and Here
In the Midst of Winter 2 Here and Here
In the Midst of Winter 3 Here and Here
In the Midst of Winter 4 Here and Here
Backwards Sea Art on the Sea Front Here and Here
Burial of Emotions Here and Here
Last Train from New Mills Here and Here
Unmoved by Words Here and Here
Remains of a Christmas Day Beach Party Here and here
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