Giving Light
'…the strangely haunting perspectives of ‘Last of the Spray Carnations’, the marvellous cynical whimsy of ‘The Cottage’; ‘The House of Sadness Past’; ‘The Sound of Eating’; ‘A Hamper from Landrake’ – terrific…a real poet'
K.M. Newmann, Summer Palace Press
'Outstanding – books beautifully produced aren’t normally matched by the contents, but this is. One of the finest books I've seen in a long, long time. Alan has a voice entirely his own. Stanza 4 of 'Last of the Spray Carnations' is worthy of Pound. 'Tears of mustard sun' - I wish I'd written that! The shorter poems too are excellent - wise, witty and full of feeling. 'The Cottage' is marvellous. At 63 when I read his work I feel there's hope for poetry still.' Barry Tebb, Sixties Press
'Some of the shorter poems seem to search for the self-referencing wisdoms of an isolated mind and remind one of the aphorisms of William Blake. All the poems strike sparks'
Graham High, Poetry Express
'...the four-liners have a Blakean feeling pulsating right the way through them. Every word counts. The poems, in their quirkiness, also remind me of Stevie' John Horder
'The booklet resonates with poems about the everyday meaning of being alive. ...Morrison is able to dip into the profound'
Doreen King, New Hope International
SOME POEMS FROM GIVING LIGHT
THE WATER SHALLOWS
While I was paddling in the water shallows
the ripples turned to waves,
the paddling to a wade.
While I tried to shallow my tumbling mind
the thoughts that swam in the water shallows
were chased as fish by the shadows of sparrows.
FORGIVE-ME-NOT
Let go. Forgive. Forget the bitterness
That buttresses when love is dead:
Most of what's said isn't meant
& most of what's meant isn't said.
OLD-FASHIONED SON
Eleven years old, I tried to reclaim
the past, inspired by a cottage's gloom –
the countryside's always the same
no matter what year: I furnished my room
with my dad's dog-eared books caked in dampstain
from The Black Arrow to Allan Quatermain.
On brumal mornings as a pale sun
lit thin curtains that filtered its rays,
I'd stick Holst's scratchy Jupiter on
summoning my father's schoolboy days –
Somerset, Nineteen Fifty-One,
in the ghostly warmth of an old-fashioned sun.
But there's a book-end to the shelf of time:
one can't stay absent from their age
in the fusty clutter of an historic shrine –
so I parted the curtains, tripped the page
to the post-impatient future time
where pop lyrics strip the Kipling rhyme.
GIVING LIGHT
When women give birth the Spanish say
They're giving light – & it's said
The newborn child comes into the day
Armed with a loaf of bread.