Thoughts On A Prayer Before Birth
While looking at some of my favourite poems the other day, I came across Prayer Before Birth, written by Louis MacNeice during the darkest days of the Second World War.It’s an eloquent plea for a life free from all the
A Spot Of Bizarre Bird Spotting
The poems that I write fall into many different styles and genres. I prefer to write verses that rhyme and scan, but also write free-form poems occasionally. It rather depends upon the subject.It seems extraordinary to me that 80% of
The Beginnings Of A Fairytale Adventure
About a quarter of the 1,300 poems that I have written over the last four years are for children. They fall into various groups: poems about animals, poems about children, poems that are variants of famous children’s rhymes, poems featuring
Saucy Seaside Humour Found Its Home In Sailor-y-Pent
After my wife died, I used to visit my children and their families often. This was during lockdown, and I discovered that, provided there was at least 10 days between visits, I was allowed to have two "bubbles”.Staying with my
Writing Listening To Mother Came From My Medical Career
I spent 40 years working with children, most of them as a consultant paediatrician.Children adapt to illness far more quickly than adults and frequently have a better sense of what’s appropriate for them than their parents. However, listening to their
