Description
One hundred and fifty titled haiku poems revealing the poet’s journal over a two year period as he travels in mind and body; A trick shot played at billiards, a sunset, snow melting on a church bell, memories of taking tea with Audrey Hepburn at Claridge’s, of taking photographs with Terence Donovan in Soho. All rendered in just seventeen syllables revealing Yates’s visions and observations from Monte Carlo to Mayfair, Ronda to Kilkeel, Edinburgh to Berlin, Belfast to Saint-Paul de Vence and more.
Haiku was the first poetic form that Paul Yates wrote in after discovering a book of haiku in his local library at the age of nine. During our present confinement at home because of the Covid 19 pandemic, Lady Glentoran and I have found the haiku meditations of Paul Yates intriguing, charming and inspiring. At this difficult time it is good to remind ourselves of the human gifts of imagination and wonder. Followers of Paul Yates will not be surprised that he has dared to break a golden rule by adding titles to his haiku, indeed, the last piece in the collection consists of only a title, THROWING A STICK FOR LOUP-GAROU, inviting each of us to write our own haiku in response. [I believe Yates once compared his relationship with poetry as that of a were-wolf with the moon.] This collection was written over the past two years and reveals the poet’s daily journal as he travels in mind and body; A shot played at billiards, a sunset, snow melting on a church bell, memories of taking tea with Audrey Hepburn at Claridge’s, of taking photographs with Terence Donovan in Soho. All rendered with ingenious simplicity and arithmetical precision. From Monte Carlo to Mayfair, Ronda to Kilkeel, Edinburgh to Berlin, Belfast to Saint-Paul de Vence and more, we can share in Yates’s telling observations and visons. Lord Glentoran
HEBRIDIAN CHOIR
banshee Caruso, the
haunted wolf howls of
grey seals siren singing…
