Here and There

The title Here and There was chosen to signal a poetry collection that places the emphasis on the movement and change which are inescapable features of human existence. The concepts "here" and "there" are bonded by experience, can be oppositional and can suggest in a conversational way the sense of being all over the place. In preparing the collection for publication, the author remembered Seamus Heaney's marvellous poem Postscript, which contains the lines, "You are neither here nor there, / A hurry through which known and strange things pass." The wisdom of Heaney's assertion - that the attempt to inhabit an unassailable Here is unrealistic - is deeply appealing and links to the need for a stabilising version of what Keats called 'negative capability' in navigating life's conflicting currents. So, there are poems of migration and adaptation; poems of travel and reaction to other ways of doing things; poems of family evolution and change; poems addressing zeitgeist challenges like Brexit and the Coronavirus epidemic; poems that focus on Shakespearean characters in their attempts to manage unwieldy circumstance. And flights of fancy. The poems in Here and There deal with continuity and change, movement and stability in challenging, sometimes frightening contexts. "Here" and "there" are relative concepts, interchanging with surprising ease. Adaptability emerges from a reading of these poems as the crucial behavioural factor if we are to lead lives enriched by confidence and optimism.

Table of Contents:
Flockdown 3; What Will Survive? 4; The Arrival of the World King at No. 10 6; Love and Loss (i) 8; Love and Loss (ii) 9 ;Gilt by Association 10; David Gentleman's New Penguin Shakespeare; Richard II 12; Quality Street 13; Your Move 14; ii; Kettled at Millwall 17; The South Africans Upstairs 18; Distinguishing Mark 19; O'Shaughnessy on his Bicycle 20; Banstead Bungalow Fish Pie Incident 21; Well, Michelangelo Finished his Pieta at 24 22; Public Relations 24; Unspeakable 26; The Rivals 27; ; iii ; Here and There 31; Summerhill, Summer 1959 32; Me, Jesus? 33; Fred Reeve in Excelsis 34; The Maths Problem 36; We called her Eaglebird 37; Stephen Louvain 38; Making the Cut 40; iv ; Providence 43; Clamming up 44; How we Spent August 2013 45; Georgia on my Mind 46; New Jersey State of Mind 47; Cool Kid on the 4 Train 48; Anyone Seen Mac? 49; v ; Wine and Water 53; Taking a Shine 54; Normal is a Travesty 55; Boot Boy 56; Bleeding in the B & B 58; Leaving Paris, Summer 2005 59; Est-ce qu'il est .. .? till the Bloody Cows Come Home 60; Postcard 62; The Cretan Sonnets 64;

About the Author :
Born in Cork city, in the Republic of Ireland, in 1951, Brendan found himself caught up in the pattern of migration which saw a quarter of a million Irish people migrate during the 1950s. Translated to the north London suburb of Harrow, he attended the local Catholic grammar school before studying for a BA Hons in English and American Literature at Manchester University, subsequently qualifying as a teacher. For forty years Brendan taught English in secondary schools in Cheshire and Northants, Devon and London, holding senior management posts in four of those schools. He published articles in The Guardian and the Times Education Supplement on literary and pedagogical subjects and took an MA in Education at Leicester University. Brendan has always placed poetry at the heart of the English curriculum, with Shakespeare as presiding spirit. T.S. Eliot has also had iconic status, while Robert Frost's dictum, "The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader", has always rung true for him and been confirmed by experience. In retirement, Brendan has fulfilled his ambition to write and publish poetry. A keen tennis player and guitarist / song-writer, he lives with his wife in the south London suburb of Wimbledon, within a stone's throw of the All England Club championship grounds.