In these times of quick gratification and short attention spans, I decided to try and buck the trend and present something not only with greater length but also depth.

The poems in this collection were written over a long period and for different purposes. They are varied but they are all long. And they all represent challenges. Each was a challenge to myself, to sustain a quality of writing for a long period and within tight constraints of form while still telling a story. They also represent and challenge to the reader. The challenge to throw off the pressure of everyday life, the pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry to take the time to read something, absorb it over time.

Such effort needs reward, these poems should not be a one-time quick fix. If the reader is going to put that effort in then there should be a payoff, they should be able to continue to get something from it afterwards. Whether that be from contemplation of what they have digested or from revisiting, rereading and seeing things they missed the first time around. So the final challenge to me was to provide this depth of content – not just quantity.

Andervayne’s Dream

This is the longest and by far the most complex of the works here. The main bulk of the poem follows a very strict format (the Prologue and Epilogue are purposefully outside this format and there is meaning in that too). Part of that format informs the inclusion of much of the symbolism within and the allegory of the tale. The challenge here was to create a story within all these constraints.

The Golden Man

This was originally supposed to be the libretto for an opera. I wrote the words but it turned out it was too word heavy. The project was never completed so I dusted it off, edited and turned it into an epic poem.

There is no real structure here beyond rhyming and making it ‘songlike” but there is an allegorical tale to be wheedled out.

This is a much older poem and much more lighthearted. It has a strange format which is simply the structure of each twinned verse. It does not go beyond that. It is a flight of fantasy, magic without bounds, just letting my imagination run wild for the fun of it.