Hot Metal: Poems from the Print Room - Couverture souple

Outterside, Nic

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 166168064X ISBN 13 : 9781661680640

Editeur : Independently published, 2020

Synopsis

And so it was every Thursday at around 2pm we would rock back in our grey office chairs and with a collective sigh of relief, one of the team would fill the kettle. The self-appointed volunteer would begin to make black Camp Coffee for all of us, except for our office junior Jenny who would always opt for hot chocolate. The black coffee stained our teeth, but without a fridge we did not have the luxury of fresh milk. The hot coffee and inner sense of relaxation was both a reward and relief at the end of a busy week.We kicked back, while in the background we could hear the presses rumble as another edition of our weekly broadsheet newspaper began to roll. George began to read a Manga comic, John popped out for some fish and chips, Jenny opened the wrapping on a chocolate bar, while Gordon lit a cigarette. In the adjoining room, the editor Tom made his daily chatty phone call to his wife, while I sat and let it all wash over me.This was 1993 and we were the editorial team responsible for putting together the news, sport and features for one of Scotland’s most highly regarded county newspapers: The Galloway Gazette.This was our two hour sojourn before we began planning the following week’s edition. It was a time to escape from “Cow Halts Traffic on A75”, “Young Mum Guilty of Shoplifting at Woolworths”, “Solicitor Embezzles £300,000 of Client Funds” and similar stories and for me to find solace and some creativity in my self-centred pastime of poetry. So I would sit, with a mug of coffee in my hand and scribble some ideas, a few lines, and if I was particularly creative maybe a whole poem. The poems would never be read by anyone else… after all this was my secret and my pastime.This was a genesis… a time and place where it all began.Now fast forward 27 years to 2020.The book of poetry you are holding forms the fourth published part of a personal journey out of darkness and into light, where love and theft are in constant conflict. It is the latest part of my journey from that starting point in that busy newspaper office in South West Scotland. But it’s not been an easy journey.When I released my first paperback The Hill – Songs and Poems of Darkness and Light in 2014, I was trapped in a corner and struggling to stay alive.The collection was published 15 months after I suffered an unexpected nervous breakdown and was forced to quit newspaper journalism for good.Part of my doctor’s suggested therapy was for me to begin writing about the life experiences which had led to the breakdown… I did that through the songs and poems published in that book.From childhood sexual abuse, through cancer, bereavement, bankruptcy, divorce, the loss of two of my children and a vicious assault, there was a lot to write about.I am still proud of that work…100 pages of pain, joy, reflection and opinion. It was raw but it was the breakthrough I had been waiting for since I wrote my first teenage angst-ridden poems almost half a century earlier.I was now a published poet and the ballpoint pen was rolling.By the middle of 2016, I was more than halfway through writing a raft of new songs and poems and I was out of the corner.Then by May 2018, I was so far out of the corner you couldn’t find me. My second book Another Hill - Songs and Poems of Love and Theft was the continuation of my journey.In between time I found time to write and publish a slim volume of poems in homage to the songs of my favourite album Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan. The book Blood in the Cracks was well received by reviewers and readers.By the end of 2019, I suddenly realised I had more than enough poems to fill yet another book! The works you will find here are more measured, a little more experimental and, I hope, more polished than my previous offerings. They reflect the real me that has emerged seven years on from that nervous breakdown and 27 years since those first doodles on a Thursday afternoon at the Galloway Gazette.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Independently published
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 166168064X
• ISBN 13: 9781661680640
• Reliure: Broché
• Illustrateur: Vasileva Helene
• Nombre de pages: 114
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg