| Synopsis: |
I first began writing poetry when I was sixteen, back in 1972. The poems were written in school copy books, which I titled and kept, some of the titles are referred to in this selection, ie Poems from Love in a Mist, Mystic Moments, The poems were written once, never gone back over or re edited. In 1973 I had two poems published in the first ever school literary magazine, in Oatlands college Stillorgan, this gave me the confidence to keep writing, however, things began to fizzle out in the eighties after I got married, there was not enough time to write, with career, and the raising of two small boys, it was a hectic time. Towards the end of the decade I decided to write again, after several attempts I gave up. Empty pages are like looking at a map, you see the roads, the towns, the cities, but the car will not start. In the early nineties I began another copy book, which was titled Unfinished Times, and that's exactly what it ended up as, with only a couple of entries.In the Spring Of 2009 my good friend Pete Ryan gave me a copy of the school magazine from 1973, that stoked the creative juices, so I got all the old copies, picked out what I thought were the best, and restructured them, some of them I did not change at all. I decided to write some new pieces, to include, which turned out better than I thought they would. Notably, The title poem, and The Bitter and the Sweet. I enjoyed the challenge, and decided to call the final result, Unfinished Times, after so many failed attempts, and my obsession with time and its many symphonies that we have to weave our life's dance to. |