LET’S GET STARTED

Hello, dear readers.  I hope you are all keeping well.  This is the first of my blog posts on my author website.  I thank my publishers, Austin Macauley, for making this possible.  I’d like to perhaps start discussion about my work, Woman of Tides, by focusing on one of the poems, ‘The Orange Tree’ on p 21.  This poem was inspired by a friend who had just gone into remission after treatment for breast cancer.  When I visited her one night after she came home from hospital, I was struck by her energy and generosity as she climbed the branches of the orange tree in her front garden in order to give me some fruit, even though it had started to rain and it was getting cold.  I commence the poem by giving the natural imagery of the orange tree and the picture of a woman climbing its branches and picking the fruit.  However, two-thirds of the way into the poem, we realise she is recovering from cancer.  I deliberately withhold this information until the third stanza, so the reader is given a different understanding of this woman’s situation and will reassess what they have already read about her.  Also, the description of her baldness being replaced by ‘the soft, grey down of a new-born swan’ highlights her vulnerability and the fact that she is not young.  This poem evokes so much – the transience of life, hope in the face of hardship, generosity of spirit, the importance of friendship.  I would be very interested in hearing your views on this and other poems in the book.  Go well, Chrisoula.

 

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