All posts by Sarah

poetry

Flux
Pat Edwards

Front Cover Flux is a collection of poems and essays by Pat Edwards. They span love and loss, topical events and living life to the full, and do so with warmth, honesty and sometimes a hint of humour.
Pat's work has been published on-line in poetry blogs and websites such as Offa's Press and Not a Silent Poet.
Pat regularly attends open mic events in Welshpool, Wrexham, Chester, Aberystwyth and Much Wenlock. She has had drama scripts published by Lazy Bees.
Pat's first book, printed very much as a 'vanity project', was well-received:

The book won't make the holiday as it was read from cover to cover when I got home....I laughed and cried all in the same hour, fantastic writing
Been reading your essays, moved me to tears. Can certainly recognise many feelings and thoughts. Fantastic keep writing
Very poignant and clever - very moving
Published:15th July 2015
Paperback:145 pages
Price:£8.99
ISBN:9-781909-644823
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Pat was born in Aberdeen, went to school in Poole, attended college in Eastbourne, and has lived in Mid Wales since 1979. She taught Physical Education for over thirteen years before training to be a work-based assessor and verifier. Pat then worked in and around Telford and Shrewsbury supporting people training to be Teaching Assistants and to work in Early Years Care. In 2013 Pat re-trained, gaining the LAMDA Diploma in Communication, Speech and Drama Education. She formed MASH-UP ARTS delivering workshops in drama, dance, singing and poetry. She continues to teach English and Drama in a number of local schools and to promote MASH-UP ARTS. Pat enjoys singing with Quindici, a small chamber choir which was formed in 2001, and enjoyed a long and happy association with Buttington Musical Theatre Company until her recent decision to make more time for her writing.

Reviews...

J. A. Humphrey - Intelligent and Moving Poems
This book, consisting mostly of poetry with some autobiographical essays at the end, is full of 'oh yes, it's exactly like that!' moments. Pat Edwards writes with a mixture of intelligence, emotion and humour that creates an immediate connection with the reader. She has clearly been through a great deal of personal trauma because of recent serious illness, but has transformed this into universal experience through the quality of her controlled and incisive writing. I came upon 'Flux' purely by chance, but it is a book to which I shall return again and again.
Non-Fiction

Healing the Hurts of Capitalism
Micheline Mason and Alan Sprung

9781909644779
Published: Sept 2015
Paperback: 182 pages
Price: £7.99
ISBN: 9-781909-644779
Available on Amazon
Healing the Hurts of Capitalism
From Isolation to Connection
How do we break old habits and routines that stop us making progress? In organising politically, how do we escape ways of doing things that are either self-defeating or out of date? Those involved in radical politics frequently put their heads in their hands in despair as old habits die hard – too often they are as destructive as ever. Or attempts to break the mould seem as eccentric and counter-productive as the patterns they would replace. It seems that we are on rails, travelling to a destination that has already been determined. How to escape? Let’s open the book and see what Micheline and Alan suggest …
Ken Loach – Film maker

Micheline Mason is an artist, writer and activist. For over forty-five years she was part of an international organisation of people who developed a simple but profound way to help each other to recover from past emotional injuries.
In this community she helped develop the theory and became a teacher of the method, exchanging attention with thousands of people in many different countries.
In her ‘retirement’ she has chosen to share what she learnt with as many people as possible with a view to empowering them to continue the work themselves. She lives in London.

Reviews...

Thoughtful and Different
Healing the Hurts of Capitalism offers an interesting explanation of why the capitalist system remains the status quo and why attempts to change it result in failure. Rather than dwelling on economics and politics it tackles the downside of capitalism from the standpoint of our own psychological distress ‘patterns’. Patterns are entrenched behaviour patterns which result from past hurts and they dictate our responses to the world around us and to our own relationships and situations in ways that are less than appropriate or helpful. ‘Patterns’ such as the pursuit of excessive wealth, compulsive shopping to make us feel better, addictions, fearing people different from ourselves, competitiveness, feelings of isolation and powerlessness are bad for us as individuals but en masse they prevent our own growth and the growth of civilisation into something more humane, more sustainable, more cooperative and more equal. A good and interesting read and very accessible unlike many books on the subject.

Susan Harris - Great Read
Wow what a brilliant book and it is written in very accessible way. It has a new approach using a diverse group of peoples personal experiences and thinking to illustrate the impact of Capatalism in their lives.. This makes it a a wonderful alternative to the academic explanations. It brings clarity to the complexities and mechanics of the present system and offers ways to support each other to build a better society.

Stefan Szczelkun
Many of us who have experienced peer counselling, or perhaps have been through a process of recovery from addictions or trauma with the intensive use of professional counselling, have a political insight into the way that the forces that hold our class system together are embedded in us from an early age. The political landscape is founded on feelings of superiority and inferiority that don’t seem to be accessible to rational analysis or challenge.
There are many thousands of people scattered through the population that have acquired these insights over the last 30 or 40 years but communicating them to the rest of the world has not happened. Part of the difficulty may have been that the knowledge gained through live and emotionally charged interaction does not translate into words on a page or screen. The clever thing that the authors of ‘Healing the Hurts of Capitalism’ have done is to base their book on transcriptions from a series of listening workshops in which the participants respond to questions about their experiences in relation to capitalism. The many quotations from these workshops give the reader an stronger idea of the process that is being proposed. In fact the book ends with a chapter on how to set up a successful listening group.
The idea is to infuse grass roots politics with a process of communication that could liberate us from the stultifying effects of the everyday oppressions we have been subject to and that have limited our power. Its an ambitious book that is written in very accessible language. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to find a more caring form of political practice.



Books by Micheline Mason...

 An Ordinary Baby

Healing The Hurts of Capitalism

The Phenomenon of the Human Distress Pattern
belief, history, travel

Retraces the footsteps of St Columbanus of Bangor, a modern pilgrimage.
Barry Sloan

9781909644953
Why would a Northern Irish Protestant, raised in a staunchly loyalist community, hitchhike through Catholic Europe on the trail of medieval celtic monks? Why is the seaside town of Bangor in Northern Ireland largely responsible for Europe becoming a Christian continent? What role did an Ulsterman play in the creation of the European Union, and what can be done today to break down walls and bring people together? Who was Columbanus of Bangor and why are present-day librarians from all over the world indebted to him? Why does God not like zebras, has Murphy's Law anything to do with chaos theory, and why are the Germans the reason Ireland had to wait 1,900 years to get decent, straight roads?
Published:20th Nov 2015
Paperback:206 pages
Price:£9.99
ISBN:9-781909-644953

 Available from Amazon
and Kindle e-books


Answers to all these questions can be found within these pages, the story of the European travels of sixth-century saint, Columbanus - and of a twenty-first century sinner, the book’s author. Weaving history, politics, theology, and personal narrative together in a humorous and readable way, Sloan tells the fascinating story of Columbanus and his legacy in uniting Europe. Profound moments of reflection and insight are punctuated by hilarious episodes: of breakfast with Vikings, of an attack by monster bees - and lunch with a talking horse! When the Saints go Marching is funny, thought-provoking, informative, inspiring and challenging - and all without being preachy.

Barry J. Sloan, born in Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland, is married and has two children. He is an ordained Methodist minister, currently serving as mission partner with the United Methodist Church in Germany.
Reader Reviews...







artbooks

In Search of an Author
Lex Thomas

1Lex-Thomas
In Search of an Author is a collection of 62 fluidly drawn ink studies, individual drawings in their own right, but interlinked by the subject of belief and the stories we tell ourselves. Artist Lex Thomas examines unexplained natural phenomena such as the supernatural and paranormal as well as magic, cults and UFO religions. The effect is a non-textual, fragmentary narrative echoing the idea that ‘truth is in the eye of the beholder’. The title acknowledges the playright Pirandello, credited with breaking through the ‘fourth wall’ with his creation of Mirror Theatre.
Published: Jan 2016
Paperback: 124pages
Price: £12.50
ISBN: 978-1-911175-03-2

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Lex Thomas lives and works in London. Having read Sociology at the University of Greenwich Thomas studied Fine Art for three years at the University of the West of England and subsequently a Postgraduate Diploma at Chelsea College of Art. Since then she has exhibited in Europe and the States and widely throughout the UK including at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, the Princes Foundation Gallery, the Mall Galleries and Orleans House Gallery. Solo exhibitions have been Of Truth of Clouds, South Hill Park Arts Centre, Berkshire (2013) and Future Proof, Opus Gallery, Newcastle (2011). She has been shortlisted for the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the Rising Stars Prize and won third place in the Woolgather Art Prize. Her work is held in private collections in the UK, USA and Germany as well as the Cill Rialaig Arts Collection, Ireland.

Visit the Artist's website


Look Inside
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history, Non-Fiction

The Farmer, The Coal merchant, The Baker
Liz Barclay

9781911175285 In the fifties and sixties of the previous century the province of Gelderland gradually became the hub of the warmblood breeding world in the Netherlands. Stallions, such as Amor, Pericles and Voltaire, just to name a few, became household names whereas the local breeders using these stallions had no idea that, in a matter of just thirty or forty years, this would lead to the international fame of the Dutch warmblood of today. Liz Barclay grew up in Gelderland during that time and, having lived in the States before settling in Cornwall in the United Kingdom, she saw that what once was a local enterprize has now become a huge international business. As a horse trainer she worked in both countries with many warmbloods, who had the blood in their veins from stallions who, during her youth, did not live very far from her doorstep.
Published:July 2016
Paperback:124 pages
Price:£7.50
ISBN:9-781911-175285
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The stories of breeders Henk Nijhof and Johan Venderbosch and trainers Roeli Bril and Jan Oortveld, men she knew, or knew of, during her youth in Gelderland, give a wonderful impression, not only of how life was, but also how life changed. Starting with the breeding lines of Totilas and Valegro as the prime examples of the Dutch breeding success, the book, with Liz’s younger years as the common thread, gives owners of a Dutch sport horse anywhere in the world the chance to connect the breeding papers of their warmblood to this heartwarming tale of some brave Gelderland horsemen, who dared to stick their neck out, never shy of taking a little risk.
Liz Barclay grew up in Gelderland before settling on her smallholding in Cornwall. She has worked with horses for most of her life, which gave her the chance to know breeders such as Henk Nijhof and Johan Venderbosch and learn from trainers such as Roeli Bril and Jan Oortveld.
Reader Reviews...




fiction

Songs in the Key of Death
Seamus Carron

cover
The subject is MURDER.
The players include the Metropolitan Police, the FBI, a satirical journalist and a professional musician.
In the background a mysterious hidden manipulator pulls the strings of the establishment. More of a ‘why done it?’ than a ‘who done it?’ the story reveals a twisted thread of music, riddles and missing girls. A trail of smoke & mirrors leading toward an end game that questions: is anyone safe, will justice be done, can law and order prevail?

This compelling book paints a rich and unusual reflection of the characters & events, their unfolding meanings filled with irony & satire.
Published:1st Nov 2015
Paperback:742 pages
Price:£14.99
ISBN:9-781909-644700

 Available from Amazon
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Seamus Carron studied Linguistics at University in Dublin then worked in the Foreign Office including several overseas postings with the Diplomatic Service. Leaving his career behind, he turned his hand to a wide range of adventures. He died at the young age of fifty-seven.
Reader Reviews...

R Gilbert - A Pacy Thriller - 30th August 2016
An entertaining and pacy thriller from a first-time author with obvious talent as a storyteller.
Sadly the novel is published posthumously meaning that this is the only glimpse readers will get into the mind and imagination of someone who clearly had a gift for writing and story development. Recommended.

D A Grieve
Not the genre of book I would normally read (ie murder mysteries) but I am glad I picked it up.
It is a big book that keeps you engrossed from the first page right through to the last.
A true 'Hard to put down' book .

history, livesinprint

Was it Yesterday
A. M. Bown

Was it Yesterday When he volunteered in 1914, A.M.Bown was a twenty-year-old scholar at Oxford studying science. He became an artillery subaltern and remained one throughout the First World War, being wounded twice and gaining the Military Cross for bravery. This book, although fictionalised, grew out of his personal experiences and is a vivid and authentic, if fictionalised, account. He tells of ordinary day-to-day incidents, some amusing, some frightening, and gives a sense of real lives - and real deaths. He keeps throughout a respect for his fellow soldiers, saying: “So this little team in khaki stood waiting for the starting gun … in the greatest game of all, and whatever share the fields of Eton may have had in any winning of it, that same share must be credited to the back alleys and the cinder patches, the parks and the recreation grounds which had been the nurseries of most of those who stood together in that forward line, picked to play for England”.
Published:3rd August 2015
Paperback:218 pages
Price:£11.99
ISBN:9-781909-644595
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Profits from this edition will be divided between the Royal British Legion and Trinity College, Oxford, a scholarship to which gave the author his start in life.
Reviews...

Times Literary Supplement
“No synopsis of the movements and adventures of that battery could give an adequate impression of the scope of the book and quotation will do it less than justice. In style it is simple, light yet adequate; the humour is never forced and the ever present sense of tragedy is never unduly emphasized”.
fiction

Flamingos over the Yorkshire Moors
Fay Carr

Fay Carr_Flamingos over the Yorkshire Moors_Cover As a young child living in Rome, Gabriella knew only the comforts of life and the love of a dedicated family. But her cosy world was disrupted by events that at her tender age she could not understand. During her growing years she recaptured in far away Africa the joys and happiness of life that also paved the way to a happy marriage and the fulfilment of motherhood. But another chapter of life was to begin and in Yorkshire she fought the hardest battles of them all.

Fay now lives in Yorkshire which she has made her permanent home. She is a keen club bridge player which takes her to play in different parts of England and Scotland. She now enjoys holidays mainly in Europe.
Published:15th July 2015
Paperback:208 pages
Price:£9.99
ISBN:9-781909-644762
 Available from Amazon
And Kindle
Buy from YouCaxton
£9.99 (+ £2 postage)

Reviews...