Bøger af Terry Barber

When you have an itch, scratch it. Even if you end up with blisters and a rash. Even if your fingers turn into claws and you begin to howl at the moon when your day is done and you become the wanton loon that bucked the trend. That's how I saw myself when I was gripped by the urge to compose my own epic poem. A poem that told the tale of a young woman in an age when Rome had been supreme in its affairs of almost all in the land of Britain. I wanted to tell her tale and that of Britons in the early part of the fifth century A.D.. This then, is my take on their lives in a village during that part of our history. It predates other epic poems like the Nibellungenlied, which was set around the 12th century, depicting an old Scandinavian era and even the 10th century English tale of Beowulf, which is possibly our oldest surviving poem. Joined with my epic poem, I have included some of the work I was working on at the time. Why? Well maybe because when I was writing this epic poem, I was not confident enough to believe it would carry the book with its own strength. As I progressed though, I realised that my story poem was worth the effort, although I kept the 'up to date' poems alongside it, just look on these poems as commercial breaks during the long program of 'The Angel Of Evermore'. I have even tagged a further three poems onto the end of the book, just for good measure. I suppose it lends a certain amount of uniqueness to the proceedings, but that's how I wanted this venture to pan out. Showing it as an authentic record of how I wrote the whole piece. So there you have it. An epic poem, interspersed with poetry that I created whilst writing the story about some people who populated a village during the latter part of Britain's Roman occupation, circa early 5th century A.D.. It's an age of magic, superstition, old and new gods, danger, retribution and redemption. It's a journey that the young woman named Krista takes and the events and people she meets on the way. Hope you enjoy the ride.

Sometime, a long time ago, as a young man I came across 'Do not go gentle into that good night', by Dylan Thomas and my whole perspective of poetry was changed. Previously, poems had seemed like baggage suffered by students who used them as tools of influence during English Lit, exams. For me personally, they belonged to another epoch, an age of romantics, an age of sophistication, way beyond the bump and grind of modern day art and its notoriety. Poetry was feeble, or else boring, a Ted Hughes quatrain, signifying very little; verse by numbers, pseudos flexing their polysyllabic muscle for the joy of university elitists. Then, as I say, there was Thomas. A man born to poetry, a man cutting through pretence, discarding artifice and living through the spirit of soul expression. I followed where he led and discovered the poetic art of a multitude of creators. As well as the British scene, I was drawn to American poets like Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin and Elizabeth Sargent. I was on a journey and what's more - I found that I too could express myself through this strange method of word dancing, this strange method of delving beneath surface values so as to meet my God, or even my Satan. Although I've appeared on local radio stations and in small independent poetry magazines, I've never managed to put a group of my poems under the one roof of a book, until now. Times have changed. The internet gives a far greater range to those who can aspire to authorship. This is my first forage into that realm. May there be many more.