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My very best wishes to all of my readers and thank you for your support.
Please click on the POETRY link (at the top of this page) for a selection of my poetry for NOVEMBER 2018
See Below for :
News
Forthcoming readings & events
My new collection HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN
Reviews
NEWS
Delighted to have poems in a new anthology, "All A Cat Can Be" and poetry
in the Sussex magazine, "Poetry & All That Jazz."
Reviews of How The Light Gets In are beginning to appear...see below
Forthcoming READINGS and EVENTS from August :
AUGUST 4th
Launch of "All A Cat Can Be" - Anthology in aid of New Start Cat Rescue
1300 - 1600 at Hatherley Manor, Gloucester.
September 2nd.
Temys Poets, Maidenhead, Reading
September 3rd.
Publisher's Launch of my new collection, "How The Light Gets In"
1000 Monkeys, The Keep, Guildford, Reading
October 10th.
Launch of SOUTH Poetry Magazine 58,
The Library Bournemouth
31st October
New Park Centre, Chichester, Reading
7th. November
The Poetry Cafe, Betterton Street, London, Reading.
What a brilliant evening at the Poetry Society's Poetry Café last night (November 7th) at publishers
Dempsey & Windle' s Autumn Showcase of poets published in 2018. Thank you Janice & Donall for
such a splendid evening. I was delighted to be reading in the company of such good poets: John
Wheeler, Linda Rose Parks, Charlotte Barker, Ayelet McKenzie, Ray Pool and Georgia Hilton and, of
course, the excellent readers from the floor at the open mic.
Not often do you get such an attentive audience and a packed house! Well done everyone!
15th November
The Light Box, Woking, Write Out Loud, Reading
I was delighted to be invited to read at THE LIGHTBOX, WOKING, the new venue for WRITE OUT LOUD, Woking on JUNE 21st
Reading at THE LIGHT BOX
GROUP PHOTO : READERS AT MY BOOK LAUNCH
A SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH OF MY NEW POETRY COLLECTION WAS HELD IN MAIDENHEAD ON JUNE 5th. THANKS FOR EXCELLENT READINGS TO
Publishers : Donall Dempsey & Janice Windle; Jean Watkins; Susan Utting; Kitty Coles; Greg Freeman;Andrew Geary; Nicky Phillips; Richard Williams; Andrew Curtis; Peter Keeble; Richard Woolmer;Rosemary Muncie; Maryann Foster
AND, OF COURSE, TO ALL THOSE WHO BOUGHT A BOOK!
More photos of the readings taken by Greg Freeman and posted at WRITE OUT LOUD can be found using this link:
HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN
is available from this website at a special price of £7 (inc. P & P) to friends and readers. RRP £9. To secure your copy, contact me at :
ptrosada@aol.com
HERE IS THE COVER OF MY NEW BOOK, A SELECTED AND NEW COLLECTION OF MY POETRY.
This is what has been said about my poetry on the back cover:
Patrick Osada has the knack of describing Nature with great observation but without being
sentimental. A modern Edward Thomas in some respects.
Patricia Oxley, ACUMEN
Patrick Osada is a very twenty-first century poet of the natural world. His strands
of Nature, Place and the Spiritual soon become plaited in a part celebratory, part
elegiac meditation. A varied and very satisfying collection.
David Perman, Rockingham Press
How the Light Gets In – The poet depicts nature and place with an impressive
command of traditional and formal verse... The section on Place, and particularly its
description of locations in Cornwall, mark this as a special collection.
Adrian Green, Adjudicator, Littoral Press, Nature Poetry Competition.
Patrick Osada is the quintessential poet of what passes now for rural England. His
subjects and rhythms may be traditional but he is fully alive to what is happening in
the sorts of places where many of us live or visit on holiday.
David Ashbee, Reviewer and Poet
Over the years many of my poems have shared an underlying theme : the natural
world and its links to man's environment and spirituality.
Having been encouraged to collect together a large group of these poems, How The
Light Gets In contains some new work, together with poems selected from my
previous five collections of poetry.
The book is divided into three sections : Nature, Place, Spiritual
Many of the poems relate to more than one of these categories – some to all three –
but I trust the reader will understand my reasons for deliberately ordering the poems
in this way.
Hopefully this helps to showcase individual poems and to place them in a meaningful
sequence.
How The Light Gets In is beautifully produced by my publishers Dempsey & Windle.
A special “Thank You” to my editor, Janice, for her attention to detail and excellent cover design. I am delighted to confirm that Donall Dempsey and Janice Windle will be two of the readers at the launch of my book.
REVIEWS of HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN :
Review by Carla Scarano D’Antonio for LONDON GRIP (on line)
Plays of light and shadow
How The Light Gets In - Patrick Osada - Dempsey & Windle
ISBN 978-1-907435-62-1 £9
Old and new poems alternate in the selected new poetry collection of Patrick Osada with particular attention to nature, especially plants and birds, and his concerns about the environment, which seems to change too quickly.
The book is divided in three sections, Nature, Place and Spiritual, but the poems are not linked only to one topic, on the contrary, the three themes often interweave in most of the poems. The ‘pleasure’ and ‘rapture’ that nature inspires and the poet’s profound love of the environment are reiterated in many pieces. There is an attentive, minute observation of the flying of birds, their migrations, their imperceptible movements and the essence of their singing; they are caught in elegant lines and evoked in sounds that engage the reader in a multi sensory experience.
Nature blooms and dies, freezes in white cold nights or bursts in lush vegetation; compelling poetic images reveal a profound communion with the environment. This contact with nature that rebirths every spring, makes being human more ‘human’ and is perhaps the core of our humanity; whereas our spiritual side might be constantly haunted by the end of our physical being. It is a constant effort of renewal where light and shadow take turns in the memories of the loved ones.
The power of spring is revealed in birds’ songs, in the ‘smell of garlic’, and in the relentless blossoming of the blackthorn in spite of winter’s harsh winds. Though winter is fascinating with its ‘icy flowers’ and ‘snowflake petals’, nature is frozen, animals rest and can only ‘dream of spring’.
The flying and singing of birds represent this cyclical renewal at its best, a hymn to hope and life:
Here come the swallows
Wheeling over the bay,
Bringing African
Blue to replace the grey;
They are towing the sun
Home across the spray,
They are warming the land:
Starting summer today,
Surprising old crows and the secretive jay.
(Magicians)
in the poem ‘Force of Nature’ the rhythm and sounds reproduce the flying of the starlings in an onomatopoeic evocation where sounds and images create a harmonious riveting effect:
Whoosh! Like a force of nature they arrive…
Starlings. This boisterous, squawking, noisy mob,
strutting uncouth gang, intimidate all
cautious birds: dunnocks, chaffinch, secret wrens.
…
At day close they rise as one: this wheeling,
darkling flock shape-shifts in setting sun.
across the land a ritual soon repeats:
sharing a common pulse they turn, turn again,
flocks swoop fields, skirt factories, circle streets
as they follow weird tracks through empty air –
invisible to all but these strange birds.
But nature is not only joyful and lively, death lingers in its folds, present and inevitable in the hawk feeding on a robin, ‘pausing, head cocked, aware of every sound’, or in the crows whose ‘shadows caw across the stubbed field:/Black harbingers who come with tales of death’. Life mingles with death in a natural flowing that does not seem to affect the wildlife’s harmony.
In ‘Still life with feathers’ four birds fly from the nest but one is left dead behind in the birdbox where the poet finds it in ‘A filigree of spider’s web’. It is ‘Perfect and whole’ in its stillness, a natural death. A similar event is echoed in ‘Still’, in the Spirituality section; it is about a still born child ‘Perfect in the deep dark of the scan./He was complete…an active growing child’. Here the reaction is different, ‘nature seemed to catch her breath’. The death of a child does not seem to be as ‘natural’ as the death of a bird. This suggests that death in nature is part of a cycle while in human life it seems to be a halt that creates confusion. This concept is already introduced in the second section, Place, where ‘sea and cloud conjoin’ (Roseland), merging water and sky in a less certain scenario compared to the countryside landscapes:
While all the time my thoughts just turn or spin.
Still trying to reconcile my past,
I find a way of starting up again:
Light on water, timeless place, salt air and acumen.
The word ‘change’ recurs in these poems underlining environmental concerns about people’s unscrupulous destruction of nature, where ‘scaffold poles’ take the place of trees and ‘hard-hatted men with cruel machines/soon make the torn earth die…’ (‘When’). The geese cannot find their place in the countryside where new houses have been built and green spaces are less and less.
Light and shadow alternate in the Spiritual section where death lingers in the memories of dead people the poet misses. It is threatening in the dead fox:
Unnatural, twisted, posturing in death:
Defiance frozen in his reaching limbs,
Anguish smiles, crookedly through bared teeth,
Eyes fixed, a final glare of grief.
The future seems uncertain, the afterlife a question mark, but nature comes again to the rescue. Though people are dead, their gardens bloom in the unbroken cycle of seasons that brings everything ‘back to life’.
The final poems reflect these two moods in striking images. On the one hand, the’ heart’s red rage’ and ‘the bird of black despair’, on the other hand, ‘the blueness air and water’ and ‘Liquids of air, fused on the mountain top’. The poet carries on, dreaming and praying for peace with the words of an ancient Celtic Benediction (‘Saying Goodbye’), ‘Uncertain that my memory serves me well’ (‘Anniversary’). It is an elegy to a loved one, painfully missed, but present. It is a wish to grasp life in memories that are fading but still there. This is an enthralling collection that brings nature and the unpredictability of human life to light.
Five Star Review on AMAZON BOOKS
Mandy Pannett : Sense of a Blessing
22 August 2018
This collection is called ‘How the Light Gets In’ – an apt title since the poems are full of shimmer and beings that shine. One of my favourite images is in the poem 'Elvers' where the creatures are a ‘mass of squirming grey translucency,/glass eels, whose every heartbeat can be seen.’ In 'Winter Solstice, Warfield' we have the marvellous picture of a crab apple tree whose fruit is brighter than any decoration: ‘Crab apples hang above the gate,/Sparkling, frosted on cold air:/Christmas baubles catching sun.’
Whiteness, frost, ice and cold air are recurrent motifs in this selection of Patrick Osada’s poems. He is skilful at creating not only a sense of place but an equally vivid sense of weather, especially winter weather that is windy and stormy with ‘A hard frost glinting’ in ‘bright white moonlight’ ('A Week of Frost').
Settings are evocative in this collection. Many places are named. Throughout, the backcloth is nature with its flowers, trees, animals and birds – a host of birds. Frequently the atmosphere is both magical and mysterious. Roseland is described as an ‘elemental place’ where ‘the headland fog holds fast’ and ‘Spirits and wraiths are free to roam.’ Together with the author, we feel we have returned ‘Like strangers to an ancient land’. ('Valley of the Kites').
Many beautiful poems in How the Light Gets In’ are written in the best pastoral tradition. Conversely, there is bitterness and grief at what has been lost in the name of technology and attendant materialism. The section called ‘Place’ is introduced by a quotation from Philip Larkin’s 'Going, Going' where everything special in the land may ‘linger’ but will most likely be eradicated by ‘concrete and tyres’. The new world that Patrick Osada is afraid will exist – already exists – is marginal, unwelcoming and toxic.
Review in SOUTH 58
Patrick Osada's attractively presented sixth collection (77 poems – old and new) is
intriguingly titled: a nod to Leonard Cohen and perhaps Hemingway. Nature, place and spirit
intertwine. He shares with us the “pleasure” he finds like Byron “in pathless woods”.
He opens appropriately with “Early Today”: a gentle, touching euphony (one of his words) of
thrush song “scattering remnants of soft sleep” with its almost hypnagogic quality in “the
border of night's dream”, setting the tone: thoughtful, rhythmic, caring, passionately felt,
controlled.
His poetry is visual and full of sound. Birds fly through the pages: “Larks Ascending” with
their musical links and the “boisterous, squawking, noisy mob” of starlings in “Force of
Nature”. He plays with form and structure: see the simplicity and intensity of the seven
haikus in “A Week of Frost”.
The settings and inspiration are often local and clearly much loved. He strides off with us
through Larks Hill and Warfield, sometimes further afield to Cornwall, even Rome. He shares
Larkin's fear “that England will be gone”: the “careless ease” of hedge destruction in “Chain
Flail” and “Nightmare” with its Lennon like refrain “Imagine no more horses...”. He enjoys
his musical references.
I enjoyed his gentle anthropomorphic treatment of the “Willow” - a “mirrored, lonely, lovely
girl” and also the touching “Still Life with Feathers”.
The last section is understandably more contemplative. In “Rosary” “...each day a prayer”. “Still” is powerful and heartbreaking: “He was to be their special gift…born sleeping
An earlier poem “Beyond St Clement” begins with “silent contemplation” and ends with “Light on water, timeless place ... and acumen”. In this collection we find acumen, euphony, wit - Patrick Osada at his contemplative best. A “natural” poet, a distinctive accessible voice that moves, provokes and opens our eyes to the “pathless woods”. He shows us “How the Light Gets In”.
Richard Woolmer
OTHER NEWS ROUND-UP :
I have five poems in the new Nature Anthology, HIPPOCRENE, from LITTORAL PRESS
SOUTH now has a Facebook Group page, look there for information about each new edition of SOUTH.
SOUTH 58 was launched on October 10th at Bournemouth Library. See the SOUTH website for a list of poems & poets. Deadline forsubmissions to SOUTH 59, November 30th.
My FIFTH collection, CHANGES can be purchased via Amazon, at all good
bookshops and from my publishers Dempsey & Windle. However I am also
making it available to my friends, readers and supporters at a special price via
this website...see bottom of this page for details!
CHANGES was chosen by THE POETRY KIT (www.poetrykit.org ) as their BOOK of the MONTH (February 2017)
REVIEWS OF CHANGES and COMMENTS :
(in chronological order)
Patrick Osada — Changes. Dempsey & Windle, 2017. 72 pp. £7.99 ISBN 978-1-
907435-362
The final poem is often the best way into a collection and Changes supports this
view. The first stanza of ‘Anniversary’ runs “Uncertain that my memory serves me
well—/ my nose pressed to the window of the past/ for images that flicker like old
film/ with action blurred and features lost to chance.”. This brings together Osada’
s approach to his themes throughout Changes’ three sections— Seasonal, At a Time
of Unrest, and Keepsake — together with his preferred use of regular metrical form,
often rhymed. Here the half rhyme (past/chance) has a pleasing lightness of touch,
avoiding the heaviness that can sometimes come with full rhyme.
Osada’s presentation of the calendar year through plants and weather is both
immediate and also layered in memory and questions: on seeing a fox at mid-day ‘
… we all rubbed our eyes at what we’d seen.’ In ‘Last Reunion’ the geese whose
annual visit marked the year leave, only to be replaced - ‘… men came with plans:/
Theodolites cast shadows over land.’. The then/now continuum/contrast is a unifying
feature — childhood memories confronted by present-day reality. In ‘Shards’ Osada
shows us men, working by hand, fitting a plate glass window into a local store, and
then the modern version: machines, vacuum suction cups, and glazing that seals life
inside city tower blocks. This layering of time works particularly well in ‘Monuments’, -
‘Immortalized in bronze, he’s caught mid-fight,/ rushing to catch the Hull to London
train/ as if it were that Saturday in May/ when what he saw and wrote secured his
fame.’ No need to name the poet or the writing here; Osada trusts his readers.
This collection answers its own question: ‘How do we keep alive what once we
were?’ (from ‘Lost Boy’). Attention to changes and the continuing work of
transforming these into words hold everything together.
D A Prince
Susan Henderson, novelist (Harper Collins), New York :
“What a gorgeous collection of poems!
Some favourites : Frost Flowers, Still Life With Feathers, Last Reunion, Rosary,
Secret, Death Of The Poet, Off The Map, To The End Of The Road, Keepsake and
Two Words.”
IAN CAWS, poet, writes :
"I was drawn to the poems about Patrick's parents towards the end of the book. SUNFLOWERS and HAWK attracted me very much, though, with such an even collection, it seems almost wrong to pick poems out. It is such a satisfying collection ...A good book to have."
In a long review in HQ Magazine (47/48) Kevin Bailey writes :
The poems in this book spoke to me as a member of a mature fraternity...because, for the older person, they are echoes or mirrors held up to experience — for a younger reader they describe an unexplored land — not full of monsters, but full of beasts and terrain that must be mapped and understood if they are one day to settle there...Ultimately this book by Patrick Osada offers a decent dose of purchasable hope in the form of damn fine poetry...
Click this link for the Greg Freeman's review at WRITE OUT LOUD
https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=65469
MORNING STAR “Well Versed In Family Matters” - 21st. Century Poetry with
Andy Croft :
“For Patrick B Osada, every memory is like the tip of an iceberg, floating unsteadily
above the “submerged” history of our lives. Part of his new collection Changes
(Dempsey and Windle, £7.99) is a series of childhood memory poems, most notably
the wonderful To the End of the Road, about learning to ride a bike with his dad.
These are paired with poems about his mother in old age, living on the border
between unreliable memory and an uncertain present. It’s a sometimes bleak book,
full of cold weather, changing seasons and “remembered suffering” but there are also
some perfect moments, as when he recalls his father looking back on his childhood:
“And when I stop beneath those limes today,/through half-shut eyes while lulled by humming bees,/I conjure in the shade another shade — /the shadow of the man he used to be.”
READINGS
See me reading as the Profiled Poet at the launch of SOUTH 53 - click this link :
POETRY COLLECTIONS :
Four of my five previous collections are currently available:
Short Stories : Suburban Lives (ISBN 1-904781-50-0)
Rough Music (ISBN 1 -904781-48-9).
Choosing the Route (ISBN 978 - 1 - 907401 - 13 - 8)
and my LAST COLLECTION :
CHANGES (ISBN 978-1-907435-36-2)
FOR INFORMATION ABOUT ALL OF MY PREVIOUS COLLECTIONS, AND DETAILS OF HOW TO PURCHASE MY LAST COLLECTION, CHANGES, AT A SPECIAL PRICE, PLEASE CLICK ON
BIOGRAPHY & bOOKS AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE.
