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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 (side bar top left ) for a selection of my poetry for APRIL 2018.
NEWS.
HERE IS THE COVER OF MY NEW BOOK, A SELECTED AND NEW COLLECTION OF MY POETRY.
HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN will be published in MAY.
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.
Please visit this website at the beginning of MAY when I shall be able to let you know how to obtain the book.
I am delighted to have a poem in the forthcoming ACUMEN 91 - out in MAY.
I look forward to reading with The Temys Poets in Maidenhead on April 22.
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 BIOGRAPHY & BOOKS 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 978-1-907435-36-2
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 ABOVE for APRIL...
Some highlights from readings in 2017:
I read at The Chipfest Poetry Event at the Old Road Tavern, Chippenham SN15 1JA on JUNE 24th.
I then rushed down to Lewes for the POETRY FESTIVAL on JUNE 25th. I took part in a lunchtime
reading with Rebecca Gethin, Claire Dyer and Margaret Wilmot at the Linklater Pavillion.
In the afternoon I took part in a question and answer session with Jeremy Page (The Frogmore Papers)
on "Getting Published."
I read at the launch of the Stanley Spencer Poetry Anthology at Cookham on May 12th. with my poem
"Approaching Heaven" longlisted for a prize and a place in the "Stanley Spencer Poems" Anthology.
A great evening, even though my poem didn't make it to the final shortlist. A full report of the event and
photos can be found by clicking on
I read at The Keep in Guildford on May 22nd with Kyle McHale details at www.the1000monkeys.com
and read and was MC for the launch of SOUTH 55 in Chichester on May 25th...
On January 22nd. I launched my new collection with a reading in London at The famous Torriano
Meeting House, 99, Torriano Ave., Kentish Town, London NW5 2RX with Surrey Poets
Donall Dempsey. Eddie Chauncy and Kyle McHale. A review of the evening can be found at the
excellent www.writeoutloud.net look for the Review, "Once More With Feeling."
See me reading as the Profiled Poet at the launch of SOUTH 53 - click this link :
SOUTH Poetry Magazine
All poems that appear in SOUTH 57 are listed on the website, the magazine is with the printer.
For information about SOUTH or anything on this website, please contact me at ptrosada@aol.com
Information about my books can be found by clicking the sidebar link (top left of website - scrollup ) "Biography and Books"
POETRY COLLECTIONS :
Four of my five 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 CURRENT COLLECTION :
CHANGES (ISBN 978-1-907435-36-2)
