I am a retired Headteacher living in Warfield, Berkshire, England. I work as an editor and also write reviews of poetry for magazines. I was a member of the Management Team for SOUTH Poetry Magazine for ten years.
My first collection, Close to the Edge was published in 1996 & won the prestigious ROSEMARY ARTHUR AWARD, currently it is not in print.
My second collection, Short Stories : Suburban Lives and my third volume, Rough Music, have been published in England by BLUECHROME.
My fourth volume was Choosing the Route, published by IDP
My fifth collection, Changes and my sixth collection, How The Light Gets In, were published by Dempsey & Windle.
Information about my previous collection, From The Family Album, can be found below,
together with information about my latest collection, THE WARFIELD POEMS.
My work has been widely published in magazines, anthologies and on the internet and in translation.
My poetry has been broadcast on national & local radio in Great Britain.
THE WARFIELD POEMS is my latest collection, now released ...
It is available direct from AMAZON and good bookshops at £10 R.R.P.
However, I am making the book available to my readers here on my website
for the SPECIAL price of £7 (including P.&P. in the UK). Contact me at
ptrosada@aol.com to place an order.
Here are some early comments about the book :
A fight to stop housing development eating into surrounding countryside might be dismissed as just another lead story in a local paper. But in Patrick Osada’s hands this account of the tentacles of a once ‘new town’ extending their grip in rural Berkshire has a lyrical passion that echoes John Clare and Edward Thomas. The unlikely-sounding name of Cabbage Hill becomes synonymous with a battle to save the soul of natural England.
GREG FREEMAN Reviews Editor, Write Out Loud
REVIEW at The High Window Reviews: 11 July 2024
The Warfield Poems by Patrick Osada. £10. ISBN: 9798323560141.
Reviewed by Richard Palmer
Patrick Osada’s collection is an elegy to a vanished and vanishing part of England, not ‘exceptional’ in terms of natural beauty or historical significance, but once ‘untouched’ and ‘unspoilt’ in an area ‘riven by motorways’ and ‘concrete towers’. Osada has a deep feeling for the landscape and natural life of the parish of Warfield, where he has lived for many years. These poems show a detailed and loving knowledge of his patch.
Sometimes the very poems have changed as Warfield changes. In the opening poem, West End, Warfield, we see this in operation. Osada harks back to the time of the plough horse and the ‘head brass’, to ground us in Warfield’s history. The sun now shines on the ‘tractor’s screen’, and the horse is now ‘a different breed’, ‘more like a family pet’. But this is just a change in farming practice. The fields are still there.
The poem, however, now itself changes. The poet has revised it to reflect more fundamental alteration:
The farmer has his plans –
he’d sell the lot today
and welcome new estates
as he lives miles away…
Yet the poem is no mere polemic. We get a strong sense of the poet’s attachment to the place where he lives. As the sun breaks through, he sees ‘where larks have climbed to sing’, where ‘young swallows dart and flash’ and ‘a cat strolls down the lane’. Nature, in all its variety of movement and life, is the subject of the song.
This sensitivity to the poet’s surroundings pervades the poems. In Frost Epiphany, the poet expresses his feelings walking up ‘Larks Hill’ ‘in an icy dawn’. The ‘cold air and moonshine’ transform trees and grass, and indeed the very horses, who stand as still as statues, in a passage reminiscent of Ted Hughes. The poet has a sudden powerful,‘humbled’ sense of a ‘God of creation’.
Osada has an eye for detail and in a sense this is the point of this collection, as he contrasts small, vulnerable creatures with the intimidating avatars of urbanisation. In Larks Ascending, the eponymous birds are ‘dots against the sky’, ‘tiny crested, feathered scraps’. Yet their birdsong rises ‘clear’ above the ‘drone’ of traffic as:
Miraculous, daredevil birds
sing out a challenge and a prayer:
an invocation to the Spring
Their vulnerability is evident, but their spirit rides high, inspiring the poet as it inspired John Clare.
In contrasting language, the poet makes his feelings clear about the threat to his countryside. In Green and Pleasant, the invasion of ‘an alien crop’, oilseed rape, the language is harsh. The spring is attacked, polluted by a ‘bitter’ scent ‘hanging on air, pungent, sickly’. The fields are full of ‘fluorescent acid yellow flames’ – poisonous and napalm-deadly. As the rape ‘burns England’s heart’, it burns the poet’s too.
The countryside is not, nevertheless, viewed with sentimentality. In Sallow, the ‘thistledown’ which emanates from the willow in spring is seen as an invasive nuisance, drifting ‘through every window, open door’ evading the efforts of ‘tidying hands’. Yet nature, not technology, comes to the rescue:
a longed for shower of rain
brings sweet relief and damps it down
There is technique as well as substance to these poems, The reader senses the craftsman at work in a number of ways. The traditional ballad form is humorously taken for A Walk in the Country, with the ‘townies’ being startled by the grinning farmer with his bird scarer. Blackthorn is a love sonnet to the eponymous hedge plant, the rhyme scheme adapted to suggest the extent and movement of the ‘drifts of snow-white petals’. Some poems are in free verse; others adopt the tetrametrical or pentameter patterns used by poets for centuries, but all are steeped in the poet’s environment. He reaches back through time for language to make the present palpable. In Quelm Lane Finds Serenity, for example, the very name raises the ‘ghost’ of the past at the same time as the leaping squirrel propels us into the here and now.
In several of these poems, Osada’s feeling for the natural world is almost religious. This is most explicitly shown in Goldfinches. The birds are initially described in clear, straightforward language, with their ‘tinkling, bell-like calls’ and movements in a ‘flash of gold’, with only a hint of their significance as they appear ‘on dull Lenten days’, but by the end of the poem their connection with Jesus is revealed, for they:
pulled out the thorns to free Christ’s crown.
In doing so, his blood was spilled
and blessed them with a love profound –
marking cheeks red as sacred birds
The collection ends with On Cabbage Hill Again, where the poet reminds us of the plough horses in the opening poem, and of his fears for the future, which, by the time of the final poem, has come to pass. The farmer has ‘sold off all his land’ and by implication, has sold out the countryside. The poet is left, like the buzzard, circling ‘shrinking fields’.
There is much to enjoy in this collection, and although some poems strike a more prosaic note, the poet’s feelings and craftmanship shine through many times, like his Warfield sun.
Richard Palmer is a retired English teacher living in Berkshire. He is a founder member of Temys Poets and has had work published in Orbis, South and other places. For a number of years he has been a regular poetry reviewer for South Poetry Magazine.
REVIEW of THE WARFIELD POEMS by MANDY PANNETT
from TEARS IN THE FENCE LITERARY MAGAZINE Blog
There are contrasts in this collection as the pastoral shifts slowly into blight. Two poems that could be seen as examples of ‘before and after’, illustrate this. An earlier poem ‘On Cabbage Hill’ is subtitled ‘Watching Deer’. Primroses, kingfishers and ‘rippled ripening corn’ share the scene as the observer is attentive to deer ‘inching through the wheat.’ The last poem in the collection is called ‘On Cabbage Hill Again’ and there are no more ‘secret deer’ but instead a landscape of ‘scaffold poles’, ‘tarmac paths’ and ‘estate houses in neat rows’. ‘This is now,’ says the narrator.
Introductory notes explain that Warfield was originally a Saxon settlement, rural in character for centuries until, in the twentieth century it became subject to overspill from nearby Bracknell. Constant threats from developers and planners have led to ongoing opposition from those who regret changes in the name of progress at the expense of flora and fauna. ‘There is still much to be found that is wonderful and inspiring (in Warfield)’ writes Patrick Osada, ‘yet sadly major changes to the environment and, consequently, to our wildlife becomes more pronounced as the house building extends.’
Transformation feels too exalted a word to use for the alterations in atmosphere and appearance from rural to suburban, but changes are still happening and transformation, in spite of some attempts at re-wilding, is almost total. Poems mark the process. ‘Frost Epiphany’ offers a fine example of the pastoral mood. Lyrical and spiritual in tone ‘Everything just gleams:/the pastures glittering, /each twig and grass blade/frosted – so complete.’ This is a scene where ‘a robin stopped to sing for me/and all the robin world.’ (‘January Sunday’). As winter turns to Spring the landscape is rich in ‘daffodil with bluebell/sallow, hazel, primrose, cowslip/anemone and celandine.’(‘Unseasonal’).
Place names, and their loss of meaning, are important in The Warfield Poems, recalling history, nature and folklore: Quelm Lane, Lark’s Hill, Hazlewood, Battle Bridge, the pub ‘The Yorkshire Rose’. At Owlswood Park the narrator comes across a notice shouting ‘CONSTRUCTION SITE, KEEP OUT.’ Here, in this ‘world of brick all birds have flown’ and, in time, ‘the new estate will be unveiled/with streets named after heritage we share-/ but not one creature, tree or plant remains/to prove this place was once more than their names.’
The disappearance of local wildlife in Warfield is slow but insistent. In ‘Swallows’ the narrator records how ‘this year’ he hasn’t seen any of the birds:
From the rise above the house, I look across these empty skies;
swallows’ demise match changes to this place –
horses, meadows, paddocks now are gone
like acres of crops, hedgerows lost … farmland to developers.
So, with our changing rural scene, swallows’ visits ceased.
A poem I find particularly interesting in ‘The Warfield Poems’ is the anti-pastoral theme of ‘Not an Ode to Autumn’ – a response to John Keats’ Ode. Here the wind is cold, there are only crab apples on the trees and ‘late Autumn mists’ hide ‘all vestige of sun, moon and tide’. In the air is ‘a chill of death.’
More signs erected by developers illustrate a dilemma not only confined to Warfield. Building Communities for Everyone neglects to say ‘But not for hawthorn, fox, orchid or deer –/those residents have gone, their fields stripped bare.’ (‘Sunflower’).
A Government Consultation paper has an idyllic tone with its Planning for the right homes in the right places but the result is also a ‘Countryside no more, landscape changed for ever …’(‘The New Estate’).
Development versus destruction, growth as opposed to loss … poems in this collection combine in a tone of regret. ‘The Warfield Poems’ become an elegy.
Mandy Pannett 28th August 2024
Review of The Warfield Poems on Write Out Loud by GREG FREEMAN
https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=137629
Patrick Osada’s collection The Warfield Poems is a lament for his village in Berkshire that over the last few decades has largely been swallowed up by the “tentacles” of housing development reaching out from a nearby new town. Not so new a town now, of course, but still the homes come. Homes that the country needs, we are told - but not at the cost of nature and wildlife, Osada argues.
This might be seen as just an example of poetic Nimbyism, yet Patrick Osada argues his case persuasively and lyrically. On the back cover of this collection I have already cited admiringly John Clare and Edward Thomas, as voices I can hear traces of here. To those illustrious poets I would add the sometimes jaundiced tone of Philip Larkin, whose 1972 poem ‘Going, Going’ warned that soon “all that remains / For us will be concrete and tyres.”
‘West End, Warfield’ echoes the “head brass” of Edward Thomas in its first line, before setting the scene:
The houses down the lane
have changed – been much improved,
extended, modernised
by couples who have moved
away from urban sprawl,
they breathe fresh air,
have roses round the door,
but shout, “Keep West End Green!”
when councillors decide,
“This village needs more homes –
The plans’s to urbanise.”
‘Green and Pleasant’ of course refers to a famous line in William Blake’s Jerusalem, and is the title of a poem that takes issue with the growth of rape in the countryside –
“and from the hills a patchwork glows / an alien crop in England’s heart.”
There’s that Larkin echo in ‘Once It’s Gone, It’s Gone’:
Goodbye to the quiet life of the peaceful country lanes,
Shoe-horning in more houses, keep this copse dog walking space,
but land that just grows houses is marked by the curse of Cain …
… Old ways will be forgotten without protest and debate,
Remember the name while it matters – ancient Saxon place,
It could become just a sign on a road flanked by big estates.
Ah, the Saxons. Invaders themselves, of course.
In ‘Waiting for the Inevitable (Urbanisation)’ Osada’s anger matches that of John Clare’s protests about enclosures destroying nature and his way of life:
They’ll turn The Cut into a muddy ditch
with concrete channels built to guide its flow;
a roundabout, cramped houses will come next:
from green fields into suburbs in one go.
The final couplet of ‘At the Splash’ emphasises Osada’s anguish:
“In making space for people and for cars, / another landscape is forever scarred.”
I would not want to give the impression that this collection is simply an extended, well-argued planning objection. There are poems here that highlight Osada’s keen eye in writing about wildlife, albeit with the underlying implication that many if not all these wonders may be lost – deer, larks, crows, rooks, goldfinches, swallows. He celebrates the seasons, and delights in trees and hedgerows – blackthorn, elderflower, willow.
Up here in the wide open spaces of rural north Northumberland it is easy to forget the continuing development pressures on the home counties surrounding London. (We left Surrey almost two years ago, for family reasons). The penultimate poem in this collection, ‘The New Estate’, explains how the view from Osada’s own house has been blocked by new homes. I will quote its three verses in their entirety:
Uninterrupted, our view towards the dawn,
beyond silhouetted horses near the hedge.
Soon, across the lightening sky, first birds flew –
in this pleasant way each breaking day was set.
But builders bought the land, in lifting hedgerows,
trampled wild flowers – birds and insects flew.
Gone: cattle from fields, horses and their meadows,
copse of frightened deer, the foxes’ brambled home.
Next they built high walls, towering above us,
blocking out the sky, our view of distant hills.
Countryside no more, landscape changed for ever …
Stolen, every sun rise, lost, each new day’s dawn.
In these poems Patrick Osada refers to the West End area of Warfield, but also Cabbage Hill, a unprepossessing name perhaps, but undeniably precious to him. This crafted collection is a lengthy cry of anger and despair at a rural paradise lost, a depiction of the cost to nature of encroaching upon it to build homes.
Patrick Osada, The Warfield Poems, Amazon, £10
Also available direct from the author for £7 including p&p in the UK. Contact ptrosada@aol.com
The LAST collection, FROM THE FAMILY ALBUM, has been well received :
A POETRY KIT BOOK OF THE MONTH :
“... well composed poems with an appealing realism. I also found them wonderfully full of warmth and humanity.”
“There are meditations on nature, youth, age and enduring love...Patrick Osada’s meticulous honesty and crafted verse also includes unexpected moments on this affecting and deceptively gentle journey”.
COPIES OF THIS BOOK CAN BE PURCHASED FOR £7 (including P&P)
write to me at ptrosada@aol.com
I HAVE RECORDED A VIDEO IN WHICH I READ TWO POEMS FROM THE NEW COLLECTION
CLICK THIS LINK :https://youtu.be/zg3nGSKnOyk
Here is Greg Freeman's full review of FROM THE FAMILY ALBUM in Write Out Loud :
https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=110507
Read Carla's review of my collection at The Blue Nib :
https://thebluenib.com/carla-scarano-dantonio-reviews-patrick-osadas-from-the-family-album/
Delighted to find a generous review of my poetry collection, FROM THE FAMILY ALBUM, in ACUMEN 99... Many thanks Glyn Pursglove and for finding in my writing..."the enduring purpose of poetry, to hold on to the fugitive person or experience and to 'preserve' it."
SOUTH Poetry Magazine 63 :
Rosemary Muncie writes :
‘From The Family Album’ is a welcome addition to Patrick Osada’s collections.
These companionable, often humorous poems engage with their humanity and
warmth, the poet’s gift of observation and his abiding love of nature…. A rewarding
read. Patrick Osada is always true to himself and his talent.
Latest Review - Kevin Bailey in HQ Magazine 55/56 :
From The Family Album is both personal and biographical...The poems describe
individual memories and experiences that we can all engage with, and by so doing,
make us reflect on our own life story...It is a book for our times, and one that I think has the capacity to comfort any unhappy heart.
My sixth, and previous collection is: How The Light Gets In :
CHANGES was chosen by THE POETRY KIT (www.poetrykit.org) as their BOOK of the MONTH (February 2017)
(in chronological order)
“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.”
Patrick Osada's fifth collection explores the impact of change on every aspect of our
lives, from seasonal effects to those specific to people and places.
“ CHANGES is a rich, varied collection, whose three sections, while distinct in tone
and theme, complement each other in satisfying and often unexpected ways.
'Seasonal' is characterised by Osada's keen evocations of the natural world and
celebration of seasonal variation. In 'At a Time of Unrest' the poet explores moments
and places and their significance, embracing the darker sides of human experience
with quiet yet compelling understatement. 'Keepsake' is more nostalgic and elegiac
in tone and proves a fitting conclusion to this moving, memorable and, above all,
deeply human collection of poems.” Jeremy Page, Editor The Frogmore Papers
Writing about CHANGES, reviewer and poet David Ashbee says :
"Patrick Osada has long been the master of traditional verse celebrating the natural
world. Here he extends his range to the changing environment and, especially
powerfully, his own family heritage."
“A beautiful book about emotional weather, recording the bleak music of winter, wind and rain, loneliness and loss.” Andy Croft, Smokestack Books
For my friends, readers and supporters:
Special Offer
Purchase a signed copy of CHANGES ( RRP £7.99) including P& P for only £6
This offer is only available to my readers through this website. To purchase books please contact me at :
ptrosada@aol.com
CLOSE TO THE EDGE
My first collection,winner of The Rosemary Arthur Award, is currently not in print.
SHORT STORIES : SUBURBAN LIVES
Many small communities have lost their identities as they have been engulfed by suburban sprawl. Lives have been dramatically altered by the challenges of urban life.
This collection sets out to consider the varied and sometimes surprising events of suburbia. For some it offers a welcome anonymity; for others it is a stage, but many remain isolated and lonely, living in a sea of houses...
"Patrick B. Osada's second collection is the immensely confident work of a writer who combines accessibility with a fine appreciationof an enormous range of forms...Short Stories : Suburban Lives impresses with its length and diversity, and Osada, in returning to the village setting of Edward Thomas's famous poem, uses familiar form in a new way : in Adlestrop Again he recovers something unexpected in the vastly changed, yet still evocative place :
Still no one left and no one came that way
So I drove on as skies grew mistier
Through rains of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Adlestrop Again
In this apparently desultory imagery and rhyme, breathes an intrepid and important new English voice." WILL DAUNT ENVOI
ROUGH MUSIC
In ROUGH MUSIC, I have attempted to record many everyday and seasonal events of the place where I live. I have been doing this for a number of years and many of the bucolic poems from my earlier collections are also set in this area of Berkshire.
I claim nothing exceptional for Warfield - in terms of history, scenery or wild life. There are places with more tales to tell, areas that are more beautiful, or enjoy exotic or protected flora or fauna. What makes it special for me, my neighbours and the many visitors who come here to walk, ride or cycle is the very fact that much of Warfield remains untouched and unspoilt in an area riven by motorways and so close to the concrete towers of “New Town” Bracknell…. It is still possible to be in touch with a life and landscape which has been obliterated by “planners and developers” in other less fortunate villages.
This collection is, in part, a response to the plans of the local council and developers to build up to 2,200 house on semi-rural land, changing for ever the nature of this area...
Once the bulldozers move in the deer, that have roamed this area for 1,000 years, will move on and with them many other species will leave.
With tarmac and streetlights Warfield will be submerged beneath a sea of houses, its traditions and rural atmosphere destroyed…
In the face of “progress” and the mindless plans of those happy to see Warfield turned into an “urban extension” of Bracknell, I offer up these poems as a celebration of local life and scenery and a warning of what we stand to lose.
"In his third volume, Rough Music (bluechrome), Osada's lyricism and social concern are again evident. In the Warfield Poems his poetry is lyrically bucolic. However, his pastoral themes are underpinned by a concern with loss and the potential ravaging of village and countryside by planners and property developers. Away from the countryside Osada populates his collection with a diverse range of characters - some famous, some iconic. He again demonstrates a lively concern with contemporary issues and attitudes, all reflected through a prism of compassion and wry humour."
"This collection shows great strength of feeling and achievement...ROUGH MUSIC has a substantial core of finely crafted poems which will stand the test of time."
James Roderick Burns NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
Osada is a poet able to work with emotion, a poet who can take small events and small places, observe them precisely and elucidate them with a deft touch to reveal our shared humanity and the moments of connection."
Jan Fortune-Wood, Coffee House Poetry
CHOOSING THE ROUTE
CHOOSING THE ROUTE
“How do we live our lives? – In hope or despair?
Whilst some navigate the world with careful planning, others are reactive and impulsive…
What part is played by destiny, chance and happenstance?
In Choosing the Route Patrick B. Osada celebrates life’s journey.
His poems are insightful and engaging. He views the natural world and human relationships with compassion and sometimes through the lens of sardonic wit. From the lyrical lament of star-crossed lovers, to a gritty exploration of divorce,his poems shift in shape and time, yet retain a remarkably honest, authentic and demotic voice.”
Indigo Dreams Publishing
CHOOSING THE ROUTE
Published by Indigo Dreams PublishingISBN 978-1-907401-13-8
FOR ALL PERSONAL ORDERS:
REVIEW FROM HQ Magazine:
“It is always good to get a refreshingly traditional collection of poetry to read – the ‘simple’ pleasure of having the bounce and music of rhyme and alliteration to carry you along…And this is getting to be a rarer pleasure as contemporary poetry wanders lost in the wilderness, unsure of its bearings or direction.
Patrick Osada is another poet who’s work has matured and settled wonderfully. His collection, Choosing the Route (Indigo Dreams Publishing, £7.50) is wide-ranging in subject matter and every turn of the page brings new ideas and images that paint pictures in the mind…”
Review by Kevin Bailey in HQ Poetry Magazine 43/44 (September 2014)