BIOGRAPHY AND BOOKS

MY COLLECTIONS

Biography and Books :

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.

HERE IS MY LATEST AND CURRENT COLLECTION OF POETRY

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

Review by Kevin Bailey in HQ MAGAZINE

The LAST collection, FROM THE FAMILY ALBUM, has been well received :

A POETRY KIT BOOK OF THE MONTH :

"This, Osada's 7th collection, makes an immediate appeal right from the title poem...”

David Ashbee, Poet, Reviewer SOUTH poetry Magazine

“... well composed poems with an appealing realism. I also found them wonderfully full of warmth and humanity.”

Amy Wack, Poetry Editor, Seren

“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”.

Greg Freeman, Reviews Editor, Write Out Loud

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.

INFORMATION ABOUT MY PREVIOUS COLLECTION :

My sixth, and previous collection is: How The Light Gets In :

Here is the cover of How The Light Gets In, 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 were two of the readers at the launch of my book.

REVIEWS of HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN :

“How The Light Gets In” HQ poetry Magazine No. 50 Patrick B. Osada lives in Berkshire – and I was born and bred in Berkshire...and as many poems in his new collection How The Light Gets In (Dempsey & Windle, £9) have their roots in Berkshire, this book comes into my hands already drenched in reviewer bias. The Royal County is rightly symbolized by the Oak and Hart, and these poems are equally dignified and animate, full of the tension between stillness and movement. These lines fromWarfield Visitor hint at what I mean; describing a Red Kite… “Till, with a flick of his forked tail / he caught the breeze to head north-west. / Like nylon kites above Larks Hill, / this bird is tethered to its home: / a pull, Like Ariadne’s thread, / will draw him back to Beacon Hill / and Cowleaze Wood in distant Bucks.” I like the “distant Bucks” - a good handful of miles across the Thames beyond the Alfredian Burghs where the damned Mercians live...as any true Berkshire-Wessex folk will tell you. And that’s the thing, this is that rarity these days – a book of poems that, in the main, concentrate on a locality; not just its flora and fauna but also change. Here is the conclusion of Making Hay, about the 65 acre solar farm at Pingewood, Berks; They promise they will seed a meadow here where sheep can safely graze for thirty years, now acres of dark windows face the sky and on each frame a glassy panel’s ‘live’. So, new breed farming clearly has begun to turn a profit harvesting the sun. This is poetry in the tradition of John Clare, responding not just to the natural environment, but also to how it is changing. Sadly, it may have a greater impact on future readers, who may reflect upon this poetry as representing a requiem for rural England. I hope that I’m wrong. It is a good read – a refreshing landscape in a gallery full of portraits… Kevin Bailey

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 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

My sixth collection, HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN and my FIFTH collection, CHANGES can be purchased via Amazon, at all good bookshops and from my publishers Dempsey & Windle. However I am also making both books available to my friends, readers and supporters at a special price via this website of £6 (including P & P) for CHANGES and £7 (including P & P) for How The Light Gets In... contact me : ptrosada@aol.com

CHANGES

CHANGES was chosen by THE POETRY KIT (www.poetrykit.org) as their BOOK of the MONTH (February 2017)

Reviews and Comments about CHANGES :

(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 SOUTH Poetry Magazine 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 hopein 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.”

Here is the full cover (front and back) of CHANGES

...and this is what is says on the back cover :

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

“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

CHOOSING THE ROUTE (recommended retail price £7.50) for£6.00 (including postage and packing).

FOR ALL PERSONAL ORDERS:

contact me at : ptrosada@aol.com

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)