My Debut Full-length Poetry Collection, An Invertebrate Fable

I am delighted to announce my debut full-length poetry collection, An Invertebrate Fable - Ten Sequences of Poetry about Insects, Gastropods and Arthropods, with natural history publisher Brambleby Books, Devon.  

These poems celebrate invertebrate life with the help of beautiful full colour images by many talented photographers, and are arranged into ten creature-based suites. The book includes a glossary, and a foreword by Peter Smithers, Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. It is available now from the Brambleby Books website (link below), and soon from various book shops.

Some of the poems have quite long histories, but most were written between 2019-22.  A lot has happened since the book was first submitted as a publication idea just over three years ago!  Its publication is a testament to the tenacity, dedication and hard work of Nicola and Hugh Loxdale of Brambleby Books.

I very much hope to take Invertebrate "on the road" this year, with readings at various festivals and events, and hopefully a launch event at a library in my locality very soon.

"Rich with metaphors and imagery, a tumbling, sliding vocabulary that slips, whirs and wriggles into the microcosm, where deep between the grass blades we meet a carnival of exotic creatures. There are poems to delight, some to ponder, and others to wonder at.  

Simon’s poems amplify the beauty these invertebrates possess ... which leads to understanding. And understanding is desperately needed at this time of global insect decline."

Peter Smithers, Royal Ent. Soc.

http://www.bramblebybooks.co.uk/invertebrate_fable.asp

Brown Centipede

 

A slotted slice of segments

wriggling, no longer than the blades

of grass that tuft about you

on all sides,

you’re a tube of micro-mottles,

rubbery ringlets fused, twisting,

and the sky’s a galaxy away.

 

Minotaur

 

Like an immaculately polished shoe,

you’re a bullet of solid gloss,

sheeny shuttle,

black star spinning through space,

elytra grooved like a spinel-spined dybbuk,

crafty assassin, darkling sprite.

 

Green lacewing

 

Neptunian mermaid,

siren in a sea of thorns,

emerald web,

eyes agog

like two gold globes,

you cruise the woodland’s

nooks and crannies,

drifting dart of chlorophyll,

viridescent icicle.