Digging For Water (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781958892909)

A book of poems, all of which were written in 2023/4, in a variety of styles and approaches. All of them are short (no more than one page).

The content is varied, but perhaps the best way to describe their overall style or flavour might be to say that they concern themselves with many of the themes of traditional Romanticism: nature, madness, love, nostalgia, childhood, memory, loss, melancholia, dreams, the supernatural, beauty. Many have a philosophical tone.

About a fifth of the poems are ekphrastic: that is, they are reactions to other works of art, especially paintings and songs. For example, there are poems based on paintings by Van Gogh, Matisse, Velasquez, Hopper, (among many others), and songs by Nico, the Beach Boys, Neu and Popol Vuh (again among others).

Since the author is now 70 and most of the poems are written in a fairly traditional style, they might appeal most to fellow Boomers. Many of the poems deal with coming to terms with getting old, looking back at one's life, and preparing to face death. This sounds grim, but the mood of the poems varies a lot.

As well as the poems, the book also has two other sections featuring short stories and essays.

The eight short stories follow the modern trend of being really short by past standards, often around 1000-1500 words. There is no flash fiction, though. With two exceptions, they are basically realistic in style and are mostly about relationships.

The eleven essays focus on Art (predominantly painting and poetry), exploring the following range of topics in terms of their relationship to Art: authenticity, materiality, the canon, success and failure, rhyme, originality, ekphrasis, science, logic, beauty, and mystification.