Pulling Weeds: Poems from the Garden (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781519239372)

John Poignand started writing poems after retiring in Chatham, on Cape Cod. Just as flowers inspired his art work, his gardens inspired his poems Born in 1937 in Yorkshire England shortly before the early Death of his father, he and his sister spent 6 years in an orphanage for Naval Officers. Their mother became a nurse at Guys hospital. They rejoined their mother in 1943. This was London during the Blitz, Buzz bombs and V2 rockets. The family emigrated to the US in 1948, there he delivered papers, worked helping in the gardens at Amherst College, and a Rose garden; there developed a love of nature and gardening. Leaving college after falling in love too many times, missing too many classes, joined the Army, serving in Denver, working nights at a folk music night club. Leaving Denver, he returned East, and worked for a children's film company, where he built and operated mobile theaters for Head Start education programs, John later worked in the AERO space industry, sold computer time sharing, simulation modelling and econometrics. He managed a data base containing the stocks and bonds of the worlds markets and became VP of International Marketing. That assignment took him to almost every corner of the world, incuding the middle east and the failing Soviet Union. John and his wife retired on CapeCod where John started capturing large digital images of the flowers in his gardens, printing these on large canvases. He won prizes for this work in Chatham, Boca Rotan, the Philadelphia Flower show and others. John is now a member of Chatham's memoir group in which he writes of his life, He found Poetry enabled him to more precisely describe colors, feelings and experiences. Poetry became his true love, refined under the stewardship of his mentor Peter Saunders, who gathers of group of fellow poets at Chatham's Eldredge Library. Almost 80, John finds a great joy in every aspect of his active life, it's chores, its music and even its traumas. His poems are in English and cover a wide range of subject matter including: gardening, seasons, nature, family, philosophy, and include some fun by poking at things that need poking.. When not gradening, he plays tennis, plays a guitar and sings. Life he says is about reinventing yourself every couple of years. Part autobiographical, John maintains that poetry present life, not obscure, but with an accessible enjoyable visual play of words that take the reader into life's many avenues.