Kirjahaku

An unemployed optimist finds a strange book that leads to unexpected seduction, love, lust and a comic encounter with a cult of alien-worshipping self-improvers.With his rent overdue, unemployed but upbeat Monkey is cast out onto the streets of Leeds. Wandering on the margins of society he finds an odd-looking book as he scavenges for food. Before he can work out how to profit from his discovery he has to escape the designs of a woman in desperate need of his body and finds himself dealing with a bizarre cult of self-improvement gurus with alien connections. And all this whilst trying to salvage his relationship with his landlord's daughter as his wolfish landlord pursues him with violent intent. It's a funny journey for a hero, but Monkey's a funny sort of hero.

A lonely hotel room in a strange town. Sutton and a cold espresso and a gun. He's going to kill someone. He's going to shoot Frank Poole. His father has told him to do it and he must do it. But it's difficult. Because his father was dead when he told him. And Poole has just married Sutton's mother. Evading his abandoned girlfriend, Sutton strives to obey his father's command whilst coming to terms with the fact that the church his father ran was a scam. Sutton's journey takes him from the labyrinthine streets of RoadSide to the Red Daisy Hotel, the dark places of BlackEnd and the hospital of the dubious Dr Zane. His encounters with hookers, muggers, priests and circus people lead him finally to a showdown with Frank Poole. The man who killed his father.

These poems span a number of years and form a collection of work so far. In the title sequence, The Fool's Progress, a court jester engages in a fantasy relationship with the king's daughter. Baudelaire's Scrapbook addresses the lascivious distractions of the world and the exigencies of mortality. Here are the re-purposed voices of Icarus and Orpheus. Captain Ahab is snagged in a trawl net. In the collection are lyrical evocations of the Yorkshire landscape and the Scottish Highlands, and explorations of the human condition through the contemplation of art, love, sin and sacrifice.