The plums are for enjoying now - John Whiting

This first collection of fifty poems shows the journey of an engineer with a factually trained mind as he ventures into the world of emotion, fantasy, rhythm and humour. There is much to move, to delight and amuse the reader from small gems to descriptive journeys, from strange views of the natural world to oblique angles on environmental issues. Even the poems that are clearly about death, such as the title poem, are written in an amusing or entertaining voice.The author gives himself the opportunity to stand back and look at poems and poetry itself and experience a range of emotions from the safety of a poem; from the pathetic sadness of ‘I will understand’ through the uncertainties of ‘whispered poem’ to the powerful journey of poetic construction with ‘closely observed stanzas’. There is such a range of subject matter with this collection that even readers with no previous interest or association with poetry should be entertained and compelled to finish the book asking for more!