USING A VARIETY OF POETIC TECHNIQUES including monologues, sonnets and rhyming couplets, John Price focuses on the individual’s will to survive. Along with the variety of techniques there is a mixture of mood and feeling – from the absurdities of the Greek gods' treatment of Tiresias and the Angel of the North's freedom fantasies to the stoicism of the cancer patient and the old man organising his 'leaving', there is humour, compassion, optimism, sadness and above all an appreciation of human courage and endurance. And then there is the image of the sea rocket blooming till doomsday ‘on whatever scraps of shore survive’.

This is the second poetry pamphlet by John Price from IRON Press. We previously published Bye Bye Blackboard illustrated by Susan M Coles, 2016.