Publisher's Synopsis
Award winning poet, David Stuart Ryan, explores the impact of a return to home after a round the world trip which has lasted some years. The impact of half forgotten places and people comes across in new and revealing ways as he explores what they still mean. But the lure of travel calls again. There is a whole section of the poetry which looks at America as he journeys there for a visit that takes in a long trip along the ocean highway of the eastern seaboard. The range of his travels from Toronto to South Carolina enables him to capture the very essence of the American scene he travels through and records in poem and picture. After this contact with the American experience the poet returns to London England to continue his exploration of roots, heritage, memory and how all this has formed the present. The benefits of looking both inside and outside the culture produce insights, discoveries, a greater degree of understanding of the truth of our lives. Once again David Stuart Ryan relies as much on his illustrations as on his poetry in order to penetrate through to the very core of an experience. For this is how we perceive our lives, we take in all available sources of information and then combine them in our brains in order to produce a picture, an approximation of reality. What precisely is this reality? The poems search back in time, to childhood, to history, to remembered fragments, snippets and glimpses from both the past and present. Only by patiently reconstructing these early traces of our lives can we hope to establish the meaning, the direction and purpose of them As we reach the conclusion of this journey of discovery, the family history looms large in the poems. Old Victorian progenitors sit proudly on the page, they traveled further and faster than even our own civilization. 'Home - and a journey to the USA' concludes with a paean to the breaking dawn down the home street as the rain fructifies and multiplies the life in the patient sturdy trees. The poems in this volume are all accompanied by David Stuart Ryan's original illustrations in full color, helping to create a whole experience where words and pictures reinforce and round out each other. The poetic experience you receive is unforgettable in its deep seated images that call and lure with their hints of another world alongside the everyday. This is poetry at its finest reinforced by unforgettable original images in full glorious color. It is an art lover's book just as much as a poetry lover's book. Book collectors and art collectors will immediately recognize the unique character of this poetry volume, it is a work of art in itself which has been some 40 years in the making.
