Those Ghosts: A Life in Poems
By John Short
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About this ebook
A mesmerising summer welcomes the reader into this collection and holds them for a journey that spans several decades. There is music – languid and harmonious, a fresh youthfulness, and time is a metronome that strikes through lustrous landscapes and characters of varying personalities. A steady, companionable read on a journey of one’s own or at home.
– Victoria Ekpo
John Short
John Short grew up near Ormskirk and went to Leeds University, where he obtained a degree in comparative religion then spent years in Europe doing a variety of jobs before settling for eight years in Greece. His poems and stories have appeared in many magazines in France, Spain, Ireland, the UK, Austria, Nigeria and the USA. His poem ‘The Dogs of Athens’ was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018 by StepAway magazine. He also has a collection of self-published stories: The Private Unmentionable Gargoyle under the pen name Hubert Tsarko. He’s a member of Liver Bards, Inklings and the Wirral-based Pop-Up Writers, and used to read on Vintage Radio in Birkenhead. His pamphlet Unknown Territory, Poems about Greece was published by Black Light Engine Room Press in 2020.
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Book preview
Those Ghosts - John Short
Those Ghosts
A Life in Poems
John Short
Beaten Track LogoBeaten Track
www.beatentrackpublishing.com
Those Ghosts
First Published 2021 by Beaten Track Publishing
Copyright © 2021–2023 John Short
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78645 480 5
eBook ISBN: 978 1 78645 481 2
Cover by Debbie McGowan
Beaten Track Publishing,
Burscough, Lancashire.
www.beatentrackpublishing.com
A mesmerising summer welcomes the reader into this collection and holds them for a journey that spans several decades. There is music – languid and harmonious, a fresh youthfulness, and time is a metronome that strikes through lustrous landscapes and characters of varying personalities. A steady, companionable read on a journey of one’s own or at home.
– Victoria Ekpo
Contents
Poems
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Beaten Track Publishing
Full Table of Contents
Late Summer
A garden scattered with toys
as sunlight fades to dusk.
I’m mesmerised through glass.
After the safe lengths of lawn,
a purple chaos of thistles
marks wild uncharted territory.
Poplar trees beyond the garden,
a man digging for main crop:
last potatoes from fertile earth.
He walks off into late summer,
past the old council estate
and its kids who throw stones.
Don’t ever approach them,
my mother lectures me.
Play this side of the poplars.
Grandma’s House
Defunct flies lay clenched
tight as fists, webs hung low
near holy statues positioned
to ensure she’d go to heaven.
I nosed my uncles’ rooms
while they were out at work,
broke open dog-ends, tasted
gold strands, sweet at first