I am certainly going to resist the temptation to post an image of every page of this book the moment it comes  off the press with the final printing in place but, with Ralph’s simple but amazingly powerful image for the titlepage spread completed this morning, I simply couldn’t resist!

In case anyone is perplexed about the title of this collection, I feel I should help by revealing a poem from later on in the book. It is by D.H. Lawrence and is not very long.

Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,

but there is also a third thing, that makes it water

and nobody knows what that is.

While I was at school, I remember, I had to write a Prize Essay on the subject
“A scientist is a poet gone wrong”.
What a wonderful subject . . . I could not resist!

I made a lot out of a favourite poem by my great literary idol of the moment, Dylan Thomas (still very much alive in those distant days)  . . .

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age;
That blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.

Had I known about the Lawrence poem, I could have made a lot of that too!