A FAREWELL TO ROMFORD
In A FAREWELL TO ROMFORD, I collect several of the pieces drafted the summer that my mother, after more than fifty years, moved away from what I still call my home town. She was the last of my family living there—the last of any friends I was still in touch with. The keystone piece here is the uncollected creative nonfiction piece "The Rising of the Rom."
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​But I've added as a sampler seven of the poems I've written about Romford over the years. Three of the four uncollected ones were casuals (meaning not exactly tossed off, but not from any manuscript in waiting, or earmarked to submit to journals) which I drafted, along with "The Rising of the Rom," as part of the "Farewell to Romford" sequence.
1. POSTCARD FROM THE SMOKE
originally published in Verse-Virtual;
collected in You Go In By The Gate That Isn't There
2. THE WIND IN RAGGED ROSES
uncollected juvenilia, written at 21 or 22
3. A LITTLE LOVE POEM
first published in smartish pace
collected in Mutt Spirituals
4. FOOL'S GOLD HEART
uncollected, though a related prose poem ran in the Silver Birch Press "Prized" series
5. WALKING TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY
first published in An Anthology of Havering Poets
collected in You Go In By The Gate That Isn't There
6. PUZZLE BOX
uncollected
7. RAG-AND-BONE SONG
uncollected