Kaleidoscope a Collection of Poetry

By Bruce Harris

This collection of poetry and includes some previously-published pieces and competition winners. Other poems have been written specifically for this collection. Anyone interested in their individual histories is welcome to consult the notes at the back of the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244986544

Book preview

Kaleidoscope a Collection of Poetry

KALEIDOSCOPE

A collection of poetry

by

BRUCE HARRIS

KALEIDOSCOPE

© Bruce Harris 2018

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 in writing of the publisher; nor may it be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, with these conditions being imposed on any subsequent purchaser.

The right of Bruce Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

Except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead in the following work is purely coincidental.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

First published by Artificium, now discontinued, in May 2017.

Foreword by the author

A history of Kaleidoscope:

In October 2016 my partner Anthony was diagnosed with Huntingdon’s Disease. This disease is inherited, and results in physical and cognitive problems for sufferers, with the obvious impact on quality of life and potentially a reduced life expectancy.

Eager to find some way of hitting back, I decided to try to raise funds to support those organisations helping patients and carers and carrying out relevant research into the disease. I thought perhaps I should try and put my poems and short stories to whatever use they may be—and Kaleidoscope is one of the results.

The first job when compiling this collection was to put together a meaningful theme. There were two immediate problems with this. Firstly, I don’t write to themes. Perhaps that’s a delayed reaction to all those English lessons on Wordsworth themes or Milton themes or others which didn’t connect much with my young twentieth century self. Secondly, if the book is dedicated to helping people dealing with serious illness, the danger is that the theme would finish up being pious, fatalistic, or a combination thereof.

My writing could sympathetically be described as ‘diverse’ and not so sympathetically as ‘scattergun’. If art is to make any attempt to imitate life, it must be diverse, because life is, hugely and randomly. There will never be any shortage of lyrical stuff about nature, landscapes, earth-shattering epochs or how seriously you fancy your particular girl or guy. Nothing wrong with that, but we have all kind of been there before.

I’ve always thought that where poetry is concerned there is something to be said for taking on improbable subjects to write about, so there are some in this collection which, as far as I know, have never been poetic subjects before. Exasperated celebrity physios. Two people walking through a Metro station listening to Vivaldi. An ecological Hades. Plastic toys in cereals. Learning Swedish. And no, they’re not all jolly. Thomas Becket waiting for Henry’s knights. A migrant boy frozen in the undercarriage of a plane. A night in intensive care. Guy Fawkes. A man in hospital after a heart attack. A stag night gone wrong.

I’ve called this collection Kaleidoscope because those little toys of colour and light were a joy of my childhood. Sights and shapes, re-arranged by the slightest turn of the hand. Reds, yellows, greens, blues and a few whites and blacks. Even greys. Life is a continuing miscellany of images, experiences, thoughts and situations, often random, sometimes improbable and occasionally bizarre.

Have a twist. If you want to shake it and shape it, be my guest. When our continued experience of life is threatened, diversity is the greatest loss. Diversity, unpredictability, the phenomenon of leaping from funny to serious in the space of minutes. The rollercoaster of being alive is to be celebrated all the more while we still are.

This collection of my poetry includes some previously-published pieces and competition winners. Other poems have been written specifically for this collection. Anyone interested in their individual histories is welcome to consult the notes at the back of the book. I hope readers will enjoy the range, knowing that their purchase will help support research and improve the prospects of sufferers.

As for Anthony, there is reason to believe that because of the relatively late onset of the