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Rescue from the dark ~ Paul Francis

£10.99

ISBN 978-1-911048-52-7

pp88, B&W inners, 216mm x 140mm

Price includes p&p

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Description

This isn’t just a collection of perfectly executed verse, nor is it just a wonderfully varied array of incisive poems that peer closely at those nuggets of history and newspaper clippings which have caught this poet’s eye.
This collection is important and urgent.
It is a clamour of wronged voices.
It’s a place where seemingly unrelated events reveal themselves to be the exact opposite of that, linking up to show us what is wrong with the world. It is a record of things that should never be forgotten. It is also a reminder that where there is humanity there is hope.

Emma Purshouse ~ performance poet, novelist

 

Paul Francis has employed skill, empathy and imagination in channelling his anger at the newspaper reports he reads daily into poetry of reason and resonance.
Write Out Loud – Read the full review here

About Paul Francis:

Paul Francis is a retired teacher, living in Much Wenlock. He is a versatile writer who has won two national play-writing competitions, as well as publishing a novel and an autobiography. He has written extensively on education, and has been a prolific writer of materials for secondary school pupils.

In poetry, he has won three national poetry competitions, and been placed (second or third) in three others. He is active in the West Midlands poetry scene, regularly reading at a wide variety of venues, and he was poet in residence at the Wenlock Poetry Festival, 2016. In 2020 he wrote a sonnet a day during lockdown, published on his website www.paulfranciswrites.co.uk, and subsequently as Turning Off the News (2020).

The First Poem in the Collection:

Rescue

Gently, as if he were an injured child,
Patrick scoops up this isolated man
and carries him to safety, while his friends
(a rugby pack who’ve planned a line-out move)
provide protection, give him breathing space.
No time to think. Do what you’ve got to do.
The man they save is racist, white but this
is no self-sacrifice. It’s not for him.
We did it for our kids. We leave him there
he dies, and we know what the judge will say.
Some black boys kill a white man, no-one cares
about what happened first.
They think ahead
for others; they take action, as a team.
Police do that, and George Floyd’s still alive.

 

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