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Book

A Moment of Disbelief

Poems on War, Terrorism and Refugees

There are now two reviews of A Moment of Disbelief, one by Dominic Alexander for  Counterfire and the other by Greg Chamberlain for Write Out Loud.

A Moment of Disbelief is published as part of the Poetry Salzburg Pamphlet Series.

The 43-page pamphlet costs:

£7.00 (+ 1.50 p&p)

€7.00 (+ 1.50 p&p)

US$ 10.00 (+ 2.50 p&p).

You can email Poetry Salzburg here, or order via the website.

You can also buy a copy at any of my performances.

A Moment of Disbelief

 

CONTENTS

On The Weeping Woman (by Pablo Picasso)

The Bombs

Spring

Whispers of War

The Mask

Gulf War Photograph

Telling Stories

Kosovo

Coming Home

Sing a Song of Dollars ...

Truth

The Square

Playing at War and Peace

Marching for Peace

Speaking to Power

A Moment of Disbelief

Grief

The Lost Fen Ragwort

Like God

Ten Rules of War

Before

Selling Bombs

Don’t Tell Me You Care

Next Door

Burdens

Where Have All the Children Gone?

Manchester, May 2017 

Stop the War Vigil at the Clarkson Memorial in Wisbech. Photo © William Alderson

Below are the endorsements of A Moment of Disbelief

from the poet and Shelley scholar, Michael O'Neill, and the Caribbean poet and artist, John Lyons.

William Alderson is a poet of skill and intensity. His poems often display deep feeling about war and migration. Like Shelley, clearly a poetic hero for him, he reacts with eloquent dismay to the horrors of combat and suffering. And like Shelley he is not content with a rhetoric of protest; he also examines, in poems such as ‘The Mask’, the theme of complicity in political wrong. This is a compelling collection, at once forceful and subtle. Reworked nursery rhymes, the sonnet and the villanelle, plus adroitly handled stanza forms and adapted songs, all appear in a volume that, through its fusion of art and controlled anger, serves as ‘an open door, inviting [us] to live’.”

Michael O’Neill

“A Moment of Disbelief is a convincing and unequivocal condemnation of war and its exploitative and inhumane consequences. At the beginning of this collection, the poem ‘The Weeping Woman (by Pablo Picasso)’ stands out as an apt signifier for the grief and suffering as a result of war prevalent in our world today. A subtle evocation of humanity is present throughout this collection; and there is hope too, as expressed in the poem ‘The Lost Fen Ragwort’, which ends with “one lost flower recovered, / one waking to friends and joy, / one open door inviting me to live.” This justifiably, politically-charged collection could be enjoyed for the expressive sharpness of its poetry while giving a significant pause for thought.”

John Lyons

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