Book
A Moment of Disbelief
Poems on this site:
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The Accident
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Future Floodlands at Peterborough Cathedral
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i.m. Neil Faulkner
As poem cards:
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
A Moment of Disbelief
Grief
The Lost Fen Ragwort
Like God
Ten Rules of War
Before
Don’t Tell Me You Care
Next Door
Burdens
Where Have All the Children Gone?
Manchester, May 2017
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