This Good Fight

This collection of poems grew from this woman's life - a life lived in the second half of the 20th century and these early years of the 21st. One theme of the collection is the precarious balance between I and you - the incessant to-and-fro between the external life, the life of others, and the life in the head. The poems were written in an order quite different from the order in which they appear here. They are arranged here so that, if you decide to read them from the beginning, you progress, as it were, through a life. Asking myself about the role of poetry in the 21st century, I look for ways of using language simply and sparingly - squeezing from few words a richer range of possibilities. These poems are for you, whoever you are, but especially for everyone who has been part of my life and made it worth this good fight. You know who you are.