Pocahontas in Ludgate

Born in 1936, Mike Bannister grew up in the village of Alvechurch in Worcestershire; a child of the Radio Age. Following National Service, he worked in Community Schools in Telford, East London and Bradford; all the time keeping close links with quiet places; Wales, Drake’s Island, East Anglia, The Pennine Hills, Scotland’s West Coast, The Hebrides, Provence and Brittany.

In 1992, Mike retired, with his wife Ann, to focus on writing poetry. In that year his poem A Fourth Warming was nominated for The Housman Society’s Poetry Prize. Mike was Chair of the Suffolk Poetry Society 1997–2002. In 2003 his pamphlet Greenstreet Fragments was published by Orphean Press – the result of a creative collaboration with the artist and illustrator Sue Bull.

Mike’s poems have appeared in Other Poetry, Envoi and The London Magazine and have earned him awards in The Crabbe Memorial, Ver Poets, and Norwich Writers’ Circle Competitions. He is currently the chair and convenor of Café Poets in Halesworth, Suffolk, which provides a platform for working poets across Norfolk and Suffolk.

"This book is filled with journeys, particularly sea voyages, loved places and homecomings: the ferry draws close to old, familiar places which have grown, through memory and time, strangely new and beautiful."

JAMES KNOX-WHITTET

Here is a longer review, also by James Knox-Whittet.