Fruit of the loins and fruit of the vine, poison fruit and the fruit of The Fall all find their place in this first collection, which also draws together those liminal moments and landscapes, paintings and photographs that represent different modes of separation and change. The poems are beautifully accompanied by a sequence of fine-grained pencil drawings by the author.

Terry Cree’s long poem Meatyard Triptych is a moving meditation, both tender and unnerving, on the ‘family albums’ of the American photographer, Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Cree’s deft quatrains – aslant, folksy, philosophical, visionary – draw on American poetic tradition with an assurance that is rare in a British writer. (And as for his poem on Krazy Kat – Zip, POW!) Elsewhere in the collection we find the fruit of experience still tasting of innocence. Moods and perspectives shift and collide – storm and calm, indifference and passion, suffering and delight – as, from the horizon, waves keep coming ‘one truth on another’.                                                                                  – Adrian Blamires

About the author: Terry Cree is a writer and artist who lives in Hampshire. He has run a sculpture park, designed a number of gardens, organized poetry readings by many of the most significant names in post-war British poetry and has taught English and creative writing to countless numbers of young people and adults.

A poem from this collection

                                                                    THE CONSOLATION OF WALLS
                I hope he found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.

There is a wall inside me against which
I have been kicking a small rubber ball
For years.

Sometimes it rolls back flat along the ground.
Sometimes it bounces back like feelings plotted
On a graph,

That old oscillation of up and down.
I can’t decide if it’s the motive force
Of ball

Bouncing against wall I feel in feeling
Or if it’s the stoical resistance
Of that

Stonewall part of me that never submits.
And which is better, moving ball or wall?
For now,

Like Mr Jellyby, I’ll settle for
The cool consolation of a wall against
My brow.

The ball can rest inside me like a stone,
As hard and rubbery as death, unkicked,
Unthrown.

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