How to Write Poetry in How Many Chapters

In the preface, Maurice Whelan writes, 'It is one thing to get started as a writer. It is another to sustain a creative writing life. I select a few poets who have written about how they established, defined, and sustained themselves. There is an exploration of the relationship between dreams and poetry, of language and the benefits of knowing the way language has shaped who we are and how a love of words is essential if you are to become a poet.' There are many parts in this short book. In one, poems written during the Covid 19 outbreak offer a literary diary of life during the pandemic. As the world was turned upside down, Maurice Whelan responded to that upside down-ness by writing poetry. Poetry speaks to the author and the author speaks to us about the essence of what it is to be human. His belief in its revelatory and restorative powers inform every page. His is a poetry of life, a search for beauty, a declaration of rights, the right to an imaginative inner world, the right to an outer world founded on truth, liberty and justice.