Familial: Selected Poems

One of the internet’s most prominent poets, John Lavan, presents his second book of collected poems.


John’s distinctive voice, enjoyed by his hundreds of thousands of blog and Twitter followers, carries effortlessly from the personal to the pastoral. Many poems are inspired by family relationships, especially the bond he has with his first son Andrew, who has Down’s syndrome.


There are also poems on love, our time, a series of haiku, and even poems on poetry among this collection of more than 100 hilarious, thoughtful and heart-breaking works.


Yorkshireman John – well-known on Twitter by the usernames @Toltecjohn, @SufiJohn, @VVG_John and @S_Spearejohn – believes that poetry connects with feeling and pushes out the wings of perception such that, after reading a good poem, we think and feel differently. “Reading and writing poetry helps me concentrate on words, thoughts, feelings,” he said.