PETER BURGHAM - ProfileBorn and brought up in Liverpool, then lived in central Scotland for 24 years, now based in York. Before retirement in 2019, I worked in IT for 40+ years, back to days considered prehistoric in computer terms...! More recently I've become a TEFL-qualified teacher (English as a foreign language) and I'm also working on my French.
Hoping to catch a literary spark from my 19th century ancestors, the Welsh bards Alafon, Llifon and Taliesin, I try to entertain through writing, and I hope you will enjoy these poems, pictures and the links to other creative activities. ========================================================= In 2019-20, I completed 3 books of verse and learnt some of the do's and don'ts of self-publishing. I continue to write and in 2021 launched a new series called Pause and Rewind, which are books of photo-poems focused on different locations. The first of these celebrated my local village of Haxby, York. There are now 5 published in the series, with 'in Liverpool' launched in December 2021. There are several more in the pipeline, and I'm continuing my research for them. In 2021, I also revamped my original collection and re-launched it as Bird's Eye View, which led to an unexpected and most welcome recommendation by New Writing North. In October 2021, I published my latest collection of lyrical narrative poems, Touchpoints. For the latter, I'd like to acknowledge my gratitude to York Writers' Group for their ever-helpful analysis and support. In 2023, I've been working on my next instalments in the Pause and Rewind series, with the expected launch of Pause and Rewind in France (including poems written in French!) by the end of the year. It's been a busy few years !! 
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The picture here is one I took in summer 2015 of Sefton Park in Liverpool. Visit the Save Sefton Park Meadows website for further details about the council and housing developer plans to destroy this beautiful heritage.
POETRY or VERSE ?
In the modern literary world, it seems to me that there is relatively little 'verse' and an awful lot of 'poetry' (or is that 'a lot of awful poetry' ?). Verse traditionally has rhyme and a regular metre, ie a definable structure. Blank verse is basically iambic pentameter but with no rhymes. Free verse has no regular patterns or rhymes. Most modern poetry uses free verse style, and places importance on rhythm and sound. If Poetry is 'language painting', then Verse is 'language painting by numbers'. Verse does not purport to be great art; Poetry, at its best, can be. I like the definition from John Barr, of the Poetry Foundation, which I'll paraphrase: 'whereas Verse is a tour guide, Poetry is an explorer'. Verse takes you to places safely, Poetry is a voyage of discovery. Both formats are perfectly 'valid' - what matters is the quality of the writing. There is a place for both. I think of my own as a mixture of 'light verse' ie with structure and accessibility, and 'free verse', with occasional forays into what might be deemed 'poetry' ...
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Liverpool Sefton
club colours !
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