Einstein’s Bicycle
This remarkable, original and imaginative poem, ‘Einstein’s Bicycle’, is the outcome of the poet’s childhood experiences in London orphanages during and after WW2. Terry says of the poem, ‘Einstein’s Bicycle’, is a slow-burn rant about life’s drama as seen by those who fill the paupers’ pit. Its heroes are the descendants of the bowmen and those who manned the gun-decks. They are the children of the levellers, those who worked the looms and spun the thread – cliches of their class, yet resilient and spirited, always conscious of their inheritance.’ He adds, ‘What begins as the sad tale of a maid in the shadow of the Cenotaph, unfolds as the celebration of a culture old as Chaucer, proud of its pedigree and its vitality to tilt at pomposity and privilege, sustained by the principle of Einstein’s bicycle – if you don’t keep pedalling you’ll simply fall off.’
About Terry
Born into the London blitz, Terry was the child of a teenaged, unmarried mother and a father who died in a war hospital bed when he was two. Most of his childhood was spent in orphanages, care and foster homes.
While still a school-boy, his mother emigrated to Australia where she raised a family and lived for the next sixty years. After many attempts to find her, the first news he had was her death notice in a Melbourne paper. He now lives with his dog in the English High Peaks in a house that’s in the clouds and writes to keep himself sane. Understandably, perhaps, some of his poems are an attempt to come to terms with the sadness of his past and the early loss of his mother – in particular, ‘Pieces of Shrapnel’ and ‘Letters to Jocasta’.
Dad’s Doodles
Like the lyrics of a favourite song, they sang in the sunshine, laughed every day and each night told their stories to the moon. They had fun and talked to the rhythm of a garden swing about happiness and birdsong, blossom and all. Dad’s Doodles are the notes of a father caring for his daughters as they go skipping through the days, leaving footprints in the dew, jewels in their dreams and thoughts that look like poems.
Letters to Jocasta
Letters to Jocasta is a bitter-sweet account of bereavement, a child for its mother, six decades after they parted on a Tilbury dockside – a damaged but unbroken bond revealed in poems about love, grief and guilt.