David Francis Jeffery: 17 books

All new poems written in 2014, although a couple were written late 2013. Various themes, sizes, rhymes and language; though nothing foreign this time. As mentioned, a couple were written November to December 2013, though the vast majority were written from February to October 2014.

All of these pieces have been rejected by various magazines, newspapers and internet sites. I thought they were worth retrieving and giving them a place, hence, Refugees. They might not all be good and they might not all be to your taste but, I like them. You might as well. Poems, short stories, prose pieces, rhymes and others I'm not quite sure what.

This book of short essays (for that is really what it is) was from a much larger work that I no longer possess. Once upon a time I had a bad hair day and threw out every hand written manuscript I owned. At that point, HA/VE was one of them. I had started typing it out but only managed these twenty...

Are you a busy person? What a stupid question, of course you are. But, are you a busy person that still needs mental stimulation, i.e. reading? However, who has time to sit down and read a novel these days? Amirite? Don't you wish there was a book you could just dip into and out of, whenever you felt...

Twenty short, short-stories. Many on a similar theme but none of them are interlinked. A short book to have with you on the bus, train, plane or toilet. Especially the toilet.

If you have read my previous book - 50 Haiku - then these will be familiar to you. If not, then these are not the standard Japanese haiku, rather, they are an invention of my own. They all consist of 13 syllables, but no set or standard syllable type per line. I.E. Japanese haiku are 5-7-5 per line;...

I have always wanted to have a go at trying to write an epic poem. The thing is though, that I've discovered that I have neither the talent, patience or imagination to write a truly epic poem. So these poems are an exercise in longform poetry. None of them have a story per se, I was just interested...

I used to work as a Mexican cook, in the dim, dark past. I was still a writer then, as I am now, but I managed a little less time to write back then. So, in between prep, set up and cooking, I would take what little time I had to write things down on the lids of our take away containers. They were...

A long experiment that felt much longer. Quite a few years ago, when I was working mostly nights, I arranged to have a few nights off, so I could experiment with an idea I had. That idea was the Host. It did not quite work out as I imagined though. I was intending to get drunk for three days, and...

I've always loved Haiku and have attempted to write them before but always got stuck on the traditional, locked in 5-7-5 syllable count. My dad gave me Jack Keourac's book of Haiku for my birthday one year and he invented his own system, whereby he eschewed the syllable count and kept the three line...

While searching through my shed for something completely unrelated, I came upon a bunch of old poems that I'd sent out and had been rejected. I quite liked what I'd written, so I combined them with some of the poems I'd written this year and, here it is. It also includes a few random prose pieces that weren't fitting anywhere else.

A bunch of poems that I wrote over many years. There used to be a bunch more but, in a fit of pique one year, I threw away all my writing and began again. These (including my other books) are some of the results. Not all of my remaining poems but definitely my best so far. Although I don't really consider myself much of a poet, I'm pretty proud of these twenty five.

I'm not really sure of a long description here, as I've really set it out in the short one. Suffice to say, I was sick to death of reading all the bullshit that goes with manuscripts - that they HAVE to be this and they HAVE to be that: don't use different fonts and don't play with the spacing and make a coherent story etc. So I set out to defy all that.

Mary has a history with her mother. She also has a history with Chris, the priest. Mary's mother and Chris have a history with the Bible. Julie has a history with Mary, her magazine and Mary's writing. Mary has a history with writing; so does her mother. Jacob is Mary's father; he has a history with...