The Station of Oi

Three collections of poems based upon art reproductions, photographs and other card designs. After a visit to the Hiroshige Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London during September 1997, I purchased a pack of ten cards, thinking they were all different, with a view to writing a poem on each to celebrate various relatives' and friends' birthdays. When it turned out the cards carried the same illustration - that of The Station of Oi. from the artist's series of sixty-nine woodcuts based on the stations of the Kisokaido Road - I decided to attempt ten meditations around the one theme. The first meditation celebrated my daughter Pat's birthday on October 1st, and the last my son Andrew's birthday on December 8th. Those in between are all written for friends. The final meditation relates to me personally and is a statement about my own confused journey at my sixty-ninth station of life.