Poetry comes from deep within and reaches out to touch another’s soul. Personal narrative poetry immerses the reader in the poet’s journey through life, in such a way that the reader is drawn into those experiences and can share in the poet’s feelings of elation or sorrow.

Whilst a reader may experience a personal bond with the author’s compositions, those feelings can be shared with thousands of others all over the world. Poetry is a gift - unguarded thoughts unleashed by the poet with readers he or she may never know. That is the beauty of writing.

Using his distinctive style of storytelling by way of stanza and prose, Irish Poet and Author, Greg McVicker, dives headfirst into the turbulent cycle of life. In One Cross to Bear , his latest collection of poetry, he takes us on a whirlwind journey of his years growing up in his native Northern Ireland, up to the present day in Canada. Poems such as; Belfast City Asylum and Everlasting Homesickness paint a vivid picture of growing up in war-torn Belfast, and the pain he endured at being torn away from all that he knew in order to start a new life in a safer, but foreign land. Greg writes unashamedly from the heart, reaching out to his readers and carrying them along the waves of an emotional tsunami. I have no doubt that these poetic stories have and will continue to affect untold numbers of individuals throughout their lifetime.

• J.P. Sexton, Author of; ‘The Big Yank - Memoir of a Boy Growing Up Irish.