The Captain’s Swallow

It’s being mad here keeps us sane, muses a transplanted Lewis Caroll in Andrew Waterman’s new collection, weighing the ‘war on terror’ against the wonderland of physical and human goings-on around him. The Captain’s Swallow demonstrates afresh Waterman’s exceptional range of themes - on his moods, his wit and technical dexterity. The rich and exhilerating new dimensions in these poems’ shared setting in Sicily’s Aeolian Islands, where Waterman nowadays spends part of each year, as well as current global events, an historical reach back through Saracen pirates to the Greeks and beyond impinges. Encompasing hilarity and poignant lyricism, chockfull of vivid people and places, these poems gather to a book making memorable overall impact, bringing alive human universals within a distinctive world where ‘things are not what they seem/except the volcanoes.