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Spotlight Poets was established in 1997 as an imprint of Forward Press Ltd in a bid to launch the best of our poets into the public sphere. Since then we have worked hard to present our authors’ work in a way that not only complements their style but reflects the class of poet they undoubtedly are.

All the authors in our Spotlight Poets series are hand-selected on the basis of creativity, style and flair, not to mention form and appeal. As a nation of poetry lovers, many of us are still reluctant to venture into the realms of ‘new’ and ‘unknown’. For those of us that would like to take an interest in the poetic art form or for those of us already holding it in high esteem it can be nigh on impossible to find quality new authors and material. Well, we present this to you...Spotlight Poets has opened up a doorway to something quite special.

Within, readers can not only revel in the best of our authors but also take a look at the lives of our poets and what inspires them. Each author has the chance to provide a biography and photograph to allow the reader to take a peek at their contemporaries. As contemporaries ourselves, we love the chance to get involved and take a deeper look at a collection of work. We hope you do too.

Annabel Cook, Editor

From Spotlight Poets ‘... poetry formed a channel for emotions too difficult, deep and incomprehensible to put into verbal words: love, death of a loved one, death of a pet, the wonder of nature and the miracle of simply being able to breathe in and out... Like many I find comfort/help from reading books about other people’s experiences and often when I look at the author’s name I find they are dead but they are still giving me comfort from beyond the grave. One hopes one’s writing can give comfort and amusement to others. However happy externally one appears, we all have our private anguishes. The knowledge of that fact helps others along life’s tough road. From the poem Making Whoopee the lines ‘and we who are left go on, shouldering the burdens you willingly carried...’ express how one feels when someone who was a cornerstone of one’s life is gone and you have no choice but to stumble on as best as you can.

The Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer, Omar Khayyam likened the experience of being in love as in the threshing shed. It asks everything of you and lays you bare. Boris Pasternak, poet, novelist, translator and author of Doctor Zhivago felt in common with Solzhenitsyn, that to find the greater truths one has to go alone, away from the herd. Love, death, war, bring one uncomfortably in contact with the great truths about ourselves and the world. Perhaps to address these truths is the poet’s job? Joan Woolley

Natural World by Annabel Cook ISBN 978-1-84077-164-0 is available from www.amazon.co.uk, or telephone 01733 898102 or www.forwardpress.co.uk