I don't Read Poetry I & ll

I

I Don't Read Poetry.

Many people have said these words.

Some of them later told me how much they enjoyed my texts without ever realising that they had been reading poetry.

This book grew out of those conversations.

It brings together 26 poems and lyrical prose pieces about memories and music, gardens and journeys, childhood and the quiet moments that shape a life. They are not written to impress. They are written to be read.

I spent forty years working as an operating room nurse before I began to write seriously after retirement. Perhaps that is why I am less interested in literary categories than in people, in their stories, and in what remains and what is forgotten.

If you love poetry, I hope you will find something here.

II

A second book.

When I finished my first volume of poetry, I realized that too many poems were still waiting to find their place. I could have left them somewhere in Cloud Nirvana, hidden away among folders and forgotten files. But they deserved better.

So this book came into being.

It is a companion to I Don't Read Poetry – Volume One, written at the same time, shaped by the same thoughts and the same quiet pleasure of playing with words.

If you have not read the first volume, you may begin here. If you have, you already know what to expect.

Andreas Köster