Jill Rees: Welcome Press

Welcome to this collection of poetry from 2007/2008.

I found myself walking round Victoria Station one day in London, battered by the dusty winds pushing through the tall-building banked streets, blowing newspaper round, stepping round the road works. Clearly this was a part of London that the reforms of Labour and my beloved Red Ken had missed so far. I wondered why, and who owned it.

In my youth Victoria Station was the place I always ended up at when I was leaving some doomed lover, drinking in the Royal Shakespeare and wishing I was a writer. That was before I realised that all you have to do is say ‘I am a writer’ and you are! I spent the most miserable, heart-broken hours here, and the most excited and optimistic, waiting for the night train to Paris, heading for new adventures, new lovers.

I started writing about windy streets while I was waiting for my coach. Then I got sent to Vienna, where I spent the next 7 weeks. I had never been there before, and was full of mixed feelings about the Lost Inhabitants, and the first thing to hit me was the hypocritical Imperialism of the buildings and the scowling faces. Seven weeks and many poems later, I left a city and a country I had fallen madly in love with, memories of the Falco movie, and several new close friends.

Later trips to Istanbul and other cities led to a collection of experiences and emoticons inspired by these cultural hotbeds, which comprise this collection.

Whether this work be good or bad I am unable to judge. Nevertheless, I dedicate it to those friends, to the memory of those who are no longer with us, whether in the Zentralfriedhof or in the gas chambers, to the Buddhist centre in Linzerstrasse, to the ever-hopeful Turkish and Kurdish people, to my family who put up with my poetic wonderings, and to my master in life, Daisaku Ikeda, without whom there would be no poetry.

I hope you find some poems among them that you like.

Jill Rees

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