Poetry isn’t something I ever saw myself writing, not for any other reason than I lacked the creative skill to do it. Putting together the first book ‘Sweeping Leaves In The Wind’, I was inspired by Neville Johnson’s words. Here was a soldier trying to make sense of his thoughts, feelings and likely his reality through poetry. There is the romantic and antiquity version of the ‘warrior poet’ and I never fully understood it -how art and war can fit together. Stories like The Iliad and Odysseus’ journey home to Greece after the Trojan war, how the arts and philosophy formed part of the training of most ancient armies like the Greeks, Spartans and Trojans. I think I can now see the truth of it, Plato said, “Only the dead see the end of war”, something which only now I can begin to understand. We’re not trained to make sense of our own minds, thoughts and feelings. Here then is where poetry seems to bridge that gap, to embrace the true philosophical challenges that warfare or being trained for warfare brings. This is perhaps why the warrior poet exists, to help soothe and rationalise the capacity for extreme violence with the ability to love. All author profits from this book go directly to helping veterans.