We
are all involved in what I call The Great Conversation, exchanging images and words with one another that
go to create a picture of the world each of us carries in our head. Human knowledge is not abstract. It is felt. By accessing
your feelings, a writer is trying to share his picture with you and, to some extent, change yours. In my poetry and novels
I try to do this through the lens of imagery and story telling. In Notes I have tried to do it through
the lens of analysis.
My poetry is simple and I love the images Marisa Attard has drawn
to accompany it. For me, the simplest things often carry the most meaning. Even in my novels I tend to use a light touch more
than a heavy one.
With The Letter Writer, I show how we all
get caught up in the mood of the moment. Whether it be a dot-com bubble, or a housing bust – we have all been there!
In Like No Other, I explore the many contradictions that lay behind the second Iraq war. Was it
just about oil and the West’s security, or were we filled with a missionary zeal to spread democracy? And what benefits
will our intervention bring to the Iraqi people? You be the judge.
In Warlord
I describe the often unbridgeable gap between cultures and the hard choices those in small countries - mine is called
Chenchia - lodged next to large ones, such as Russia, must make. Yours and my insatiable thirst for oil is the catalyst. You
might want to ponder who is the warlord in the story. The ones we think of as backward, with traditional ways – or the
Russian President? Could the Warlord even be ourselves, hiding conveniently behind the men and women we elect?
My last novel, The Storytellers:Metamorphosis describes the wrenching changes that take place when
the old way of doing things becomes discredited and a new way has to be found. In The Damned and other essays
I try to lay out the forces that will impact human evoution. Multiverse, my most recent novel, is
about the choices we make individually and collectively and how these determine the kind of future we inhabit.
