In what amounts to a blizzard of printed poetry, Stephen Atkinson is the third regular Write Out Loud poet who has recently published a collection. Back in September Stephen’s poem ‘Our Lily’, summing up how he felt about the death of Queen Elizabeth, was read out in Parliament by his MP. And he quite rightly mentions that on the cover of his collection, The Darkness & the Light.

He has also paid tribute to his fellow poets on Write Out Loud. Stephen said: “Six or seven years ago I was asked by a friend in a band to write some lyrics for a solo project he was working on, and after years of attempting a novel (and failing miserably), I realised this suited my very, very tiny attention span - and found myself writing lyrics & poetry daily! The perfect place to encourage & help my poetry grow, I discovered, was Write Out Loud. With both new and established poets, there was always, and still is, lots of encouragement to be found. It gave me the confidence to continue & improve.

“So, after my poem 'Our Lily' was read out in Parliament I decided to compile what I consider to be my best efforts into a book, The Darkness & The Light.  Nearly 200 pages of, well, whatever came into my head! There's ghosts, reminiscing, life, love, war, a certain pandemic, even tales of Christmas!”

Talking about the feedback he has received, he added: “The thing I hear the most is: I never read poetry, but I enjoy reading your stuff for some strange reason! Whatever that reason is, I'm forever grateful to anybody who takes the time to read my words.”

The Darkness & the Light is available on Amazon