A Write Out Loud poet and Poem of the Week winner is planning to publish his second full collection this year, after his first was hailed as “witty, sympathetic and just a touch sardonic” in an online quarterly poetry magazine.

In a long and detailed review in The High Window, Stuart Henson went on to say of John Short’s Those Ghosts: “Short has enjoyed fine times in France, Spain, Italy and Greece and had his fair share of romance in most of those places.”

Short’s new collection, In Search of a Subject, will be published later this year. In Those Ghosts the action begins in childhood then moves to teenage years where the poet realises that his fruit-picking skills may lend him geographical mobility. After completing a degree in comparative religion at Leeds University he sets off for rural France and discovers the advantages of learning the language: a summer venture then extends into several years of travel.

The collection skips across various life incidents: a motoring jaunt with his father on the cusp of dementia; a winter afternoon at a race meeting with a friend; a stint on night shift in a Liverpool biscuit factory; dangerous moments up olive trees in the south of Greece; and sojourns in obscure Catalan towns. These experiences are also interspersed with tales of love, loss and hardship.

Short’s Write Out Loud profile reveals that he “these days he divides his time between Liverpool and Barcelona and is a member of the Liver Bards, Dead Good Poets and Pop-Up Writers groups, appearing at open mic venues around Liverpool and reading occasionally on Vintage Radio, Birkenhead”.

Those Ghosts is available on the Beaten Track website for £6.99