Early Doors: The Ilkley Poems

Early Doors is a sharp, funny, and quietly devastating portrait of a life rebuilt in Ilkley, one poem at a time. From Soho backstreets to moorland fog, from friendly terraces to the dark corridors of an adolescent's troubled mind; these poems chart the oddball glory of Ilkley. It's a town where neighbours know your business before you do, UFO hunters salute the sky, and even the daffodils demand to be heard. Peter Thomais writes with a craftsman's precision and a local's dry humour. Kids hustling their parents, yellow lines causing civic uproar, a rocking horse guilty of GBH, the man who would only communicate through the medium of dance: all are turned into stories that entrance and captivate. By turns tender, surreal, and laugh-out-loud recognisable, Early Doors is a love letter to Ilkley and to its people. A book for anyone who's ever tried to start over, looked for direction in the fog, or found themselves unexpectedly at home when the Mayor decides to pay them an official visit.

Pagina's: 184, Paperback, Independently published