Coracle
BooksBooks by Dick Sullivan
The Moon at Midnight: please see Melanie (below).
Remember the time we were alone
In an inn of honey-coloured stone
And all night long made love?
The bells aren't ringing yet for evensong
And we have time, though not too long;
But all we need is time enough.
All there is Love, and then decay,
I beg you not to throw
The last-of-love away.
80 pages
Prices: UK £6.95 (p&p £1.50)
US $10.00 (p&p $2.00)
ISBN 0 90628040 0
What they say about The Moon at Midnight"(The Prefaces) for me add greatly to the value of the book. I always find it fascinating to read about the way a poet works and what underpins their work and these (prefaces) give us a deep insight into ... the world view that informs his poetry".
Quaker Monthly
Melanie: both this book and The Moon at Midnight (please see above) is a continuing story of the love between a man and a woman, separated by circumstances, and late in life (love-in-age, in fact.)
Underlying both is the belief, explained in prefaces, that poetry is in essence spiritual, that at its best it can induce a sense of the Divine, and that the Divine is human love writ large.
Lightning lit the spider's web
And thus was widow Dido wed.
But who freed Dido into Dis?
Love can do much more than this.
Love soars above all other things:
It is no Icarus with brief wax wings.
78 pages
Prices: UK £6.95 (p&p £1.50)
US $10.00 (p&p $2.00)
ISBN 0 906280 33 8
What they say about Melanie
"(He) speaks of life with clarity and wisdom. ...(his) work is made more interesting by its constant focus on sensual experience ...Melanie is one of those extraordinary books that can seem to sum up the grief and joy and hope of people..."
NHI Review
What they say about both Melanie and The Moon at Midnight:
"Here are two slim volumes that give much food for thought and if Dick Sullivan is right, as I suspect he is, then we Quakers should all be trying to write the true poem of ourselves, not just verse."
Quaker Monthly
Morning on the Mountain: A poem telling the story of the growing love between a man and woman.
It is also about the power of love to transform people and make them complete.
The poet also argues that love is the surest way of experiencing something of God.
It is the sequel to Capperbar.
75 pages.
Prices: UK £6.95 (p&p £1.50).
US $10.00 (p&p $2.00)
ISBN 0 9062 8012 5
Capperbar: Contains two long poems (and a few shorter ones) for the price of one.
The body of the work is about the search for a spiritual identity, or some knowledge of God, if you wish. The journey takes the poet through real landscapes - such the deserts of Namibia down to the Cape, and remote glens in Scotland - before finding a solution: the divine is experienced in those rare moments when the mind is free of thought.
Art can induce this, as can landscape and the poem is therefore also a poetry of place.
The final part is a narrative poem. Capperbar (naval slang for anything stolen) is a man snatched from his rightful element and forced to live in an alien world, a frigate in the Napoleonic War. He has no faith and as he meets his end his sole consolation is what he experiences through his senses. It is not enough.
In this poem's sequel, Morning on the Mountain, the poet discovers the real route to the divine: human love.
What they say about Capperbar:
"This collection brings you back again and again to the eternal questions about human life and sees all our experiences as pointers to the Divine." Quaker Monthly.
94 pages.
Prices: UK £6.95 (p&p £1.50).
US $10.00 (p&p $2.00)
ISBN 0 9062 8050 8
Orders to:
Your local bookstore
www.Amazon.com or www.Amazon.co.uk
Or (cheques with orders, please) to:
Coracle Books, 13 Red House Yard, Thornham Magna, Eye, Suffolk, IP23 8HH,
England.
Print order form here
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Books on-line, though out of print
Navvyman: the definitive history of navvying and navvies - the men
who with their bare hands built Britain's canals, railways, dams and docks.
A people apart, living in their own shanty villages and shunned by almost
everybody (apart form missionaries sent to convert them). Each man was expected
to move thirty tons of earth a day with a pick and with a shovel.
Navvyman can now be read on:
www.victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/contents.html
This is a website of Brown University, Rhode Island, USA
An Appendix, specially written for Brown University, can also be read on:
www.victorianweb.org/history/work/sullivan/appendix.html
It gives a brief autobiographical account of what happened after navvying, as a way of life, ended at the Haweswater dam in the Lake District in the early 1940s.
Also visit:
www.victorianweb.org/history/work/navvy2.html
www.victorianweb.org/victorian/history/work/navvy.html
www.geocities.com/the_navvies/
Old Ships, Boats and Maritime Museums: Now out of date as a guide
to...well, old ships and maritime museums - but still recommended as a work
of reference by such bodies as the National Register of Historic Ships.
Its potted histories and descriptions are timeless.
Some of the contents of this book are now also available on the Brown University website:
www.victorianweb.org/technology/ships/index.html
The vessels are: Cambria, Provident, the Tetty Boat, Kathleen and May, Steam launch on Lake Windermere, Great Britain, Demon, and Robin.
Also visit: www.nhsc.org.uk/NRHV/index.cfm