John J Turner Sen.
'The old man of Shaws'
Scotland

E-mail Address: jojatu39@yahoo.co.uk
Please include the word 'POETRY' in the subject line of any email you send.

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Background

I grew up in the East End of Glasgow. I started writing in 1971 while working in the Brompton Heart and Chest Hospital on the Fulham road. On re-marrying I found myself only doing the odd piece here and there. For the last three years though I have been throwing myself into writing with a gusto.

Who were your influences?

Feeling that writing in isolation was getting me nowhere, I joined the Larkfield Writing Group. The help I received has helped me no end. My spell in London saw a poem of mine published in the church magazine of St. Luke's Church, South Kensington. In the eighties a couple of my lost poems were read on Radio Clyde.

Of late I have joined the neighbourhood writers and apart from my entries on your excellent web site have been published in a few anthologies produced by the writing groups.

A friend also has made me a small booklet using desktop publishing. So impressed was I that at the moment I myself am trying my own hand and proof reading some verse and some poems.

The two authors who have had the biggest effect on me are Robert W Service and Rudyard Kipling. As I write my verses I am unconscious of influences, but in the last few years, as I have been avidly reading anthologies and rediscovered old favourites, these convince me that in my own way I am doing okay and that at least some of the work I do is worthy of all those wonderful writers - from Stevenson and Burns to McCaig and Morgan.

Examples of poetry.

1. Alienation
    
2. Another Sad Song
    
3. Civiand
    
4. Did You See Him
    
5. First Blood
    
6. In Days Lang Syne
    
7. Insomniac
    
8. Let Us Take A Walk
    
9. Payback London
    
10. Regressive-Progression
     
11. Remember Me
     
12. Seascape
     
13. The Ballad of Janey McQueen
     
14. The Patriot
     
15. The Question
     
16. Wars End
     
17. Welcome Home Ally