ABOUT THE COLLECTION

“A daily writing practice over the past two years has led to my writing on a wide range of themes. I suspect that someone pours a little poetry dust into my ear each night as I sleep because I wake up with a few lines of rhyme from the dream world to tinker with from the first moment of the day.  However, the pile of sodden clothes in the bathroom reminds me that it had not been an ordinary night – and that an effort to capture what had gone before, was required. The themes of animals, war, poetry, politics, love, materialism, adventure and death have emerged, but I have not grouped them, and rather allowed them to roam and mingle. These are all my vital concerns and I imagine that they are for most people. In this way, the poetry is demotic, accessible and yet, I hope, subtle and unpredictable by turns. I tend to be the person people want to make an example of rather than to follow, and am not sure of my suitability as an exemplar of making poetry that could become important in your life – I but must admit to harbouring hope, for as Emily Dickinson says: hope, it never asked a crumb of me. Lastly, when I write poems, I have in mind an audience of people whom I love and trust, people who have lived these times, who can relate to these themes, who care for children and animals. In other words, I write with the feeling that I am amongst friends.” – Les Morison

ABOUT THE POET

Les Morison is a senior counsel who practices as a member of the Johannesburg Society of Advocates. He obtained his BA Llb from the University of Natal. He qualified as an attorney in 1988 and as an advocate in 1990. He took silk in 2009 and qualified as a solicitor of England and Wales in 2016. He wrote and staged the play “The Prize of Peace” in 2011 which received a nomination for a Naledi as play of the year. In 2026 he published his poetry collection The Savagery of Sundays. Les practices contract law and teaches pleadings. He is qualified as a commercial mediator.