My earliest memory has me around three years on the planet. I picture myself on my own, though that seems unlikely. I am transfixed, stopped at a curve in the wall, besides the pavement: transfixed by a metal toy car that is sitting on the wall. I know it’s not mine. I know I want it. I take the car.

My next memory is of a stag beetle in the grass, in what seems a huge jungle on close inspection – and this impossible, fabulous, fantastical, fierce creature. A wonder of the world. Here in front of me, and then, magically, in my father’s hands.

The Collection House holds what has become a body of work over the past few years. Poems have been my main focus. Poems of pain, poems of passion, poems of presence, poems of love, poems of healing. Poems grasping with a present moment reality. Always some element of transformation inherent in the recognition of, the ventilation of, the naming of what is there.

Also, recently, I am lucky enough to be playing music with talented friends, and The Mirage Effect has taken shape.

I would be very happy if some of my poems or music could touch something, some flame of recognition, within the reader or listener and inspire or help them in some way on this devastating, mysterious and beautiful journey we call life. ❤

John McAndrew is a poet, author, musician, a man of many colours and a bear of little brain. The first poem he wrote was at the age of eight and involved some intense colouring-in, along with the words, “He became so worried, all he could think of was the colour blue”. The first word he learned to read was “Pooh”.