About Alone Away

<p>Matt Hetherington is a writer music-maker and moderately immoderate self-moderator. He has been writing poetry for over 40 years and his sixth collection 'Kaleidoscopes' was published by Recent Work Press in September 2020. Current Inspirations are: raw garlic vinyl played very loud through big black speakers and the Corpse Pose. </p><p></p><p>His new collection is 'About Alone Away' (Walleah Press December 2024).</p><p></p><p>This collection is muscular masculine carnal clever and tender; these poems exhibit the false bravado and acute selfreflection of a seeker. In between quirky wordplay there are tender moments: first childhood love a teenage kiss a harsher adult reality. Here is all love's contrariness: he begins with 'middle' poems has 'ends' in the middle and 'beginnings' at the end ... perhaps an optimistic plea for mid-life love. </p><p></p><p>K.A Nelson</p><p></p><p>We are invited to journey into & through vulnerability suffocating pain & a hinted-at redemption. Hetherington's language & imagery ricochets between the quotidian & the surreal & we inhabit the ache absorb the oscillations of mood & hope almost taste his pain 'sweet as an orgy of salt'. There's a sense of exorcism of a scourging self-interrogation of organising the chaos of loss and of wrestling demons </p><p>into submission but also a playfulness & wry intelligence underpinning renewal & reinvention: retrieving hope relearning trust embracing life resuscitating love.</p><p></p><p>Paul Summers</p>