Latest
news:
June 2020 Free Stuff!
I have now decided to stop selling my works through Lulu and just give them away instead! (I believe that as human societies get more selfish we should respond by geting more generous). So thanks to the National Library of Australia you can read the following works for free online:
The True History of Pocahontas
‘Think of the world’: Collected Poems 1986–2016
The Reawakening: Religion and the Future of Humanity
October 2019: Wordfall
Over the years I have given a lot of thought to how to present fairly traditional poetry in new ways, thus, for example, my Collected Poems (see below) presents the poems in reverse chronological order, latest to earliest. In my latest collection Wordfall there is no collection. Instead readers can visit the web page and click a button to generate random poems from the ‘collection’. Here it is.
June
2016: Missa Mundi

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In Missa Mundi,
I provide alternative texts for the four pieces of the Catholic liturgy
most commonly set to music: the Mass, the Requiem, the Te Deum and the
Stabat Mater, expressing a green, worldly spirituality. These are
suitable for replacing the traditional words in sung settings. Here is
the document (PDF 600K).
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May
2016: ‘Think of the world’: Collected Poems 1986–2016
And
another project: my collected poems of 30 years, some 670 poems, 250
previously unpublished (498 pages). It is now available FREE (see above).
This
collection has a unique arrangement: in place of a chronological or
thematic organisation these poems are arranged in sections from my most
recent work back through earlier years to my earliest work, written in
the UK. This allows the reader to follow my inspiration and development
back to its source and, I hope, appreciate the consistency of purpose
throughout his body of work.
Throughout
the focus is on the war waged by modernity on nature and on the human
spirit as a constituent part of the natural world. |

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December
2015: The True History of Pocahontas
The True History of Pocahontas is a literary
film script which endeavours to tell the story of
Pocahontas/Matoaka right.
‘In
this historically-informed screen play John Leonard strips away
the myths surrounding the life of Pocahontas and delivers a
compelling account of her tragic life at the moment of the
foundation of the Virginia colony. He demonstrates that in this
case at least, the truth is even more fascinating the myths.’
Camilla Townsend, Historian, author of Pocahontas
and the Powhatan Dilemma (Hill
and Wang, 2005).
It is now available FREE (see above).
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November
2015: The
Reawakening

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The
Reawakening: Religion and the Future of Humanity,
my work on the history of religion, is now available FREE (see above).
Here
is a synopsis (PDF 800K).
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May
2014: A
Fifth Poetry Collection
A
Spell, A Charm,
my fifth poetry collection, is now available from Hybrid
Publishers in Melbourne.
Here
is the media release (PDF 280K).
And
here is a recording
of the Canberra launch on 15 July. (mp3, 28 mins, 29 mb). I
have also made a Youtube
version, which has a slideshow of my photographs and other
images to accompany the audio.
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Elsewhere in these
pages:
Sample
poems:
I used to have a page of
sample poems here, but now that you can see complete PDFs of many
of my works, there is no need for this. See this page and Publications.
All
my publication details:
Read about my older
publications and
order hard copies of them.
Free
PDF Novels
Have a look at a couple
of complete PDFs of unpublished novels.
PhD
Thesis
Look at my Thesis.
Interview
with the Author
And you can read an
interview I did a few years ago with Cordite
magazine.
The
Practicalities of Writing Poetry
This is an article
of mine which appeared in Overland
magazine in 2007. It was
described by one reader as ‘schoolmasterly‘ (which I took as a
compliment).
Wikipedia
See my Wikipedia
page!
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