After the Crash: Poems of Separation and Divorce (Poetry and Short Stories)($9.99Value)

Description

After the Crash was written during a period of separation and family upheaval. The poems were not planned as a book. They were written in fragments, often while moving between places, courtrooms, rented rooms, and temporary lives. At the time, they served a simple purpose. They were a way of keeping track of what was happening while everything familiar was falling away. This is not a poetry book in the conventional sense. There is no attempt to impress, no clever framing, and no distance between the writing and what it records. The poems move through separation, divorce, travel, courtrooms, empty houses, and the daily logistics of being a father whose children are being pulled further away. Places are named because they were real places. Conversations appear because they happened. Anger shows up when it had nowhere else to go. Nothing is softened or turned into a lesson. You do not need to know how to read poetry to read this book. The poems are not puzzles to be solved. They sit beside each other the way days do when you are trying to get through something that does not resolve neatly. Some pieces are quiet and observational. Others are raw, direct, and sometimes uncomfortable. The shifts between them were not designed. They reflect the way life moved at the time. There is a strong sense of movement through Europe in the middle of the book. Trains, hostels, phone cards, unfamiliar languages, and the strange relief of being nowhere familiar when home no longer exists. Alongside that is the constant presence of children. Remembered voices. Missed meals. Small promises. The steady effort to remain upright as a parent even when everything else is collapsing. This is not a book that ties itself up. It does not offer closure or a clean arc from pain to healing. The later poems do not claim that everything is better, only that things have moved on. That unfinished quality is intentional. Separation does not end when paperwork does, and recovery does not arrive on schedule. After the Crash will resonate with readers who have experienced something fundamental falling apart. A relationship. A family structure. A sense of home. A version of themselves they thought was settled. It is for people who do not want advice, uplift, or resolution, but who recognise the value of seeing disruption recorded plainly and without disguise. Sometimes the most useful thing a book can do is tell the truth about what it is like while you are still in it.