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The Innocence primarily deals with apathy, the suppression of one’s emotions and lack of interest in everyday life. The poems included I wrote over a period of seven years, shortly after the death of my Mother to cancer and before/during my severe diagnosis of Crohn’s Disease (an inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract).

Spending the majority of my nights in the company of myself under the influence of alcohol, was an act of self-defence, I now know, but it resulted in my most active writing period away from even my family and closest friends. Shortly before that, I began to realise drinking on the town with huge groups of people who weren’t really my friends, and having sexual liaisons with random women in an attempt to vent my frustrations, only made me angrier and want to blame people for my misfortunes even more.

Part of the journey also involves my time spent in hospital, particularly under the care of doctors and nurses in the ICU and gastro ward. At the core of my apathy was my physical inability to work, having to deal with certain idiotic NHS workers who were only bothered about picking up their pay cheques from week to week, and an incredibly surreal experience where I “died” for two minutes and had to be shaken back to life.

Acceptance or coming to terms with my illness as well as the death of my Mother is something I show signs of wanting towards the end of this book, but to go somewhat full circle would’ve been a bit too cliché (I’ll save the more “progressive” poems for another compilation). Basically, this is a journey of one man going through the emotions – not a lesson in morality. Be it that I am only human, many people will be able to relate to the spurts of anger, sexual rebellion, dissatisfaction and even sarcastic hopelessness that I express here in opposition to myself, other people and even fate (if there is such a thing, of course).