Honey Words

Words flow like honey from Sean Joyce’s lips, and I don't mean that boring clover honey that substitutes character with sweetness. I’m referring to bush honey where flavours of Manuka, Kanuka, Kahikatea, Kauri and Matagouri punch edgy flavours onto your morning toast.

I mention toast because Sean is a longstanding master of the toast. A member of Sunrise Toastmasters for around 100 years, a Wedding Celebrant of less than a half century and a poet all his life, Sean knows a word or two, and he doesn't seem to forget any of them.

Sean has a remarkable book of poems up on Amazon ‘Poems Happen - Arguments for Happiness’ that didn’t make me sad for a moment.

Here is what some sensible reviewers have said:

From the Amazon website;

Tutor K: A fine collection of poems and short stories drawing on personal experiences to explore "what it is to be human”. The work is at times paradoxical (as the subtitle suggests) occasionally brilliant as in 'Small Summer Days' and largely satisfying. Some have a deceptive simplicity and this restraint is used to terrific effect in poems like 'How fast do you dig'. The tone of BUNDORAN is poignant and tender, with a gentle reminder of both the reader's and the writer's mortality: 'And before that, I suppose it will be me. BEYOND HISTORY is a very polished piece. The poetry illustrates a variety of styles, subjects, and treatment of themes. The prose poem AFTERWARDS paints a most realistic picture of a group of workers surging towards the factory gates in the morning. I love the line that includes: especially say each other's names! Tutor M: The poems are wise, thoughtful, and droll. They are 'Poems (that) know more than than the poet/ knows or the reader learns'. And they are optimistic despite the sobriety of what they confront. Tutor N: The prose poems, Small Summer Days and Someone Else, are excellent; whole lives are illustrated in less than a page and the characters stayed with me long after the readings.

I am enjoying Sean’s poems and have chosen one that is not mentioned above. If you want to read those and a heap more you might buy the book. Why not buy five and give four as presents? Check it out here