Kaleidoscope

Generally speaking, and according to people who profess to know about it, poetry is categorised by cultures and genres, its number of lines or words, whether or not it rhymes and what it is about. This, at once, suggests that poetry is governed by rules and must follow set forms and conventions. According to Richard Th z , however, writing to a set of rules that permits the results to neatly fit critics' pigeonholes is contrary to what poetry should be and goes wholly against the grain. For him, poetry is, first and foremost, to do with the free expression of feelings and ideas that are given intensity by the use of the aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. As a self-confessed and conscientious non-conformist, it is little wonder that he most frequently gravitates towards the least well-defined style of poetry often disparagingly referred to as 'free verse'. Kaleidoscope is a short anthology of poems written between 2010 and 2015 and, in spite of his preference for non-conformist poetry, Richard is no layman when it comes to literature. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leave his poems open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, figures of speech create a resonance between otherwise disparate images layering meanings and creating previously obscure connections.