Aperture

About the Book

Aperture is a collection of poems drawn from life experiences and reflected through the emotional lens of love, joy, pain, disappointment, anguish, loneliness, and exhilaration. It is an opening by which the “light” of simple human experience is collimated or diffracted. Subjective, though it may, the poet sacrifices his mood, temperament, disposition, and personality at the altar of emotional expression. Aperture affirms that this emotion is the great leveler and that mankind- the embodiment of pure emotion- all drowns in the depths of its gentle wrath.

About the Author

Richard Claude Valdez was born in Trinidad, of English-Lebanese and Scottish-Spanish heritage. He was educated in Port-of-Spain at Franceschi Private School; Belmont Boys Intermediate Roman Catholic School and by the Order of The Holy Ghost Fathers at Our Lady of Fatima Collegefrom which he graduated. From his very early schooling, he exhibited a keen interest in literature and voraciously immersed himself in reading poetry and literature of the English masters.

In Trinidad, he held a variety of employment positions with the firms: George F. Huggins; Gordon Grant and Pan American World Airways. He immigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1970 and began studies in English Literature and music at The University of Toronto and The Royal Conservatory of Music. To subsidise his studies, he worked in a wide variety of jobs as manual labourer; landscaper; machine operator and building maintenance. Later he was employed by the Canadian Civil Service in a variety of clerical and supervisory positions. He joined the teaching staff of the Toronto District School Board in 1986 and retired from the profession in 2003.

During his mottled employment career, he continued to write poetry-storing away his work-in the hope of future publication. Aperture is his first publication of poetry; his second, entitled, “The Promise of the Rainbow Through My Tears”, will be published in 2010. He is currently working on his first novel with the theme of homelessness on the streets of Toronto.

A classical vocalist by profession-in the field of opera and concert-he continues to perform in Canada; The United States; The Caribbean and Europe. He has added a new dimension to his musical career by composing the music to his poems, “Four Songs of Love, Loss, Languor and Longing”, to be debuted in the autumn of 2009.

He resides in Toronto and northern Florida with frequent visits to his ancestral home in Trinidad & Tobago.