Late Beginner

About the Book

When I was 16 my mother took me to an industrial psychologist. "My boy a writer?" she cried. "Better a lawyer," they agreed. "Write only if compelled to," he advised.

About the Author

My first voyage was at the age of three months. Born in Johannesburg, I was taken to London. By the age of two I specialized in falling flat on my back, a skill I perfected throughout my life. After the war broke out in Europe, we crept about the oceans in a blacked-out ship, to reach the United States by way of Australia. When America entered the war we could not travel and so remained in New York City until 1945.

I was returned to South Africa at the age of ten where I remained until the age of 18, later going to University in England where I lived for 23 years. I became a film assistant director and then an editor ("What's a chap like you doing in an industry like this?" was the first word anyone said to me). At that time I showed some poems to a friend of mine, a successful Broadway writer, who told me to put them away in a drawer and look at them ten years later. I did just that and didn't write a word until five years after I opened the drawer.

Some years later, I moved to Switzerland, where I now remain, having in the preceding years become husband father and grandfather - also I participated in many small venture capital companies, then worked as a professional photographer. Am I now a poet?