Dawn Sail Over Crookwood

by Mark Whelehan

ISBN: 9780956423016

Fiction Paperback
210mm x 210mm – 160 pages
RRP £12.99

This 160 page softback book contains the latest poetry works by Mark Whelehan, a well-known Sculptor, Poet and Polymath of Irish descent, who escaped the theatre to sculpt on several acres of Wiltshire, where he keeps a flock of Land Rovers, a fleet of Soay Sheep, Guinea Fowl, Dolly the African Grey Parrot and an Irish Wolfdane named Crook.

During his varied life, he has lived on a fishing boat on the Thames in London and travelled to Africa, USA, West Indies and across Europe. In his younger years he was, in his own words: “…. a young tyro following a wild hedonistic path along a sort of rake’s progress, who was booted out of the RSC, BBC and various Film, Theatre and TV.”   His poems, illustrated in his own distinctive pointelle style, are about release and a liminal space transitional between imagination and reality.  They attempt to recreate past and present love, atmosphere, landscapes, folklore and characters from Crookwood, near Devizes in Wiltshire.

“From a young age,” says the author “ I was interested in wildlife, archaeology, ornithology and astronomy.  I ended up spending half my adult life in the theatre and in bars, and the latter half sculpting in my own studio space.  I always felt I had decided on which paths to follow, later on than most, but in actual fact I am constantly involved in it all.   When asked I often reply that I am still deciding what to do as a career – there isn’t, and doesn’t always have to be, a reason for everything!”

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