Kieran Beville

Shadowlands is a haunting landscape of love and loss, a mystical journey of remembrance and longing that spans a lifetime and beyond. Each poem—even the darkest--resonates with a vibration of light glimpsed through eyes…like portals-opening into the soul. Indeed, there are a number of references that hint of the poet’s observation, wonder and contemplation from an early age. In the first section: Loss of Innocence: I remember the cottage where I was born Its thick stone walls, and deep-set windows,             Where I sat on rainy days, watching   Contrasting images, “damp coats drying near the fire’’ are repeated much the same as night and day, within and without—life’s countless dualities. Yet upon visiting the graveyard as a boy as revealed in his poem All Soul’s Day everything seems less black and white. Here, there is no distinct separation between life and death…but rather more grey matter befitting a land of s...

Shadowlands, the sixth collection of poetry by Kieran Beville, takes its title from the book and movie about the writer C.S. Lewis, whose book ‘A Grief Observed’, chronicled the psychic pain caused by the death of his wife. Kieran Beville, in these mature poems on the human condition of life and loss, love and grief, has captured the Zeitgeist of our tragic age, with insightful imagery and without any sentimentality. As the poet John Liddy observed about this author’s previous collection, A Place Apart , trawling through memories of meaningful past moments in life is often the leitmotif of Beville’s work. In Shadowlands he addresses such moments under the rubric or methodology of the awareness of loss, in four sections: ‘Loss of Innocence’, ‘Loss in Love’, ‘Loss of Life’, ‘Loss of Humanity’. The book’s striking cover image, ‘Moonlight on the Lake’, taken from the painting by the English Victorian landscape artist John Atkinson, sets a suitably elegant and melancholic atmosphere fo...

  Author’s Preface In his book Shadowlands , C.S. Lewis used the term to describe the human experience of suffering, grief, and the darker aspects of life. The title ‘Shadowlands’ suggests a place where darkness and light coexist, and the book explores themes of loss, love, and the human condition. In my collection of poems, titled, Shadowlands , I explore that mystical realm where the living and the dead overlap or co-exist. Before assembling this collection I realised I had a large and diverse range of unpublished poems but I didn’t want to assemble such a rattle-bag. As I read and re-read the poems it became clear to me that there was (within the complete body of work) an overarching theme for a segment of the work – that of LOSS, and this theme could have four sub categories. First, there were poems about Loss of childhood and moments remembered. We all have these, and I am still astonished at the treasure to be found when excavating that place. As childhood passes t...