Losing Touch

'Music and the sea, memories tinged with sadness and love inhabit Andrew Leggett's poetry, which resonates with his unique voice. To come across a music icon such as Lead Belly in a poem fills me with joy and Andrew Leggett's poems strike so many chords and they are full of music and yearning. It takes a lifetime to gain the perspective to write a book that is so full of poems that will appeal to readers of all ages, readers who will find the work accessible and charming, each poem a window into the poet's world, a world that is both strange and familiar. Maybe it's my age but a poem in which the poet sees his father in the mirror when he is just looking at himself really gets me where I live. I love the pervasive presence of music and the sea in this beautiful collection of heartfelt poems. There's a poignancy here that strikes a chord in the heart as well as the mind. A masterful collection of poems straight from the heart.' - Phil Brown, Arts Editor, ' explores the fictional and non-fictional spaces of desire and impermanence. Desire can manifest in the quotidian or the mythological: by the pool, Leggett is drawn to the thigh line of his lover's one-piece, or he plunges us into the world of the femme fatale, or he reveals the love of a fisherman whose wife 'is woman below / but above the waist / she is all fish'. In a suburban restaurant, 'the fish in the tank...will never see stars fall'. They will face death like his ancestors, or those captured and killed mercilessly by the enemy. In front of a cluster of chortens on a ridge in Nepal, the poet asks the guide why people have built them. The guide replies, 'People come / They build / remember many lives'. Leggett takes us on a journey where we look back.' - Rosanna E. Licari, Poetry Editor,