WINTER CROSSINGS Shoestring Press ISBN 978-1-912524-62-4   £10.00

Most of all, Lykiard appears to be saying that we should honour the dead in a more realistic and less emotional way, recognising each person for who they were and what they were actually like rather than idealising them. This very grounded, secular, humanistic philosophy of death is in keeping with Lykiard's detectable philosophy of life, one primarily of carpe diem, of sensation and experience, of love and travel, of socialising and socialism, of art and rationalism, of what the Greeks termed eudaimonia (happiness), of epicureanism and its goal of achieving a state of ataraxia (tranquillity and freedom from fear -could there be a better destination for the human mind?), of the mortal soul as opposed to the eternal spirit. 

Winter Crossings is once more testament to how the poetic gifts of Alexis Lykiard, far from diminishing with advancing years, grow greater and more sage like with age, gifting us ever more valuable and surprising insights from a sprightly mind that in some aspects still seems so young. 

Alan Morrison The Recusant  

I found a continuity and wholeness in the collection which bound it all together – you avoid the easy lyricism that Yeats bequeathed us I think, and go for a stronger narrative style. So many of the poems tell a story: Everyone Their Island, and a brilliant political poem about Israel, Labouring The Point: A Colonial Question… I can’t think of a better volume about getting old and viewing what’s left through the poetic lens!!

John Daniel - Poet & Author 

Your writing is wonderfully strong, touching too and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. The honesty of your personal patches I find fine indeed.

Kate Westbrook – Artist & Musician

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2020/10/riffrains-of-jazz-loving-poet-winter.html

Catherine Eisner - Author and critic