THEATRE VERSUS OPPRESSION
Registered Charity SC039092
Using applied theatre to bring about positive change and development

A Puppet Without Strings
(for release summer 2007)

Author: J.S. Hartley

Publisher: Arandura Press

Language: English & Spanish

Synopsis
This book of poems has been formed from a number of poems written over the years – reflections on my present and  past; hopes and fears for the future. They are both my own stories and the stories of the people who have passed through my life and shared with me; their experiences and mine joined on the page as a memory, as a means to reflect, sometimes to smile, sometimes to deal with my own thought processes that are easier written than spoken. The poetry was never intended for publication, it has always just been part of my own reflective process and probably always will be, but over the years so many people have asked for copies of various poems or asked me to write them one for a situation they were going through that I decided to print a few of them here. They are here to be shared in all their simplicity and honesty. They are a part of me just as I am in the essence of all that I write. They carry my dreams, my hopes and my fears as well as my moments of doubt and questioning.

The poems selected are from memories as a child, the pain of growing up, the pain of being a grown up and a few taken from what I often call the Paraguayan years or the research years even though they were all neither spent in Paraguay or doing research! Some are from the pain of others who shared their stories looking for sense through chaos whether that was a death, a lost love, or an inability to enjoy the joy that life can be.

But the poems should be allowed to speak for themselves. They mean what they mean to each individual with his/her own history and emotions that are brought to the open page. Poems I believe mean exactly what each and every reader understands them to mean, they are limitless in interpretation and defined by the reader alone.

  God

If life is so many things that I am not

Give me the strength

To be what I am