Liam Martin

The Out-born Liam Martin

The themes that recur throughout this collection are Buddhism, the mixed-race experience, and wisdom lore. The influences on the poems are many: the Bible, Lao Tzu, the Quran, Shakespeare, Derek Walcott, among others. In Part One - titled The Out-born - the author chronicles in 85 prose pieces his search for enlightenment. In Part Two he finds poetry in some of life's sober lessons. In Part Four he constructs 23 poems out of traditional proverbs. A varied collection, it ranges from the high lyricism of Part One's The Out-born, to the sober tones of Part Two's Life Lessons, to the naïve forms of Part Three's Early and Later Poems, and to the conventional expressions of the Proverbial Poems.