...dream me to a place
where i hold you close -
so you can see for yourself
the contours of my life.
dream of stone - Songs from Last Imaginations
REVIEWS
It’s odd to describe a pamphlet as “delicious”, but that’s how this one feels: on the tongue as you read it out loud, on the ear as you note each poem’s deft internal rhymes. Images are clearly drawn, yet also strangely liminal. Pictures, every few pages or so (sometimes accompanied by quotes from enquiring minds), act as punctuation – a chance to pause and savour. Reach the final poem, and it won’t be very long before you’re devouring Nightingale’s words again from the beginning.’
MARK ANTONY OWEN
POET, PUBLISHER, PERFORMER.
CREATOR AND CURATOR OF IAMB
Songs from Last Imaginations reads like a mesmerizing piece of music. We start with an incredibly dramatic opening seeing the author ‘drowning in air / drowsing despair / acutely aware of this unaired nightmare’ and are taken to an intimate world of dreams ‘so you can see for yourself the contours of my life.’ And there is so much to see. From the day at the beach with the danger of sharp flint to the leaving home, poisonous relationships and emotional times that follow. Exquisite poems are interspersed with quotes from well-known poets and powerful photos enhancing the words. Dorian Nightingale’s book is a dream you will not want to wake up from. A stunning collection of poems.
JULIE STEVENS
MS POET.
AUTHOR OF FIVE PAMPHLETS.
Dorian Nightingale writes musical, rhythmically insistent poems filled with passion and 'the lick of untrammelled sunbeam'. Their liquid sounds cascade down the page.
JOHN McCULLOUGH
POET.
MULTI AWARD WINNER FOR LITERATURE AND POETRY
BIO
Dorian lives in Heathfield, Sussex. He has always been fascinated by the musicality and textural sounds of words and their phonemic and harmonic structures. His inspirations are drawn from a wide range of artistic influences from Caravaggio, Nick Drake to Radiohead.
He is a graduate of New Writing South, the Open University and the LSE
where he studied Creative Writing, Psychology and Comparative Politics respectively.
His poems have been published in a number of print and online journals.
He is a 2022 Best of the Net nominee, winner of 2024 Shoreham Wordfest, iamb poet and regularly performs his poetry in South-East England.
