PONGS, subtitled ‘Look To The Far Horizon’, is my latest song collection – all of which are poems turned into songs. These are not simply other people’s poems set to music because in most cases the originals have been changed, added to or subtracted from in various ways.

My first attempt at this was the title track, taken from ‘A Ship Sails Up To Bideford’ by Herbert Asquith (1881-1947), describing the sight of an old square rigged ship appearing over the horizon and heading for port. The poet imagines what cargo might be on board including the ‘fruits of Jaffa, dates, oranges and gold’ and also ‘fine silk from China and bales of Persian dyes’. I got the idea to use the poem almost in desperation after composing a tune but unable to think of any words (an unusual event for me) I began thumbing through an old school poetry anthology called ‘The Book Of A Thousand Poems’. I added a chorus and changed a few other elements to make it more suitable for audience participation.

Since then I have deliberately used this technique and shamelessly plundered poetry books for good material. In fact, most poems are not suitable for a musical treatment – because they have no rhymes or do not scan well, or have no narrative flow and often too subjective in style. However I have used poems by Edgar Lee Masters, Jonathan Swift, AE Houseman, John Betjeman, among others – with poetry which was often intended to be read aloud.

The book is due for publication soon and a demo CD of the songs also is nearly ready too.