Gerald William Dowden

Lines-in-flight Gerald William Dowden

Publisher Marketing: Lines-in-Flight are poems derived from the content of airline in-flight magazines, predominantly written during the course of air travel. My choice of text from these magazines is purely random, in the sense that I flick through magazine pages in any order, without any pre-conceived pattern, and subjective, in the sense that I simply select what appeals to me. This selection tends to be, from a poetic perspective, specific images or, from a prosaic perspective, single clauses. There is no consciously pre-identified theme or template that governs this selection. The construction of the poem, as these components are chosen, is far from random, however. Certain images tend to define a theme and my ordering of textual components responds to this. This is a completely conscious operation. The personal journey in each poem is exhilarating, as I experience words that others have offered, being shaped by me, into poetic expressions of my own thoughts and feelings. For the most part, I do not consider where this journey will lead; I do not set out (with one or two exceptions) to focus on any particular theme. The whole process has been revelatory, for me, both in terms of the poetic richness that can be achieved through this method, and the affective reflection it casts on my own preoccupations. In fact the satisfaction and sense of completion, with which I am finally left, is one of total ownership, as if these words had been mine all along.