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FOREWORD:
From a second hand bookshop in Houston, Texas, I purchased a visually stimulating book about the similarities and
differences between Eastern Siberia and Alaska - "Divided Twins" as it was called. The photographer and the poet that had
produced it had filled this volume with wonderful anecdotes and glorious photographs of the people and places. I was
drawn to the images of women, particularly the old Siberian ladies (babushkas) wrapped in layer upon layer of protection
from the bitter cold. After a lifetime, the unforgiving weather of these northern lands had taken a toll on their faces. It also
occurred to me at some point a little earlier, that some of my poetry had been about lonely unmarried women (see "When
They are not Watching", "Grace" for example). I have no real notion of why I did this, only that I enjoyed the inventiveness,
the black humour of distorted reality. It was the seed of this collection of poems about encounters with, and perceptions of,
my opposite gender. These poems are my expressions of fabled or real encounters with the opposite sex either as family,
wives, girlfriends, artistic influences, mere glancing blows or faces staring out at me from a book.
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