I have now would you believe, put out 9 volumes of poetry. Between these 9 volumes, there have been 325 sales or free give aways. Poetry doesn’t sell. So why do I do it? No idea. I just like blasting out stream of consciousness poems and there are one or two people that enjoy them too.

The first collection that I put out was my second book ever. It is called Weird Tales and I put it out in 2006. It included quite a few written about the then new love of my life as I look back along with poems that had a magical aspect to them as well. I can’t say it sold well as it didn’t but an occasional copy drops. It does have a solitary 5 star review however! – “Being somewhat familiar with Dr. Vasey’s poetry I had assumed this would be a sampling of some of his best works. What I had not anticipated was the presentation of such a poignant love story. Woven among the fragments is a heartfelt journey of love painfully lost – then just as painfully found. Admittedly I was a bit thrown by the unexpected theme. Then it occurred to me what a wonderful metaphor this is for the spiritual journey Dr. Vasey previously shared. This is one that definitely deserves a number of reads. I suspect there is an important message here about the inner workings of our soul… which may or may not have been the author’s original intent.” I think the reviewer credited me with too much forethought….

The next collection was titled Poems for the Little Room. Yes, I envisaged this volume in the toilet to be read while doing whatever is done there and I named it with that idea in mind. I self-published it via Lulu and it simply never sold at all despite my brilliant idea! Eventually, I put it out on Amazon in 2014 where it did find a few sales. It was originally a collection of small love poems about my partner and our daughter using photographs to support the poems. So far as I know, it has never had a review. I recovered this one recently with a photo of mine taken in Brno. So here is one of the shorter poems instead….

This is my heart
It is yours
Symbol of my love
Also yours
Please don’t break it
Or ever lose it
Just let it beat
Next to yours

Next came a collection called Best Laid Plans in 2014. The cover of this features a rather beautiful and happy Green Man image from a home down the street that I then lived in in Brno. It’s a jolly image and rather striking and it was the first time I used one of my own photos as a cover. I enjoyed writing these poems too that focus on the magical and mundane, and always are a play on words. It has three reviews and all 5-star including this one – “I personally, loved this unique and genuine glimpse into the authors mind; his thoughts and processes of the modern world as we know it and the emotions that come with it. His writings are something we can all connect with and relate to. The book speaks with great voice and character and makes you feel as if you have slipped into his mind to take a walk in his shoes. I would call it modern poetry maybe. If you are looking for something different, something new, something creative… look no further. I wish it were longer and have added a couple of his others to my TBR 🙂.”

Despite the lack of sales, I was a glutton for punishment and being in a deep vein of form at the time, I put out another collection almost immediately called Moon Whispers in 2014. I actually sent the MS to other writers and asked if they would give recommendations – remarkably two did.

“G. Michael Vasey understands the power of the word. In Moon Whispers, he takes obvious care not to convolute a simple message, exercising an economy of words when it is due, to reveal clean, crisp vignettes of his inner landscape. From tantalizing homages to food in “50 Shades of Food” to life’s more existential questions, as in “Touching Emptiness” and the quote inspired “So What Am I?”, readers will be more appreciative of each of their senses and yet wondering what lies beyond what they perceive with them.” Dielle Ciesco, author of The Unknown Mother: A Magical Walk with the Goddess of Sound and Your True Voice: Tools for Embracing a Fully Expressed Life

“Moon Whispers is a tender and beautifully-crafted collection of poems that can touch the deepest layers of our soul. Like the sound of a favorite song on the radio or the recognition of truth in an unexpected place, it brings light and happiness into the heart with every verse.” Daniela I. Norris, author of On Dragonfly Wings and Collecting Feathers

Moon Whispers was written while listening to the dreamy music of Blackfield and dedicated to that band.

Like I said, I was knocking out poems about life, reality and magic at a rapid rate at this time and so .. yes, you guessed it, I went for another volume of non-selling verse! The Art of Science is the volume from 2015. I even had an audiobook version of this one made…. The poetry in this volume is among my favorite and features Succubus, which is among one of the most popular posts on my website – shame the book didn’t sell. To break the monotony of this post, here is a video I made of one of the poems in the volume read by myself and set to my eldest son’s guitar work…

Still writing poems like crazy, I put out yet another volume in 2015 called Death on the Beach using an image of myself taking a photo of Anna Maria Island in Florida – on the beach! Yes – amazing huh? Some of the work in this volume had a rap feel to me and so that is how I promoted it – Rapping poetry of loneliness. No reviews and virtually no sales…. oh well. Here is an excerpt.

I will tell you this
In a moment of honesty
I would love to be your celebrity
Come on you paparazzi
You can follow me
Snap your snaps and invade my privacy
Follow me around in your idiocy

Celebrity – at least as a poet – it seemed was a long way off. But, that didn’t stop me – Nope… by early 2018, I put out an angrier volume following my split from the ex love of my life in which I also wondered about how to be a father to my daughter …. I called it The Dilemma of Fatherhood and featured a lovely image of my daughter in the Prague Metro I had taken on a weekend trip there with her. These latter two, I just did a Kindle version.

Life plainly had settled by the end of 2019 as I put out another collection called Reflections on Life with a wonderful shot of Whitby Abbey taken on a spiritual retreat weekend around that time. The poems were now more about spirituality and reality and featured ones like this…

I am One
And also a multitude
A crowd of aspects
Moving in harmony
The many personas
Bound together willingly

Finally, this one actually sold a few copies too. That only encouraged me last year to put out my latest volume called Slavic Tales. You can gather from the title that this was partly about my journey to connect with the land and experiences of working with the Slavic pantheon. This too made a few sales. It also features on my own photographs of the Brno skyline.

Am I done with poetry? I doubt it. I don’t write it to sell as by now I know it has a very limited audience. I write it for me, for my pleasure and enjoyment and I push out these collections hoping that somewhere, one or two others will also find something there to enjoy.

And the best seller was????

The Art of Science….. 140 copies.