My first poetry collection: 50 Things to Do Before You Die

I’ve written almost anything you can imagine: blogs, magazine articles, entire websites, newsletters, Op-Eds, thought leadership pieces, speeches, scripts, annual reports and more. Latterly, this has included novels. All along, I’ve written poetry. I decided to collect as many as I could find and publish them. 50 Things to Do Before You Die is the result.

The world’s least-read poet

As a professional writer, my writing has reached millions of readers. As a novelist, not so many. As a poet, I expect even fewer readers could give a hoot about poetry in general, never mind mine. It’s been a passion project to bring this volume to life.

The subtitle is ‘Collected poems about life, death, and pigeons’, so that’s what you get. Poetry is a deeply personal adventure, so I guess these lines of verse offer some insights into my state of mind over the past few years, although some of them were written purely for fun; observational pieces that I’ve enjoyed writing. Some are harrowing dives deep into the soul.

Will it sell? No, it definitely won’t.

I’ll try and distribute as many free copies again as I can, but poetry isn’t everyone’s thing.

I have won a couple of poetry competitions over the years, but they’re written for me rather than an audience.

Some of them you could read at a funeral or a wedding (try not to confuse the two), while some of them would get you locked away if you tried that.

There are poems set in Malta and other places in Europe and some in Cape Town. There are pigeons (and crows), since these creatures mimic our actions and emotions, at least the way I observe them.

Once again, I’ve made them available on Amazon dot com for anyone who wants to take a look. 

The illustrated works

Oh! I also included some completely irrelevant illustrations that I’ve doodled over the years.

Behind the cover

The cover is a pic of me exploring a fascinating place called The Red Tower/St Agatha’s Tower in Mellieha, Malta. It looks like what Lego would have designed if they were doing a Game of Thrones set. I’m happy, in that photo.

The title was an annoyance: I couldn’t come up with a suitable thread to tie everything together, so I figured I could pitch it the way tourist websites do. I don’t want anyone to die, obviously, but I’d be happy if some of the fifty things you do include reading my poems.

Thank you to everyone whose lives have been woven into mine. There might be lines inspired by you in these pages.

In case you’ve not encountered my novels, you could do worse than to read them, too!

You can find them on my author page: Scott Dunlop

Corpse Song

Old Town Encounter

The Vanishing of the Rainbow Lark

Corpse in Time

Corpse Between the Covers (my latest release, I like this one!)

And: 50 Things to Do Before You Die (poetry).

Happy reading to you all.