Geoff Hoffman.
Profile.
Having read English at Oxford, I naturally qualified as a Solicitor and joined the Civil Service, being at different times Deputy Assistant Registrar of Criminal Appeals in the Supreme Court; and head of Conveyancing and Matrimonial Litigation for the Official Solicitor, acting principally on behalf of the mentally ill. A few years ago I took early retirement.
All this time I have been writing poetry, of various kinds and styles, while generally avoiding an ultra-modernistic approach. To date, since retiring, I have won 17 prizes in poetry competitions. In particular, one of my poems won first prize in an international competition, while others have won second and third prizes. Many of my poems have appeared in English poetry magazines.
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Trial by Verse.
Crisis in Court.
Horror! Counsel's dropped his book,
Waking everyone in Court.
Without this volume, counsel must
Rely on unaccustomed thought.
Counsel's caseless - counsel's lost.
Yet this shattering event
Can't be without precedent?
The usher rises from his nook,
With a condescending look -
Picks the volume up again.
Silence is audible; and then
Counsel with a frown condign
Turns the page and seeks the line
To support his argument.
Thus another crisis passes -
Horror! Counsel's dropped his glasses...
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Comic and satiric verse about the law, its makers and practitioners, it was published by Barry Rose, one of the leading Law Publishers in England. His Honour Judge Israel Finestein QC commented that he read this book “with interest, amusement and benefit.” It was also given a favourable reading by several Judges of the Supreme Court, and reviewed with approval in The Jewish Chronicle. The author was interviewed about it, and read extracts, on Three Counties Radio.
Copies may be obtained from Hammicks Legal Bookshop, 191-192 Fleet Street, London (tel. 0207-405-3554) or ordered on-line from fleets@hammicks.co.uk,
or from www.amazon.co.uk, Foyles, Borders, Waterstone’s, Blackwell’s, Ottakar’s and others.
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The Jewish Pilgrimage:
An Exploration of Reality, Mainly in Verse
An Answer to Fanatics
Except in the enforced defence
Of freedom, life, or innocence,
Whoever lifts the sword
Defies the Lord.
To fight for God is an offence:
The father-sin of violence.
Whoever kills in Heaven's name
Is Heaven's shame.
One cannot make God's glory more
By disobeying Heaven's law;
Nor violence at any price
Buy the way to Paradise.
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The book is in two parts. The first is philosophical verse, entitled “The Moral Genesis.” This has two meanings, referring on the one hand to the nature of right and wrong, and on the other hand to why God (if He exists) could be justified in creating a universe where suffering is inevitable. Its purpose was to argue out certain ideas for consideration. It is a form of poetry that might be called “the poetry of ideas” as distinct from traditional descriptive or narrative verse, because it explores problems and sets out conjectures.
Steps into Poetry:
Nonsense and other Verse for Children
.
Crazy Lazy Daisy
.
Crazy Lazy Daisy
And her little sister Maisie
Were feeling rather hazy
About who and what they were.
Were they rabbits with bad habits
Who would only eat Welsh rarebits
And would never leave the spare bits
For the pussy-cats that purr?
Were they pussy-cats themselves?
Were they pixies? Were they elves?
Fairies sitting upon shelves,
Wrapped in robes of velvet fur?
One morning they woke up in bed
And turned a richly ruby red:
They were not what they thought they were,
But something else instead.
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The verse in this book is designed to catch the minds of children and spark interest in rhythm and language. They have always preferred rhythm both in words and music to a bald story. Very small children also like nonsense being read to them by an adult; and older children may feel a sense of achievement as they grow to understand and appreciate poems that do not treat them as idiots but come more and more to appeal to their developing minds.
Copies
may be ordered from
www.amazon.co.uk,
Foyles, Borders,
More volumes are on their way, each one very different from the others….
www.webspawner.com/users/barcarolle/
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This page was created for Universal Love ©2007 with the kind permission of Geoffrey Hoffman. All rights reserved.