Woking Writers Circle member Greg Freeman has brought out his first full poetry collection. Marples Must Go! is already available from Guildford publisher Dempsey & Windle, under their Vole Books imprint, although the official publication date is 1 September. Greg said: “I always hoped to have published a full poetry collection by the time I turned 70. I am very pleased and relieved to have managed it with just over a year to spare!” But what is the collection about – and what on earth does the title mean?

A mysterious slogan on a bridge across the M1 that remained there for decades denounced a 1960s transport minister who had a finger in the pie of motorway building, and also oversaw Beeching’s vandalism of Britain’s railways. His name was Ernest Marples. Greg’s wry and bemused poems meander around this and other subjects such as free school milk, Juke Box Jury, Space Patrol, and the curious appeal of Andy Williams, as well as the first proper sentence of a two-year-old child: ‘Jack see Mrs Thatcher.’ As the years go by, he finds himself remembering the cartoon comic heroes of Beano and Dandy, picturing what might have happened to them in later life, and wondering plaintively: ‘Why can’t life still be hilarious?’ The collection also includes a sequence of poems about the Sean Henry sculptures in Woking titled ‘All The Lonely People’.

Greg’s poems have attracted praise from poets such as Brian Bilston, the hugely popular ‘poet laureate’ of Twitter, who said: “In Marples Must Go! Greg Freeman pulls off the difficult trick of writing poetry that is both funny and thoughtful, poignant and personal. With topics stretching from the Beatles to Brexit, from childhood comics to Covid jabs, this collection constitutes a wonderful poetic romp through the history of modern Britain.”

Greg will be launching his collection at Write Out Loud Woking on Zoom next month, and at a special online publisher’s launch with Dempsey & Windle in October.

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