Life Begins At Forty: 40 Selected Poems

When Phillip Mellor published his debut collection of poetry, Still Growing back in 2007, he fulfilled a dream he had held since he was sixteen years old, and introduced the world to his unique brand of verse. Little did he know that fifteen years later, on the cusp of turning forty years old, he would have published a further nine books, two e-book shorts, and would be releasing Life Begins at Forty, a personally selected collection of 40 of his best poems, including previously unreleased versions of The Beach, and Winter.

Phillip Mellor has built a reputation of being a poet with a strong unique voice. His poems are both deeply personal, and unequivocally universal. They celebrate both the natural world around us and the inner world of our hearts. He has been described as a modern day troubadour, whose poems are lyrical and full of heart. If you are new to his work, this book is the perfect place for you to start your exploration.

Blue In Green

Written in a single turbulent month in the summer of 2014, the twenty poems in Blue In Green have taken several years to finally see the light of day. These poems are meditations on human heartbreak, every page full of raw emotion, taking the reader on a journey through the intense experience of human relationships at the point of their cessation. Beautifully illustrated throughout by Catherine Pendegrass, a scientist by trade but a talented artist in her own right, Blue In Green contains the geography of the human heart; a map of a whole world constantly in motion, stilled, if only for a second by the poet’s pen.

The Unaccompanied

“There is a war that rages inside every heart — A battle between the light and the dark.” – The Battle. This conflict is the thread that weaves the poems in Phillip Mellor’s ninth collection of poetry together. From the protagonist in the opening poem Main Event refusing to “take a knee”, to the title poem that closes the book, the poet takes us on a journey into the human heart and mind and asks, if we leave love behind us, what steps in to take its place? Thoroughly modern, yet rooted in ancient ideals and metaphors, The Unaccompanied is a master work of emotional and spiritual exploration from a poet at the zenith of his powers.

The Dark Places of Lost Things

Phillip Mellor’s eighth collection of poetry is his most elegant yet. The poet delves into his deepest archived memories, conjuring up a world that despite seeming solid and permanent, is so temporary and finite that most of the poems seem to be told from the point of view of a ghost. The spirits impart their timeless stories and lessons, and encourage all those who wander through their haunted rooms to honor the past and seize the present to avoid their own fate in the future. The poems are immediate, engaging, and their scope acutely focuses in on subjects ranging from lost dreams, lost freedoms and lost love, to the current state of the world today. Phillip Mellor has delivered a collection of poems full of the hopes and fears of the modern world and the call to live your life with an open heart.