the crash wake and other poems

Owen Lowery was born in 1968. A British Judo Champion while still at school, he toured the UK and Europe competing and demonstrating. Before he could go to University he suffered a spinal injury while showing his skill for charity. He has since been tetraplegic. He gained a BA from the Open University, an MA in Military History from the University of Chester, and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Bolton. He completed a PhD for Bolton joining creative and scholarly work relating to his own experience of living under perpetual threat of death to the World War II poet Keith Douglas. His Examiner for the Doctorate was Keith Douglas’s Editor and Biographer Desmond Graham. His poetry has appeared in Stand and PN Review. He was listed for the Bridport Prize, the Welsh Open Poetry Competition, the Virginia Warbey Prize, and the International Sonnet Competition. His first Carcanet/Northern House book was Otherwise Unchanged. The artist Paula Rego, contacted through Anthony Rudolf, judged his poems relating to her work outstanding and she allowed her paintings to be part of his Carcanet book Rego Retold. He has read at the London South Bank, at many venues round the UK, and the BBC produced a TV programme about him. He married Jayne Winstanley whose love has been integral to much of his work. He recovered sufficiently from a car crash, that they both suffered, for him to produce the poems in this book. He had a sudden illness and died in May 2021. He was at that time preparing this book for publication, and many of his personal, present tense comments have been left as he wrote them.