The Man Who Spoke to Owls

David H W Grubb was born in 1941. Poetry collections include The Memory of Rooms, Selected Poems (Stride 2001),The Elephant In The Room (Driftwood 2004), Out Of The Marvellous (Oleander 2006), It Comes With a Bit of Song (Salt, 2007). He has also published three novels and an autobiography, and was editor of Sounding Heaven and Earth (Canterbury Press 2004). He has been Tutor of Creative Writing at University of Reading, the River and Rowing Museum, Henley on Thames, and Norden Farm Arts Centre. He also runs a mentoring scheme for individual writers. Much of his writing had been influenced by working in places of extreme poverty and civil conflict. A collection of short stories will be published in 2009. David Grubb's writing has been praised by John Fowles, D.M.Thomas, Ronald Blythe, Selima Hill, Adrian Mitchell, Peter Redgrove,John Silkin and John Burnside. Much of his work has been influenced by rural landscapes and traditions in England and conflict zones such as Bosnia,Rwanda and Kosovo, where he worked delivering humanitarian aid. In all of his writing there is a tension between traditions, fables and spiritual faith and the terrors of failed states, extreme poverty and the voices of suppression and domination.