‘Conversations With Birds’ is my first collection and as you would expect birds feature in most of the poems. They are not however the principal subjects of the poems but a means by which the poems remain rooted in the natural world of which we are physically and spiritually a part.
       As a child I spent a great deal of time in the woods or on the cliffs and beaches of the Gower coast where I lived. As a young boy. I spent my time identifying and observing the birds and creatures, who were my natural companions. As a child one does not doubt ones connection with the natural world and ones ability to communicate on some level with it.
       When reflecting on the sad loss of a dear friend who had a similar love of birds to myself. in particular his attachment to nightingales. I came to realise that birds had somehow featured in much of my emotional development through the years. On the day, unknown to me at the time, my grandfather had passed away. A crow landed on my shoulder as I waited for the bus to school and I didn't doubt then as I do not doubt now that these events, at some metaphysical level were connected and this for me is the territory of poetry.
       These poems therefore are not about birds they are about my experience of life in which birds and other creatures feature as a means of connection with our emotional and spiritual life. They are my story a fundamental part of my life growing up as in later years. I can only write from my experience and for my sense of the sound and rhythm of words, which for me are also important, and I trust that the readers will find resonances within their own experience
 
Ian Griffiths