Mantz Yorke trained as a scientist, gaining a degree in industrial metallurgy before taking up a career in education. He taught in schools and university before becoming an educational researcher. Now retired, he has been able to spend more time writing poetry that reflects his interest in science and human behaviour as well as his enjoyment of, and concern for, the natural environment. His poems have won prizes and have been anthologised and published internationally and in the UK.

DARK MATTERS
​by Mantz Yorke

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“I have long admired Mantz Yorke’s capacity to evoke places and landscape in his poetry, and his latest collection, Dark Matters, does not disappoint. Yet, as the title suggests, Yorke is equally adept when he turns his attention to the dark side of human experience. The first poem in the book, ‘The Sinkhole’ explores the competing forces of good and evil within human nature and is indicative of the treasures to come. Mantz Yorke is a poet who deserves to be widely read.”
– Sally Long, editor of Allegro Literary Journal

“Mantz Yorke’s fascination with humanity is evident in Dark Matters. He challenges difficult topics such as nuclear weapons and war, often by telling stories of real people. Carefully researched, these poems are study elevated to dispassionate, revealing hymn. One poem may list the components of nuclear fallout; another the spring flowers of a certain region. Dark Matters is an homage to the poem as a vessel for story, told by a deeply engaged poet with tremendous respect for his reader and his craft.”
— Kirk Ramdath, Publisher, Wax Poetry and Art

"The poems are evocative, the details creating an emotional picture. Despite the subject matter, they are not gloomy, delighting in the small touches, an artwork, a landscape, that bring joy. Mantz Yorke has created an observant, measured, honest collection." 
— Emma Lee, The Journal #64

“Dark Matters, like Mantz Yorke's collection Voyager, treks along life’s crags and edges, at times engaging with world conflicts. As the title’s word play suggests, this collection is a shadowed, prescient, metaphysical journey encompassing nature’s life-giving wonders (‘a hedge’s mauve-hazed sloes,/peacocks on knapweed’s magenta tufts, meadow browns …’) and humankind’s self-sabotage (‘you’d helped open the doors/for Little Boy to fall on Hiroshima/and Fat Man on Nagasaki’). Forebodings are leavened with optimism (‘I am learning/ from these stunted plants/how to hunker down/in the darkness of a cleft, andsurvive’, and calming water ‘offers me/another sunrise,/another world’). ”  
— Sarah Pritchard, poet

Dark Matters
ISBN 978-1-913329-38-9
2021
Perfect bound paperback
148 x 210mm 92 pages

RRP £10.00 including p&p up to £12.00 in the UK

For international orders, please contact the author through our CONTACT page. We regret that if an overseas order is sent to us, we can refund only 90% of the payment made, because there will be a 10% handling charge.
THIS PAYPAL BUTTON IS FOR UK ORDERS ONLY

VOYAGER by Mantz Yorke

The reader voyages with the author over forbidding landscapes and dangerous seas and finds themselves launched into the vastness of space. He brings to his emotive narratives a distinctively personal sensibility. He has climbed these treacherous slopes, trekked these harsh landscapes, sailed these stormy seas, and in these poems we are with him. With him we feel the slippery scree underfoot as we descend from the mountaintop, and see:

‘the glacier
dangles its grubby paw over Argentière, its teeth,
so white from afar, plaqued tobacco-ish brown –
a shabby snow-tiger beautied only by azure
crevasses almost indigo-deep.’  (Glacier d’Argentière)

The strength of these poems lies in the richness of their historical and geographical references, their accessibility, their vivid soundscapes and their multi-layered meanings.

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Cathy Bryant, writer, editor and reviewer, comments:
​“... a polished, technically accomplished work that leaves the reader profoundly moved ...The reader travels in from space to explore Earth – the ‘pendant sapphire besmirched by ochre, green and whorls of cloud’ that is our home – then swings away to take a last look back.
Reading ‘Voyager’ is rather like being guided by someone who can find the right words to describe a space shuttle’s disintegration, the first triumph of a young bodyboarder, the terrifying ascent of a fin of rock in Utah, and a meditation under Colorado’s starry sky. This wide-ranging collection, folding history and science into poetry, is a remarkable achievement which has the reach to speak across both time and space. I want this book to survive, for it tells those who follow us about the past and hints at what the future may hold.”

RRP £10.00 including postage in UK (up to £12.00)Voyager by Mantz Yorke
ISBN 978-1-913329-04-4
2019
Perfect bound paperback
148 x 210mm 82 pages
​RRP £10.00 

​​OVERSEAS ORDERS — PLEASE SEND NO MONEY.
For international orders, please contact the author through our CONTACT page. We regret that if an overseas order is sent to us, we can refund only 90% of the payment made, because there will be a 10% handling charge.
​​THIS PAYPAL BUTTON IS FOR UK ORDERS ONLY