Welcome to my poetry website. I am Roland T Woodward someone who has written poetry all his life as a way of understanding what was happening to me and to try and make meaning of the world around me.
Poetry has always been a major vehicle in the development and expression of my internal personal universe. Throughout all my life I have had to learn how to use my dyslexia to my advantage and to learn what it can give me and what it makes difficult for me. The adaptations and strategies for doing so have been interesting, sometimes funny and at other times deeply frustrating, which I am sure has been an influence in how I write my poetry.
The striving to understand self and the world eventually brought me to a career in psychology where I practiced my craft as a forensic psychologist in prisons and mental health establishments. My main expertise was as a group therapist and manager in therapeutic communities where these “search engines for meaning” suited my natural interests. My main frame of reference for all this work was existential, greatly influenced by Irving Yalom. When I retired I continued to practice as a therapist, supervisor and consultant to individuals and organisations.
I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic prostate cancer in 2019 and as a consequence relinquished all my professional work and concentrated on living family life and ordering and publishing my poetry, which has led to the publication of small collections and an anthology of my experiences of the cancer journey.
I am now seventy seven going on seventy eight and have been writing a blog for family and friends since my prostate cancer treatment started. Occasionally I would post a new poem on the blog or put a new video on my YouTube channel, however with the publication of the Cancer Years Anthology: Man to Man , my publishers, Rulers Wit, and I thought setting up a separate website to focus on poetry would be a good way to bring my poetry and the poetry that has inspired me together in one place.
I continue to write poetry and be a member of the South Leicestershire Poetry Stanza and intend to do so and be so until the prostate cancer takes me down or another of life’s perils does.