Bob is available for readings and talks on
getting poems published in small press magazines.
Contact him by email mailto:raggedravenpress@aol.com
or on 01789 730320 or write to
1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Stratford-on-Avon, Warks CV37 0LR
The Maker of Glass Eyes
the second collection by
Ragged Raven co-editor Bob Mee
Order through http://www.cinnamonpress.com
Paradise Road
the first collection by
Ragged Raven co-editor Bob Mee
104 pages
£7 inc. p + p (UK)
(£9 - overseas. N.B. we can only accept sterling)
Published by Blue Fish 
Blue Fish
Now available from Ragged Raven Press
To order please make cheques payable to Ragged Raven Press and send to 1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Stratford-on-Avon, Warks CV37 0LR
To pay by credit card:
Paradise Road - UK - £7
Paradise Road - Overseas - £9
It's cold in the desert.
Friends die or get hooked.
And women walk the bleak night,
and some survive, but the way Sheila does.
Last night she wept beneath the Bourbon St. sign.
We have all come, as the girl said when I was young,
to fear the beating of the drum.
(from: At the time of nuclear testing in
Nevada)
Reviews for Paradise Road:
...a wry conversational style that reminded me
of Billy Collins. But as with Collins, the apparent simplicity can be deceptive.
Paradise Road includes a handful of genuinely haunting pieces set in some kind
of dystopian landscape.
Raw Edge
The only problem Paradise Road presents to the
reviewer is how to adequately represent this beautifully produced, beautifully
written book. With the poet as raconteur, each poem here - unpretentious,
unaffected, pared to the bone - is a compulsive read...These are domestic, (auto)biographical,
confessional poems even, but only in that they are of what has impacted on him -
from dog tracks to boxing rings to Doris Lessing at the Harper Collins party, to
a lyrical remembering of old friends...He manages to convey, not nostalgia, nor
regret, but a wonderment at his making past, and that he should have ended where
he has felt the need to pen a poem on it. Skipping with ease between minimalist
free verse and driving-on beat, he provides many sympathetic chuckles. He also
punches his weight. His If also makes more sense than Kipling's.
Throughout the collection what struck me most was the way the spoken word has
captured Bob Mee's ear; and it is that spoken word which he has reshaped into
poems to be spoken in the mind's ear...Here are stories that replay in the mind
long after the telling, atmospheres that stick and images that one recalls
almost as if one's own experience.
The Journal
A collection of 70-odd poems, exhibiting a
wide range of style and content. A good many witty, cheeky poems are rooted in a
gritty acceptance of life's bare necessities in a world of poets, boxers and
pubs. He creates effective lines that read like refrains, achieving through a
surface simple accessibility incisive images and evocative sentiments...These
are powerful elegiac pieces, varied in tone and emotion, drawn to look back into
the past and thereby colour the present with its hue, always striving for and
achieving an originality of voice.
New Hope International Review
Bare Fists
(Ragged Raven Press, 1998)
(revised edition, HarperCollins 2000)
(American edition, The Overlook Press 2001)
Liston & Ali The
Ugly Bear and the Boy Who Would Be King
(Mainstream 2010)
ISBN 9781845966225
Long-listed for the 2010
William Hill Sports Book of the Year
(Short list to be announced 24/10/10)
The Ultimate Encyclopedia
of Boxing
(Carlton, several editions - latest October 2010)
The Heavyweights
(Tempus, 2006)
Twenty and Out
Autobiography of boxing promoter Mickey Duff
(HarperCollins, 1999)
Lords of the Ring (with Peter Arnold)
(Hamlyn, 1998)
Boxing Heroes and Champions
(Apple Press, 1997)
