Hearthstone

Blacksmith poet, Joseph Butler, was born in Oxford in 1962. He has earned his living as a farmer, teacher, and boatbuilder as well as blacksmithing. These poems grew out of working with a family of three generations of blacksmiths in an Oxfordshire forge, they are linked up with the Greek myth of Hera and Hephaistos, the crippled god of fire and metalworking, and patron of craftsmen, and bound up with his own family drama. This is his first, exhilarating poetry collection.