Waide Riddle, screenwriter, editorial columnist, and a rather lovely chappie has written a book of poems…”The Power of Summer.”

It’s a selection of nine poems, all summer-themed and blissfully, cheerfully rhythmic.  Anthemic chants brimming with musicality and the fever of summer potential.  Oh, how these lyrical grooves make me long for the beach.  They reek of rum cocktails, suntan lotion, and the scent of tanning skin.  Sticky ice cream hands, sandy toes and wafts of beery breath, and sea salt drying on red-tinged shoulders.

The poems are packed with hopefulness, something we dearly need right now.  They remind us of a time when our only worry was finding somewhere to rinse off before we left the beach for the pub. Or where we left the car, or whether our friends would make it in time for high tide.  In the UK, where I am from, summer was always a glittering horizon during the many many gloomy months of rain and bitter cold.  I grew up near the coast and spent many days on beaches both sandy and pebbled, the salty Atlantic air is like the breath of god to me.  So ready these poems of Waide’s, with his own deeply personal and love-packed memories, although quite different to my own, brought back so many similar love-packed days of old.  Full of laughter, games, sunburn, and even a few tears.  But truly wonderful.

They sing off the page, these melodic chants.  Where’s the booming bass? The spiraling guitars? The swaying bodies?  Poetry doesn’t have to be stuffy you know.  Poetry can move us in so many ways, uplift, invigorate, empower.  These poems, “Groove,” “Summer in Santa Monica,” “The Tom Hardy Party,” “Kiss Me Chris Pine” and many more are achingly LA.  Like a Hockney swimming pool, all glamorous and sultry and bold.  If we ever get back to the beach again, with our lilos and magazines and flip-flops flapping we should chant our favorite of these collected poems like a prayer into the pacific ocean air, in gratitude for our lives…more, please!!!