This Friday, Carmarthenshire-based author Joseph Marshall is releasing a poetry book, ‘Introspection’, that seeks to express the emotions of grief, loneliness and sadness through fictional characters in small worlds.

The author says: “Grief, loneliness and sadness have never been easy for me to express and unfortunately, I’ve had many reasons to in recent years. However, through writing poetry, I discovered a method to explore my emotions by depicting small worlds and smaller characters that capture how I feel. By placing myself in these fictional spaces I was able to look further inward and pay the cost of coming to terms with my identity.

“Through introspection you may learn a lot about yourself, but there also is a danger of looking too deep and losing yourself along the way. This is the journey I started on a long time ago and I have yet to see how it ends.”

Joseph Marshall lives in West Wales with his family and many rescue pets. When he is not helping with the family business of running a holiday cottage, he is practising his writing craft. He has been writing poetry for six years and had his first publication when he was featured in Momaya Press 2018 Poetry Review, ‘Love’. He went on to be included in Momaya’s 2019 Poetry Review, ‘Masks’ and Vita Brevis’ Poetry Anthology, ‘Pain & Renewal’.

The 74-page book ‘Introspection’ will be released on February 3 and is already available to pre-order in paperback (ISBN: 9781398468924) and e-book (ISBN: 9781398468931) from booksellers including Waterstones, Barnes and Noble and direct from the publishers at www.austinmacauley.com/book/introspection .