Welcome to the website for Robert Walton, writer, tutor, researcher and reader/performer, often with a bit of community activism thrown in for good provocative measure.
Primarily a poet, Robert (aka Bob / Rob / Robbie ) often writes in celebratory mode about the excitement, idiosyncrasy, comedy and achievement of everyday life. This is not to ignore the tragedy, injustice, pain and darkness of life but to be inspired by words such as:
- ‘Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward‘ (Nelson Mandela)
- ‘Hope is the fuel of progress‘ (Tony Benn)
- and ‘When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it‘ (Winnie-the-Pooh).
It’s been a long time a-comin’ but Robert’s second collection of poems, ‘Sax Burglar Blues‘, will be published by Seren Books on 30 October 2017.
Bob Walton’s 
poems are lithe and limber, with touches of humour and wry internal rhymes.This is a world teeming with animals and plants and cars and jazz, be-bopping easily across the Severn from Bristol to Cardiff and back. It’s an upbeat collection, a celebration of being in the world, but there are plangent undertones, too, of loss and oblivion. These are poems which are accessible and fun, but which also demand to be returned to, re-read, and pondered over.”
– Katie Gramich
The cover uses a wonderful print by jazz artist, Jeff Schlanger, musicWitness to the free jazz scene in New York City.
Robert Walton 