Alistair Robinson’s Stereograms of the Dead launch in Sunderland

Last night saw the launch of Alistair Robinson’s new poetry book Stereograms of the Dead at Waterstones in the Bridges Shopping Centre.

Sunderland Universities’ own also gave a public reading from his new book as well as signing copies for fans.

This was the third leg of his book launch having already done one at South Shields’ Central Library, Prince George Square and at the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle last week.

As well as previously working as the Sunderland Echo arts and entertainment editor and teaching journalism at the university, Alistair has also been writing poetry for over 20 years and in 2004 he won a Northern Promise award for his poetry.

Alistair’s last volume of poetry, South of Souter, was published as a chapbook by Sunderland-based Sand in 2003. The new book is his first full-length collection.

His new book’s rather bizarre title comes from a poem inspired by a visit to a charity shop in Blandford Street, Sunderland.

“That poem focuses on the LP records that are invariably found in such shops,” says Alistair. “I’m a keen collector of old vinyl and I came to the sobering realisation that the records you find in such shops, most of which are of the easy-listening variety from the 1960s and 70s, will have come from the collections of the deceased and been donated to the shop by their relatives.

“There is invariably a copy of the World of Mantovani, and a few Jimmy Shand and John Denver LPs, and these records are mentioned in the poem.”

A number of the poems tell the story of Alistair’s grandparents, and the book is dedicated to his late grandfather but this isn’t his only form of inspiration as the themes of his poems ranges from a letter to his unborn child to a plastic Buddha in a garden centre.

Alistair explains how he gets his inspiration from “things I see things that pop into my head things that I hear on the radio, memories.

“I just wanted to get a good mix of funny poems and descriptive ones and serious ones and philosophical ones.

“It’s a collective because it includes my favourite pieces from 15 years ago until now, there a couple of poems that go back to the mid 1990s some of them appeared in previous anthologies and I collected them all together, some of them were written as recently as last spring.”

Alistair hopes to release another collection of poems with (publishing company) Red Squirrel soon, explaining that “I’ve got a few ideas at the moment and I’ve been chipping away at a novel for a long time, so that’s my next project I hope to complete.”

Stereograms of the Dead is available to buy now.