John Godfrey took voluntary redundancy from a management post in the railway industry, when he realised that work was getting in the way of other things he’d rather being doing – writing being one of them. His first poetry collection, The Man on Crewe Station (Rockingham Press, 2011) was widely praised.
Beautiful Contraptions is his second full collection. The title poem heads a section which features ‘contraptions’ both old and new as a form of tribute to their creators, with a hint that poems themselves might be considered ‘beautiful contraptions’ in a way.