Maitreyabandhu - one of Triratna’s most successful poets - writes to say - “I’m finally launching my first collection of poems The Crumb Road, on Thursday 27th June, 7.30pm, at the London Buddhist Centre. The book has taken me 7 years to put together: although I’ve published poems, including pamphlets of poems, before this is my first full-length collection – it’s a bit like bringing out your first album after having released some promising singles!

To launch The Crumb Road I’ll be interviewing the editor, Neil Astley, and he’ll be reading from Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy. In the second half, Neil will interview me about The Crumb Road and I’ll read from it. The Crumb Road is divided into three sections, the first part mainly autobiographical, while the second contains more explicitly ‘spiritual’ poems. The third section tells the story of a secret and finally tragic relationship between two boys.

If you’re in London on 27th, please come! Maitreyabandhu”.

The Crumb Road will be published by Bloodaxe Books, who describe it thus:
“Maitreyabandhu's thematically varied debut collection includes poems of spiritual transcendence as well as meditations on love, memory and sexuality. Sometimes comic, often elegiac, the poems convey the pleasures and terrors of childhood as well as the mystical world of fable. Truthful, tender, and written with a kind of wonderment, the collection culminates in 'Stephen', an extended sequence of poems exploring a clandestine, and finally tragic, relationship between two boys. For Maitreyabandhu - a Buddhist teacher and member of the Triratna Buddhist Order for over twenty years - The Crumb Road is an image for the unreliability of memory, and for the vital thread of human value that connects us to the spiritual world. Poetry Book Society Recommendation”.