Welcome to my website. As a writer, occasional poet and life-long archer, I thought it was about time that I put all my work in one place. It is a modest amount, admittedly, but I would like to share it with you, and I hope that you enjoy it.
You will find several poetry collections, two of them for children, one of which is still being developed, and pieces covering archery humour and the history of my own archery club and its Victorian predecessor, plus other writing.
I have also included the story of my search to identify my American soldier father. It took more than 25 years against all the odds. But thanks to DNA testing, it proved successful, and in late 2016 I made contact with my half-sister, Judi Clough, in the USA.
The search for my American father also led me to the surprising discovery that I’m descended from two Mayflower passengers through my Edwards family in the USA. For a working-class British boy born in a two-up-and-two-down in a Stockport backstreet, that is a surprising pedigree – but it just happens to be true (see the Life Stories section.)
The extensive research into my family history, starting in the USA and then here in the UK where I live, led to the discovery of my maternal great grandfather’s death in a cotton mill fire, and resulted in my book on a disaster that took the lives of ten good men – more on this in the Life Stories section.
My website title may sound mundane, but it actually connects the two loves of my life – archery and poetry. All international archery rounds are shot in metres, and most of my poetry is written in metres.
There is another, far less obvious link between archery and the written word. Remember that the grey goose feathers that guided the longbow arrows to their targets at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, became quills in the hands of such English literary giants as Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton.
Thank you for visiting.
David Edwards Hulme.
Archery
“The Bowmen of Bruntwood was formed in 1950 by Trevor Francis…..He’d been a glider pilot in the Second World War, and a resulting back injury meant he couldn’t play contact sports like rugby. So archery it was.”
Poetry
“A poem must be accessible, not a private note to one’s inner self.” “You should be able to dip a poem in a river and flavour an ocean.”
Life Stories
“He was an extremely handsome man. To young working girls like my mother, all American soldiers were attractive….their accents, their swagger, their style, their smart uniforms.”