In 2025, Adrian W. Church stood before the towering stones of Göbekli Tepe in Türkiye and tried to imagine the people who had created them thousands of years before him. The experience became a poem. In “Göbekli Tepe”, the stones lead him from one place in the present to a larger question about human civilisation, settlement and the extraordinary distance between early communities and modern life.
The moment says a great deal about how Church writes. He travels, looks closely, becomes curious, and then follows the thought wherever it leads.
Throughout Frivolous Verse and Multifarious Observations, travel, history and nature repeatedly work in this way. They provide places to visit, certainly, but they also give Church reasons to remember, compare, question and occasionally reconsider what people leave behind.
Travel Gives a Place More Than One Meaning
Church’s poems suggest that travelling is partly about seeing what exists and partly about noticing what a place makes you think about.
His fortnight in Istanbul in 2025 led to visits around Türkiye, including Göbekli Tepe. On his first full day in Istanbul, a guide named Gülşen introduced him to the city and the country.
“Sites and Sights of Istanbul” responds to the layers he encountered there. Europe meets Asia. Byzantine, Roman, Ottoman and Turkish histories occupy the same city. Topkapi Palace and the ancient cisterns become evidence of people solving problems, exercising power and building things meant to last.
Travel in Church’s poetry can also turn backward towards his own past. Weston-super-Mare, for example, mattered because he had holidayed there with his parents for many years as a child. A later visit therefore became less about seeing somewhere new and more about revisiting an earlier version of his own life.
Even imagined travel finds a place in the collection. “By the Shores of Lake Como” was written for a colleague and her husband before their weekend away, with Church picturing the couple together beside the lake.
History Is Interesting Because People Were There
Church rarely treats history as a collection of dates.
His interest in the English Civil War began in childhood and later led him to spend ten years with the Sealed Knot re-enactment society. Elsewhere in the book, historical subjects range from Lady Jane Grey to war, monarchy and ancient civilisation.
The attraction seems to lie in the human question behind the event: Who lived through this? What did they build? What choices were made? What survived?
“Inca Retreat” makes this particularly clear. Church describes it as partly a poem about Machu Picchu and partly a comparison between the permanence of human works and the much greater persistence of nature.
History, then, becomes less about admiring ruins and more about recognising how temporary even impressive human achievements can be.
Nature Can Be Found Outside the Front Door
The natural world in Church’s poetry does not depend on dramatic scenery.
One poem describing changing colour and weather was inspired entirely by views from his living-room window. A winter photograph taken from his bedroom window, with bare branches against a golden sky, became another source of inspiration.
A stream near his home carries an even older connection. Church walked and played beside it as a boy. Development has since altered parts of its course, yet he writes that the memories remain and the stream still holds its magic for him.
“Natural Therapy” takes the relationship further. Frost, changing skies, new growth and the return of green become sources of calm, capable of easing worry and restoring a sense of peace.
The Real Influence Is Attention
Travel, history and nature may look like three separate interests, but Church’s poetry connects them through one habit: paying attention.
A Neolithic site makes him think about civilisation. A seaside town returns him to childhood. Ancient ruins raise questions about human permanence. A stream holds decades of memory. A view from a window is enough to become a poem.
Frivolous Verse and Multifarious Observations shows what can happen when curiosity follows experience home. Church does not need every journey to be extraordinary or every landscape to be remote. He only needs something in it to make him stop, look again, and think.
Grab your copy today and see how travel, history, and nature influence Church’s thoughts.
