A Mansfield writer has released a new horror poetry collection that has been inspired by his struggle with two chronic illnesses.

L. A. Mason, 51, whose new collection is called Ovum Of Risk, was diagnosed with Graves’ and Parkinson’s diseases, which meant he had to retire from work.

Those diagnoses made him appreciate the fragility of the human body.

Ovum Of Risk presents 27 nihilistic avant-garde poems dealing with pain, disease, horrific transformations, confrontation with injury, the dark side of sex, and death.

They are loosely connected through the psychopathic protagonist, “haunted, alone, and paranoid”, who is voyaging back through his life to his birth, and beyond.

It is the protagonist’s warped view that the only way to remove the ‘ovum of risk’ – that is, the potential for any new child to grow to become a force for evil such as a murderer or dictator – is by not reproducing.

Drawing inspiration from artists, including poet Dylan Thomas, painter Francis Bacon, French poet Baudelaire, French novelist Émile Zola and Un Chien Andalou creators Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, Ovum Of Risk is an unsettling but hypnotic read, and one of the few collections of body horror poetry to be released in recent years.

To buy a copy of the collection, visit the author’s website at www.blacklamp.net or search for the title on Amazon.