Bøger af Mike Parker

Taking the four seasons, the four elements and these four lives as his structure, Mike Parker creates a lyrical but clear-eyed exploration of the natural world, the challenges of accepting one's place in it, and what it can mean to find home. __________________________'A delightful book about beauty, joy, love and home...

'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said...'Maps not only show the world, they help it turn. On an average day, we will consult some form of map approximately a dozen times, often without even noticing: checking the A-Z, the road atlas or the Sat Nav, scanning the tube or bus map, a quick Google online or hours wasted flying over a virtual Earth, navigating a way around a shopping centre, watching the weather forecast, planning a walk or a trip, catching up on the news, booking a holiday or hotel. Maps pepper logos, advertisements, illustrations, books, web pages and newspaper and magazine articles: they are a cipher for every area of human existence. At a stroke, they convey precise information about topography, layout, history, politics and power. They are the unsung heroes of life: Map Addict sings their song.There are some fine, dry tomes out there about the history and development of cartography: this is not one of them. Map Addict mixes wry observation with hard fact and considerable research, unearthing the offbeat, the unusual and the downright pedantic in a celebration of all things maps. In Map Addict, we learn the location of what has officially been named by the OS as the most boring square kilometre in the land; we visit the town fractured into dozens of little parcels of land split between two different countries and trek around many other weird borders of Britain and Europe; we test the theories that the new city of Milton Keynes was built to a pagan alignment and that women can't read maps. Combining history, travel, politics, memoir and oblique observation in a highly readable, and often very funny, style, Mike Parker confesses how his own impressive map collection was founded on a virulent teenage shoplifting habit, ponders how a good leftie can be so gung-ho about British cartographic imperialism and wages a one-man war against the moronic blandishments of the Sat Nav age.

Short stories about unpleasant things happening to ordinary people

Overnight Sam's world has been turned upside down. The realization that every time he falls asleep he wakes up somewhere else has the young lawyer questioning everything, including his own sanity. His desperate search for answers will pull him into an adventure that is beyond his wildest dreams.

Mike Parker inspires countless individuals to see the possibilities of change by eliminating their limited thinking and developing an unlimited mindset.

In his fourth collection of poetry, Parker is a disc jockey spinning fossil records in defense of conscious science and common sense. His no-nonsense attitude gets to the gravel and grit of political and environmental issues, and at the same time glides in the tenderness of love for the children of his mountain community and the awe and reverence he feels towards things imbued with natural power and beauty, whether it be a woman or a mountain or losing a lifelong friend to cancer. In several activist poems Parker puts the fist back in pacifist, becoming a ballsy bubble-hashed buddhistic bean-spiller to the shameless sprawl of the military industrial complex, from the creeping resurgence of fascist corporate oligarchy and the quietly quarantined contaminants at the Rocky Flats nuclear superfund site to outcroppings of viruses such as Ebola, Zika, xenophobia and bigotry. Tackling contemporary issues such as war refugees, immigration, climate change, Parker unleashes a barrage of rhythmic rants in a punk poetic whack-a-mole response to the conflagration of hate wherever it pops up with the sheer fire, flare and brevity of an iron-nickel meteor shower. With sitting meditation and frequent mountaineering as his personal path of heart & hailstones, he continues to be a mentor to working poets and a voice for the working poor. "Michael Parker's Kimono Mountain transports the reader to remote Colorado mountains and introduces a sexy spring rhubarb, a stalker cougar, and the well-worn snowshoes of life. He harkens back to NYC days in a tragic story about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and a chance encounter with fellow conscientious objector Muhammad Ali. Parker's epic love poem for his wife and daughter, How to Make Your Own Kimono, is heart warmer. But Mike always returns to his roots, his core, reminding us, that 'treason is in season.' Plutonium pollution hides under the spotless mountain, 'homeless hole in America's shoe' and there's an 'OxyMoron in the White House.' He never lets the peace and isolation of the mountains distract him from the struggle against economic disparity and injustice, 'rich get richer, poor almost get paid.' " Emily Armstrong "In Kimono Mountain Poems, one quickly sees Mike, the far-reaching humble poet pushing his gift into stronger and sharper cadences, beats and zen-jester-wit. The wide curragh of themes which his pen encapsulates: breath, equality, dismay, loss, friendship, grief, earth-glory, home - all reach kindredship with Mike's taut lines of verse. Like currachs tied tightly at the dock, Mike's poems are bound by his artistic sensibilities and his deeply human connection to all that is embedded in his heart. I am a better man for having read these offerings." Brian Buckley, Co-Proprietor of Innisfeee Poetry Bookstore & Café, Boulder, CO. "Seething with life, Kimono Mountain grabs poetry by the throat and shakes words till they tumble out with lust, beauty and clear eyed honesty. Michael Parker writes about nature, politics and love with passionate simplicity and a complicated desire that you feel in your body as well as your heart." Pat Ivers

Join author, speaker, and coach Mike Parker in an inspiring journey of self-discovery as he reveals the keys to finding, keeping, and savoring your most gratifying, heartwarming, and rewarding memories. It all starts with his delightfully unique and uplifting questions for you to Ask Yourself in a guided journal format. These questions are specifically designed to help you focus on the best times and people from your past, present, and even future. Ask Yourself is your guide to a happier, healthier life, full of inspiring self-discovery. With the turn of each page, you will rediscover the memories and people you never want to forget. This thoughtfully crafted guided journal will bring all of those memories to the forefront of your mind and help you store them in the perfect place to keep forever.

Mike Parker, bestselling author of Map Addict, offers a very full, intelligent and witty exploration into a glorious and passionate British subject - footpaths and the history of land ownership.Mike discovers how these paths have become part of our cultural landscape and why, at the tender age of 44, he suddenly finds himself at a crossroads.Provocative, funny and personal, this book celebrates Britain's unique and extraordinary network of footpaths. It examines their chequered and surprisingly turbulent history, from the Enclosures Acts of the eighteenth century to the 1932 Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout in Derbyshire; and from the hard-won post-war establishment of great National Trails like the Pennine Way to the dramatic latter-day battles by the likes of Nicholas van Hoogstraten and Madonna to keep ramblers off their land.The story ranges far and wide, to all corners of the country and beyond, and is filled with the many characters that Mike engages with along the way - the poets and artists, farmers and ramblers, landowners and Rights of Way officers and campaigners, historians, archivists and anyone else who crosses his path (or even tries to block it).