AN Abberley chef has found writing poetry to be a great healer and is now preparing for his first book to be published.

Alan Penrose, who lives at The Elms Hotel in the village near Stourport, where he also works, began writing poetry to help him come to terms with his divorce in May, 2004.

The 38-year-old, said: "I write as a self-healing process because writing my feelings down helps. I can't express them to other people so I started writing poems. I'd never written anything before."

He has secured a deal with an American publisher for his book, Screamings From a Maddening Mind, which contains poems about his life after his divorce, his three children and how people treat each other and the earth.

One of his poems - Unsung Heroes - is also about his work as a chef and "what goes on behind the scenes while everyone is out at the restaurant enjoying themselves."

He said: "I think working as a chef, particularly the fact that we have to be artistic, helps with the writing."

Alan, who has written around 130 poems, said he did not think about getting his poems published until a friend suggested the idea. It can take him anything between an hour and several days to complete a poem once he has an inspiration."

His book, which he expects to be published in May, contains 55 poems and 17 black and white pictures of Alan, shot by Abberley photographer, John Pitt, which try to convey the darker side of the poems.

Alan said: "We had a lot of fun getting the photos together. John has a lot of imagination and they are very powerful photographs."

He is already planning his second book, as well as a short story, which would be told in poems.