Paul Hume Simmons was born in Ilford, Essex, in 1957 and attended Brentwood School and the University of Essex. He has worked as an administrator in local government for the last 26 years; has two daughters and two little grandchildren and lives near Colchester. This collection of poems The Look of Beauty follows on from his first publication in 2013, A Construction in Space. Its style can be concise and sometimes apparently simple and retains a certain rhythm. It touches and dwells on ideas and situations with insight and some delicacy - and the poet hopes to instil a sense of beauty and a degree of order, in whatever ways these can be recognised; not just in appearance.

Paul Simmons was born in Ilford, Essex in 1957. He attended Brentwood School, and the University of Essex, where he gained a degree in English and European Literature. After seven years in the City of London Paul has worked in Local Government since 1989. This is his first collection of poems; a sensitive, subtle and original poetry of ideas, which seeks to be edifying and accessible.