The experience of pausing and gazing back at one’s life is the narrative that inhabits these poems. They are the story of Mr. M.’s mortality. A mortality framed in the ashes of fragmentation, grief, and a redeeming longing for wholeness as he approaches the end of his journey. The emotive thread in this evaluative pausing is revealed in the glitter of silence, thorning hedges, and a constant twirling through the labyrinth of an ever-evolving sense of meaning. A meaning that nurtures both acceptance and defiance in his effort to continue through the inferno that is creation.

In these poems, the autobiographic Mr. M. dances and twirls his way through old memories. He is helped on his journey with wine, tea, smokes, psalms, and an ever-present archetypal giant. This work is an excellent and reflective study that sheds light on mortality and meaning.
Richard Sellin, author of
The Spiritual Gyre: The Recurring Cycles of Western Civilization.

In Old Roads New Ashes, Mr. M. invites us to travel a road, weaving back and through an outer world filled with dilemmas, confusion, and grief, into an inner sanctuary shrouded by the mystery and presence of the eternal. As Mr. M. reveals his struggles and discoveries, you will ponder, rage, laugh, and throw up your hands in frustration…but in the end, be transformed by it all.
Dan Jay Kirk, Poet, Editor, and Visual Artist.

In his poems, Ilya Tourtidis introduces Mr. M., who is at a crossroad in his life - a bardo like state of death and rebirth. In his introspective journey through grief, choices made, and roads travelled, Mr. M. becomes enlightened and eventually finds peace through acceptance and transitions into a new incarnation. Tourtidis’ book Old Roads New Ashes is deeply moving, passionate and inspirational.
Sharon Urdahl, Poet, Writer, and
Editor of the anthology: A Murder of Crows.

In Ilya Tourtidis’s new book, Old Roads New Ashes, his alter ego Mister M confronts the vicissitudes, challenges, and paradoxes of the self in modern life. He looks back at the quest his life has been and asks metaphorically “Can we ever reach the new beginning which lies sleeping in the ashes of our past?” This is Canadian poetry at its best - quirky, intimate, brilliant, witty and wonderful.
Ed Varney, Poet, Visual artist, and Editor