JOHN LAVAN HAS long been one of the internet’s most prominent poets, with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. Now, his poignant, funny and heartbreaking poetry has been turned into an e-book, with the launch of Familial: Selected Poems.

More than 100 exceptional pieces of work have been hand-picked by the Yorkshireman across a variety of subjects. These range from love poetry to poems of place – and even poems about poems. Many are inspired by family relationships, particularly the bond John has with his first son, Andrew, who has Down’s Syndrome.

Familial: Selected Poems is published by Apostrophe Books, which harnessed the agility of e-publishing by having the book on sale less than eight weeks after founder Martyn Forrester first fell in love with John’s remarkable poetry via Twitter.

The elegantly-designed book is available to download now for e-readers including the iPad and Kindle, and is priced from £2.99 / $5.99. It can be bought via Amazon, iTunes and many others.

John Lavan is a high-profile blogger with thousands of visits a day to his blog realpoems.org and to his Twitter accounts @Toltecjohn, @SufiJohn, @VVG_John and @S_Spearejohn.

He said: “Using words is such a gift for both readers and writers. I like my poems to move people and help them see the world differently – and always with a smile.”

In the video below, John reads An Eden Conception, one of the poems from the new collection: