Need help

Yeeesch! I neet help. I need a method to flush out lists of authors in a MySQL field called "KW". The field looks a bit like this: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ &&1; Caribbean and West Indies; Guyana;&&4; Birney,(i) Earle; Harris,(i) Wilson; Hope,(i) Alec Derwent; King,(i) Bruce; James,(i) Henry; Olson,(i) Charles; Rushdie,(i) Salman; Purdy,(i) Al; Joyce,(i) James; Macleish,(i) Archibald; Cummings,(i) Edward Estlin (E.E.); Auden,(i) W. H.; Atwood,(i) Margaret; Tutuola,(i) Amos; Simon,(i) Claude;&&7; comparison of authors and works; ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In the section that starts with &&4 I need to look for (i) search backward to the prewious ; and search forward to the next ; and extract into an array the contents between the semi-colons to arrive at something that looks like: Birney, Earle Harris, Wilson Hope, Alec Derwent King, Bruce James, Henry Olson, Charles Rushdie, Salman Purdy, Al Joyce, James Macleish, Archibald Cummings, Edward Estlin (E.E.) Auden, W. H. Atwood, Margaret Tutuola, Amos Simon, Claude Can someone please help me get started? John