TIME
Time, so they tell me,
Is a precious commodity;
Nowadays I own lots of it
(ever since the steelyard gates clanged shut)
I wonder how much a few weeks of it
Would fetch at Christies?
From my new collection of poetry ’67’, now avauilable @ http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
VIADUCT IN PONDERS END
If I were a sheep
Picking a living on this canted grass
I might wish to communicate with my friends,
Similarly pitched across the way,
But would be unable to do so,
Barred by this tarmac valley
That gouges its way between us
Conversation would be useless in any case;
This crew-cut corridor is filled
With the tuneless dissonance
Of steel engaging steel
The cadences of piston power reverberating
The never-ending whine and grind
Of this rusty city…
If I were a sheep
I think I would wear ear-muffs
from my new collection’ 67′. http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
This is the opening verse of Philip Larkins classic poem Annus Mirabilis, a poem which I consider to be one of my favourites of all time. Larkin was generally acknowledged as curmudgeonly, and one of the most miserable men in England; he once said of himself that ‘deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth’. He was an inveterate letter-writer, and those published after his death in 1985 reveal his right wing views and his racist language. Indeed one historian described him as a ‘casual, habitual racist and an easy misogynist’. He also had a taste for soft porn – though had he still been alive today I expect he would have graduated to the hard stuff! There is no doubt that he had lecherous tendancies; and he conducted three seperate affairs together during one period of his life. Tough cookie!
“Morning, noon & bloody night,
Seven sodding days a week,
I slave at filthy WORK, that might
Be done by any book-drunk freak.
This goes on until I kick the bucket.
FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT”
He was born in Coventry in 1922, earning the title ‘the bard of Coventry, though he worked most of his life as University librarian at the University of Hull. He wrote two early novels before turning almost exclusively to poetry, although he did contribute a lot to Lucky Jim, the first novel of his great friend Kingsley Amis. His first published collection was called The North Ship, but it was his second collection The Less Deceived, that got him noticed.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.”
Undoubtably one of England’s finest poets, he couldn’t stand pretentiousness and once commented; “I can’t understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.”
MUSHROOMS
When I was knee-high to a man
And fields were free
We picked mushrooms
On mornings such as this
Barbed wire, where it existed,
Was negotiable.
Now the Stalag-masters have returned
And fenced us out
Or is it in?
from my new collection of poetry ’67’ – http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
This is the first verse of Stevie Smiths classic poem ‘Not Waving But Drowning’. That’s always the dilemna isn’t it? How to determine that the wave isn’t a cry for help. That brave smile could be a grimace in disguise, masking all kinds of pain and anguish. That stiff upper lip could be holding back a tidal wave of of worry.
Smith herself was often drowning when she appeared to be waving. Deserted by her father when she was three, she lived with her mother and her sister Molly in Palmers Green. She suffered from depression all her life and when her mother died when she was sixteen her aunt Madge moved in to look after her. She wrote in several poems that death ‘was the only god who must come when he is called’.
Stevie wrote 3 novels and 10 collections of poems during her lifetime and.although she never married, was said to have been George Orwell’s lover. She never quite abandoned the Anglican faith of her childhood, describing herself as a ‘lapsed athiest’, and one of her poems contains these lines; ‘there is a God in whom I do not believe/Yet to this God my love stretches’. She died in 1971 aged 69.
might as well finish ‘Not Waving but Drowning’!
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
FALL
Autumn mornings are best;
The sun smiling low over the gasworks
Flighty leaves browning the common
Kites lark-high over the tree-tops
Coffee and a roll in the old rectory
And you by my side
from my new collection of poetry ’67’. http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
IN PRAISE OF MONARCHS
He dug ditches in obscurity
Raised ten children to maturity
When pushed he said;
‘I do the best I can. Life’s hard
On the working man, but I mustn’t complain
I’ve got my health, while there’s others
Who can’t stop dying for all their wealth.
All that stuff in China…I wouldn’t give it
If they changed my lot for Royalty I wouldn’t live it.
There’s more to life than being famous you know’.
SILENCE AT THE BAR
The old man grimaced and silently imbibed his pint
His withered wife glared her whole life at him
And pointedly moved to a seat
At the far end of the joint
Two sons, forty and finicky,
Silently contemplated the following day’s races
While the daughter and son-in-law,
Long run out of things to say,
Blew smoke in each other’s faces.
Only the children were living;
The girl was chandelier-swinging
And the boy was table-top walking.
“Shhh!” said the mother,
“be quiet you two rascals,
We can’t seem to hear ourselves talking”
from my new book of poetry – http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
PUT ANOTHER LOG ON THE TV
Talking gets harder each day:
Smokeless zones and telephones
Have killed the conversation
Now our lies, laughs, truth and tears
Have all been swallowed whole
By another monster
In another shiny console
Rocking-horse to rocking-chair
And somewhere in between
The fireplace has become a flickering screen
Glowering at the world
Insisting on silence as it reward
Granddad spat in the fire;
I spit in your face;
Old lies die hard.
from my new collection of poetry ’67’. http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
WIMBLEDON
I could write a poem about you
It might even say
‘I love you’
There would be hate;
A modicum of debate
About whether you were you
Or was it your dead-ringer I saw
Slurping in the arms of granite-jaw
When the forty-love shot was hailed
And you and lover-boy got nailed
TV doesn’t lie my dear;
Only one thing now is missing;
Who was that bastard you were kissing?
taken from; http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
My Writing Life 