I shall be reading from new Horseshoe Press pamphlet ‘Thames Valley Texas’ next Tuesday at the Organ Grinder on Open Books second birthday. Without the hard work of the T S Eliot of Bus Drivers there would be no Open Book so thank you Neil Fulwood here’s to the next two years…
Category: working class poetry (Page 1 of 3)
The planned new poems in a volume called substitute was held back as I had another year’s teaching contract to complete. I am now officially retired from Nottingham College so can concentrate a tad more on the written word.
To date I have written a baker’s dozen of new poems since last year’s reading and will be reading from the new collection at the Open Book Reading on the 3rd October.
No Substitute update….
In an ironical twist having selected the title because of The Who song I found out that Pete Townsend actually got married in my hometown and at the council offices I and my sister helped clean back in late seventies. My mother and nan were cleaners there in evening.
There no sustitute for a tie-in bit of PR in this case there were even photos taken. No I was not there but probably at home kicking a football against the wall as a nine year old.
Accept no substitute…
After twenty years chez Nottingham I finally been invited to share my thoughts at a reading.
So if you wish to listen to a couple of bolshy poets tearing down the walls of heartache now’s your chance…
Neil Fulwood been around a bit has some books and generally a good egg….
He will be promoting his new Smokestack Press publication and generally taking the piss out of the Tories which in current climes no bad thing.
I will be ranting as usual……at everything.
I will be reading from this book available until August 2nd as a free pdf download below.
I will be offering this as a free download from this evening as it Bastille day.
GRASS CLOUDS contains everything I have written as ‘poetry’ since I arrived in Nottingham in 2002 so about 20 years worth
Contains 80 poems and some illustrations. I will be reading from it on Tuesday August 2nd at the Organ Grinder Canning Circus with Neil Fulwood who celebrating his new Smokestack Press publication.
Includes the following pamphlets and projects:
Drifting Village Poems 2001-2011
Edwin Smith Commission 2014
Burning Books and Buying time 2017 – 2018
My Father’s Things (illustrated) 2019
At the Organ Grinder I shall also be reading from the new volume ‘Substitute’ which due in Fall 2023.
Privilege
Is mine and always will be it is my birth-right
I am born to this and never shall let it slip
I am the world king and God’s chosen one
To let go of power is to betray you all
I will make the problems disappear
All it takes is character as my masters told me
Drilled with a sense of purpose and entitlement
From a young age to handle the reins of power
The ethos at Eton and Oxford is always to be right
even if found out never let the mask slip
For that is a sign of weakness and I am not weak
I am the firm hand, the strong voice, the liar
Who can not ever be found out to lie
The philanderer who can buy secrecy
The fool who cannot be judged wrong
For there is no other King
This morning the cloak of privilege
Is torn and stained but still wraps me round
With banker friends and people of high birth
who will take me in and bathe my wounds
I will return to the battle with my Excalibur
Smite my enemies and ride again into battle
This county needs me in its darkest hour
I watch re-runs of Churchill in a darkened room
This is my right my destiny
I am alone A King of no country
The agency have been at work again
He just didn’t look like a poet so they set to work
Told him to lose a few pounds and get a new stylist
The shabby chic look to match his fake poverty lyrics
Helped sell the gig and books in the provinces
Bolstered the teenage girl clickbait on tiktok
It was so much easier to sell the image than the contents
After all style over content the norm so no matter
His youtube and whatsapp ratings were off the scale after the revamp
His poetry books flew of the amazon print on demand presses
Soon even the arts council wanted a piece of the action
After all WWCB had just come onto their radar
Meanwhile his poems started to falter
The early promise based on genuine family history
Gave way to more and more internet copped falsities
His heroes had blundered on through addiction and blank pages
Now he was dropping more pills to keep the words coming
His apps were full of half-finished ideas and poems with no ending
Then one day it all ended
In a fast food stop on a motorway
He caught his reflection in a window
His eyes hollow, his hair teased by a stylist
Into the Victorian waif look
Another Delivery driver just like his father.
Another acronym to play with WWCBWP
White Working Class Boy Without Poetry
Doff your cap,
Toe the line,
Do a good job,
Know your place,
Speak when spoken to,
Don’t talk back, keep mum,
Be reliable
Hold your knife properly,
Don’t leave the table until told to,
Watch your step,
March in time,
Defer to your betters,
Salute the flag,
Be punctual,
Do a good job,
Never argue,
Be polite,
Bow,
Scrape,
Be invisible.
If you do not do as you are told you have…
A chip on your shoulder,
Are bitter,
Difficult
A maverick
A born troublemaker
An outsider
A thief
Or worse
Political
Working Class
A writer
Each van a different worker living on this road it a Sunday.. the Thatcherite Dream made reality.
Loops
Sparkling green walls covered in frosted webs
A thousand hedges grid-locked our estate at dawn
October school-runs on foot, lawns damp with dew
We’d strip privet sticks and collect them in loops
One web on top of another until a sticky shivering
Vibrated in our hands, dew running down stalk to palm.
We knew nothing then, spun our own stories as we traipsed
Slowly toward a school playground fuzzy with chalk
Circles on walls, boards, exercise books and balls
Punctured and hiding below those spun nets
The exhaled breaths of football careers not yet dead
We curved balls endlessly at bare walls
They came back every time,thuds ricocheting
Against the garage walls our only release
Drum n Bass lives before we knew the words
Stamping out glam rock tunes in our heads
Now the lawns and hedges torn up turned to gravel
Commuter belt rentals cars packed in like terraces
Nothing breathing just dead ground that floods easily
The earth covered and the dreams we had floating away
Over the hedges, nets, lawns like vapour trails
Heading west to unknown futures no longer there.
A new boy in my old bedroom repeats an overhead kick
On a digital platform.
Dreams of escape as a ball lands in a net.
Cannot hear the milk train on the loop.
Ignores far sirens and sticky hands cradling the dead.
The Loop:
The London – Oxford railway line bypasses my hometown of Didcot on a single track known as ‘The Loop’ to thirteen year old trainspotters…
THUNDER CIRCLING
He needed to talk to someone.
It happened to be us.
His rolled tobacco slipped from his fingers
as he went over events fifty years before.
The harbour, Singapore, thunder circling
and lightning flashing across the sea.
A merchant navy man,
sitting on deck with his mates,
watching a free show.
‘lf they’s could only ‘arness that energy’.
The same bar two hours later.
Someone else who wanted to talk
but blocked by E’s, drunk,
it came in staccato bursts, the sense,
mouthed through a vocabulary
borrowed from rap, rave and T.V.
Eighteen, jobless, staring through glass
at a wet car park, he rocks gently
like a ship stuck in harbour.
Outside, flashing lights, sirens.
1993
HAWKER SIDDLEY ARGOSY
Improbable squares, steel-framed frogs
hopping from aerodrome to aerodrome
through an emulsion sky, wool clouds.
You could hear them from miles away
before they’d flash over the barn
and into my wide open six-year old eyes.
Other times they dissolved through
the outhouse plastic corrugated roof
into distorted birds that rattled
like boxes as they headed south
travelling so low and slow
as if weighted down by air.
Sometimes two would appear together
flickering through the tall roses
as I clung to the wooden fence
head hung back, off balance.
l tried to read the letters and numbers
painted on the dull grey fuselage.
I imagined them picking up our house.
Slotting the wooden walls, corrugated
plastic, roof slates and felt, windows,
my mother washing clothes in clouds of steam,
even our spaniel and me
and spinning us all into whiteness.
From Landmine: Poems 1992-1996
Read more here: LANDMINE
My first six years I lived in a wooden clapboard house on top of a hill near Wittenham Clumps. We were under the flight-path of Benson aerodrome which is why these aircraft had a profound affect on me.