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Latest volume Grass Clouds Poems 2002-22
A selection of published and self-published volumes 1992-2022…30 years! I will be reading poems from these various collections tonight at The Organ Grinder with Neil Fulwood.
Here my CV 🙂
A NEW YEAR GREETING
****
(poem here)
Addenda: What I am not.
Shaun Belcher is the author of one out of print slim volume that disappeared into the virtual ether before it was printed via lightning strikes/amazon so qualifies as a work of fiction.
He did not edit any anthology of obscure, unacknowledged legislators nor did he win any prizes, nor should we be specific did he enter any competitions.
He has held no official tenures as a creative writer at any top end nor third rate provincial university and has never reviewed other poets he dislikes for the simple reason of building a profile to get published.
He has never been recommended by friends in the poetry world as he has none and has studiously avoided anything to do with poets or poetry for over two decades.
He is member of no group who look after his publishing and reading interests when his work over time slides into fabulous irrelevancy or simply becomes so bad it an embarrassment.
He has no agenda nor minority axe to grind and has never played on his working class beginnings for pity or favour.
He regards his lifelong devotion to obscurity and keeping some semblance of sanity in a world over-run with poets like a corpse covered in flies that he should not add to other’s suffering by maintaining a steady output of academic poetry which simply done to fulfil research departmental targets.
His earnings from poetry over 40 years accrues to £70 he once got paid for being given a slot at Ledbury Festival by a friend and a commission again via a friend for £500 which works out to roughly £14.25 per annum which a living wage in the poetry world these days.
He is however still a poet if being a poet is none of the above.
He is still alive at time of writing and doesn’t expect things to change radically.
It all depends on a red wheelbarrow apparently and he does not have one.
Happy New Year.
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
I have been collating a selection of poems written since coming to Nottingham in 2002. It hasn’t been a particularly inspiring location for my poetry and hardly anybody realises I actually published in 2010. I surprised to find 96 poems in 20 years which was my yearly output back in the 1990s. So once I thought of an appropriate title and found an image for the cover I will release a pdf of the ‘Nottingham Years’ 2002-2022 in advance of my 20 years in waiting reading at Neil Fulwood’s fine poetry event at the Blue Monkey in August when he will be the main act.
Perhaps I should crowdsource a title..’Dark Tarn’..Guntown… Wordy Poet Hood? Forest and City :-)…..’Play on the Grass’……maybe that it …
GRASS CLOUDS…
job done son…now go have a shower..
COLLATERAL
(for D.D.)
Windows shake, tyres screech
Litter blows across the estate
Gunshots ricochet as sound
The Divis Flats, Brixton Market
Beirut, Jerusalem, Sarajevo
A baby cries, a baby cries
The broadcast stops, the helicopter hovers
There’s a smell of cordite, a cold wind
A face you have seen before on the news
Starting to dissolve in a pall of smoke
Gravestones, a line of mourners, a hearse
More tracking shots, more candles to light
The post-war peace has been noisy
All night the rain streaking the vans
As another round up begins
Difference is a slogan, tolerance fades
Hope drifts downstream like radium
Whitewashing concrete stained with blood
We can carry on, we can care even more
The trains will run, the tide will turn
The supremacists will make everything alright
The same arguments start again and again
Tube trains fill with dust and smoke
Collateral damage drips through the door
You choose what to believe, what to see
As another herd of innocents die in a cellar
The missing migrant is pushed into the sea
Sixty years of peace in Europe a lie
From the Balkans to Ukraine this is total war
An iron curtain swinging in the breeze
In the morning a cold silent light
A white horse streaked with blood and lame
Dragging itself to a poisoned stream
The crusaders horse is then shot full of holes
Its body carried away on a torrent of pain.
Collateral: The ghost in the Western dream.
A poem about a true story. I do not know if anybody still alive would remember it.
I have a vague memory as a child.
The match was organised by Ernie Butler who was then working as a driver at Smiths Crisps on the Trading Estate Station Road in Didcot and the club was the Marlborough Club. The park is Edmond’s Park as my family lived in Glebe Road and Newlands Avenue.
I played for Didcot Boys (THE team) briefly before being substituted too many times and my Dad moved me to Didcot Eagles….where I played a lot more and lost every game but happy as larry .
SUBSTITUTE
Looking on from the sidelines came naturally,
a boney slightly effete lad who wanted to be what his Dad wanted him to be.
Every Xmas Meccano and Scalextric (or a cheaper version from Bosleys toy shop)
When all I wanted was pen and paper or an Airfix Saturn V and some comics.
Happy with my mum’s Encyclopedia of Animals and a set of colouring pencils.
I even built my own museum of antiquities in my bedroom.
Including a glass topped case of oddments my Dad dug up with his JCB.
A meteorite, a bit of roman pottery, fossils or so he told me and who was I to argue.
I spent hours kicking a ball against my neighbour’s shed.
The smell of tarmac and sweat oozing from his pores after a day labouring
as he showed me how to dubbin my boots. How to pace myself, avoid injury.
In kick-arounds I wasn’t bad, no Tony Adams I struggled at left back.
A position the better team I clawed my way into could not fill so there I was.
Sunday morning in Edmond’s Park living my father’s dream in his position.
Trying to live up to the photograph of his team shot at Reading FC ground
before winning the North Berks Cup ( I have photo, medals and programme.)
My mother watched me take a few knocks and struggle as a defender.
Not ‘filled out’ enough to stand up to the bigger boys. Immature and sensitive.
The inner poet derailing my ambitions to play for Arsenal from an early age.
I look at photos of me aged 14 and wonder I didn’t break something.
But my father’s advice came good. Don’t get angry get even.
They score one you go back and score one against them.
Remember your second wind. I wrote a poem titled that.
Mum played the long game wanted me to go to University. First in family.
The rest all drove trucks, laid tarmac or went into the police or army.
One Sunday my Gramp Ernie challenged a semi-professional team to a match.
His family and mates from the Working Men’s Club against them as a bet.
Our whole family of Butlers and Belchers turned out on a frosty morning to watch
them win on the park I had been substituted most games on.
My Dad and Uncle Dennis and others ran rings around the so called professionals.
There was a big celebration at the club that evening. Ernie had won his bet.
I learnt then that there is no substitute for perseverance, talent and a bit of luck.
Now I stand on the sidelines again.
Recovering from a host of bad tackles, unlucky injuries and plain bad-timing.
Always a substitute never a first-choice.
Stepping across the poetic line.
Taking on the professionals at their own game.
Waiting for the final whistle.
I have spent the afternoon reading the beginning of Yvor Winters ‘The Function of Criticism’ which I acquired about 30 years ago.
I also read a couple of interesting articles online.
The first by the poet David Yezzi is interesting and makes a case for his continuing relevance. The second is a wider career over-view from the now defunct Contemporary Poetry Review.
I also mused upon the slow demise of the ‘Poet-Critic’ a sad reflection of the sorry state of contemporary poetry where popularity and social media profiles count for more than intellectual rigor. Even with Larkin, Heaney and Hughes there were solid publications of other writing. Can one imagine a serious book of Simon Armitage or Helen Mort criticism ..no because it too dangerous an occupation in the ‘blow-back’ noughties where any -expression of opinion is frowned upon. Books are reviewed but mostly to further mediocre careerist blogs but serious criticism that gone the way of decent classical music radio i.e. popularised out of existence.
So reading the opinionated Winters is refreshing. He was wrong as much as right but at least he expressed an opinion.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/1997/6/the-seriousness-of-yvor-winters
https://www.cprw.com/the-absolutist-the-poetry-and-criticism-of-yvor-winters
Talking of opinionated tody I also picked up this Further Requirements book by Larkin to add to Required Writing which again I had for over thirty years. I wonder how long before Larkin is ‘Decolonized’ from the local university stacks which considering his lifetime devotion to maintaining library collections is beyond sad.
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
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