SEA CHANGE

I have a recurring dream that I suddenly discover I have not written my dissertation and therefore I cannot graduate. I've had it for years, and it probably comes from supporting higher education students. There is always trauma around getting dissertations in on time, although, back in the day, I was very organised and had mine completed in good time. It's my version of an anxiety dream. Oh, a Gentleman's is a Third Class degree which was considered an adequate level of achievement for a gentleman before they began their Grand Tour of Europe.

SEA CHANGE

There I am again

discovering my dissertation is unwritten

a common enough event in this repeating dream

But hang on

I check the calender

find I have seven days until hand in

And I think

I can do this

thereby sidestepping the sea of shame

And I know a Gentleman’s Third beckons

The poem is called Sea Change because this time I change the script. This is not a big poem. I may try it out at a couple of readings to gauge its reception. 

Sachal Vasandani has a new album out on the 14th. Here's a taster Sometimes I Miss.

Until next time.

IT WAS NOT THE 70s

Here is a poem I began to write in a supermarket car park. I'd just parked and the idea was insistent. I hope I have met it's expectations.

I found myself in Lisbon

thinking about the Liverpool Stadium

because sun faded in a small shop window

was a well worn copy of Barclay James Harvest Live

it was not the 70s

I was not wearing flares

my hair was not half way down my back

no

it was grey

it was short

and I was old

reflecting on how such moments

take you to places

you didn’t know you remembered

The Liverpool Stadium was an old boxing arena that was used in the 1970s by rock bands. Barclay James Harvest were a prog rock band who've been mentioned on this blog before. The gig I went to was 31.8.74. I have to say I still have no recollection of Rare Bird the support band. As I remember it was a good concert, although my fondest gig of theirs was Sheffield in 1975 [8th November- the internet is amazing at times].

As to the poem, it is a work in progress. It certainly isn't finished yet. I'll leave you with a live Mockingbird. 

Until next time. 

FABRIC CREDIBILITY

Sometimes memories surface and who knows why? Events that I have given no thought to for decades pop up and sometimes I think that might make a poem. This is the story of a crime I committed over forty years ago.

CHAMELEON

my camouflage that year was

a marjons football club jumper

I stole from the Student Union shop

the time I volunteered to accompany

Heather who was intermitting to

join Operation Raleigh for six moths

the Deputy President was anxious that

everyone should know exactly where

she had just come from

I simply picked up my prize

and failed to add it to the list

of clothing she had chosen

in the outside world

I wore it sparingly and only

when I needed fabric credibility

not that anyone ever commented

or bothered to admit they had

taken in the embroidery on my left breast

but it gave me comfort

as I navigated my new reality

The lines wrote themselves and the breaks seemed to fit. I've polished it up a little but essentially this is how the poem arrived. Operation Raleigh was a opportunity for young people to participate in a scientific adventure. I had the jumper for a number of years, it was quite well made I seem to remember. Marjons still has a football club and I still have never played football. Though I am happy to pay for my jumper should anyone wish me to.

The photographs this post are all from Wednesday. The sea at Meadfoot was choppy. Here's Spirogyra with Captain's Log. 

Until next time.

TODAY'S UNIQUE SELLING POINT

When actors are in rehearsal they will often have a person whose role is to supply the correct line when the actor forgets or fluffs the script. I was recently asked to be the prompt in a production and this poem arrived as a result.

today’s unique selling point is that when words fail us

we can call line

and the appropriate dialogue will be supplied

all we have to do is repeat what we hear

and this drama that is our lives may continue until

the next person fluffs their speech

the director tells us to take ten

we look at each other and wonder what to say

What I like about it is the idea that we can simply go through life being fed lines and that we do not have to think. Yes, I know, life cannot be that simple [or empty]. We have to do the real work for ourselves.

Astrid Gilberto died this week. I was a long time fan, having grown up listening to Bossa Nova in the early 60s. I leave you with her timeless music. She will be missed.

Until next time.

PRACTICAL TIME TRAVEL

Recently I spent a morning walking round Plymouth. It was unexpected. A meeting I had to attend had been cancelled at the last moment due to Covid and I decided to have a look at the city centre. I had been a student in Plymouth, back in the early 1980's and I knew the place well. Like everywhere it had changed over time. As I meandered I could not help comparing the reality with the memory, perhaps this is nostalgia, but to me it seemed the nearest I'd ever come to time travel.

Practical Time Travel

this used to be a bookshop

that covered two floors

wall to wall books

now it trades for a charity he has never heard of

all that they can scrape together

makes constellations on the floor

next door had been an Oddbins

he would buy the house red

to take to student parties

everything had seemed so permanent then

today is an unplanned visit to Plymouth

which has him comparing now

to the city that lives in his head

and reality comes in a shabby second

The poem may not be complete, I think I need the Secrets perspectives on it. I am standing too close. I did, however, dash this off.

there is no way back

no magic door

no wormhole wardrobe

to effect the switch from here

to some romanticised past

this is where we live

so fight to change tomorrow

as yesterday’s stale bread is hard to swallow

This is not going anywhere, too much tell and not enough show. Here's the Human League from the 1980's.

Until next time.

A TENT ON THE FLAT ROOF

 

This is based on a real incident. As it happened in the 1980s I think I am safe to tell about a friend who camped for a summer on one of the flat roofs of the university we attended. He maintained that no one looked up and anyway his tent was well concealed. The quote is from John Milton.

the hungry sheep do not look up- Milton

Clive climbed that wall

shinned up the side of A Block

kept a tent on the flat roof

and lived up there the whole summer

confident he would not be discovered

as if he had worked out an equation

the rest of us had missed

I had the idea for the poem as I was falling asleep one night but wrote it down a day or two later. I like to let the ideas percolate these days.

This second poem was written in the summer.

unbeknown to you

this patch of grass

has razor sharp reflexes

and as you absently

place down your glass

they conspire to tip it over

and feast on the spilled red wine

The poem is what it is, a brief observation, though the stalks of grass did appear to be on springs, pushing upwards as the glass tumbled over.

Joy Crookes is recording her first album at the moment. Here's a reminder of just how good she is.

Until next time.

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE

 

The Mad Emperor Across the Water continues to break records even in his twilight days, though being impeached a second time is nothing to be proud of, but nothing else in his tenure has been either...

Since the start of the pandemic there have been at least five, sometimes seven, cruise liners at anchor either in Lyme Bay or Tor Bay. They are both a spectacular and a sad sight. I cannot help but think of the people who staff these empty, floating hotels and how they would probably like to be back at home with their families.

This poem is not about the ships. 

Wallshill summer 2020

the three of them

stop

by the wire fence

by the flowers

by the memories

by the sign that reads

danger crumbling cliffs

the other side is all space

and sea and rocks

they take in the parked cruise ship

waiting it out in Lyme Bay

the views are amazing he tells them

you only live once

doesn’t matter if you die

and like the gentleman he is

he parts the wires

so they can limbo through

I would like to stress that the people in the top photograph are nothing to do with the poem. I have used it because I like the composition and I would like to thank them.

This second poem is from an email, it relates to a project I was involved in some time back. When I read the email I thought it was a poem in itself, a found poem. 

Directive

If you could gather some poems

filter down to three max

pick some very different topics

our audience has limited interest

war, mental health and feminism

are all hot topics at the mo

or, maybe one that is,

uniquely Marjons- that could fly!

I love the enthusiasm of the narrator and their take on the world...

I have been listening a lot to Untitled [Black is] by Sault. A superb album. Here is Widlfires.

Until next time.

MORE WATER THAN IS HEALTHY

I feel I need to offer some explanation about this week's post.
James Kay-Shuttleworth founded Marjons in 1840. He was part of a political/religious movement that wanted to offer the working classes education. I am one of the many people who benefited from his vision.
Recently a friend sent me a BBC News page about Gawthorpe Hall. The following poem grew out of these events.

A Poem of Two Summers

i Then

At least, for now, the rain has stopped

the room remains cluttered with words

to describe this wet summer,

and prayers of thanks it is not as bad as 1816.

It is damp enough to keep them penned inside,

so he reads the letter once more.

Mr Kay-Shuttleworth realises he has had enough of the cage,

perceives the time has come, steps out into the garden.

The burdened leaves impart more water

than is healthy on his black broadcloth coat,

he does not care, for things come together,

such liberating circumstances as will free men

to build God’s Kingdom on this earth,

equality through education.

ii Now

Now the summer has wrung every

drop of moisture from the soil

I see the shadow of that Victorian garden.

Its ghost outline vividly demarcated

on the screen of my mobile phone,

over two hundred miles away

and nearly two hundred years later,

informed of its significance

for the hundreds of thousands, like me,

who have benefited from that vision,

I give thanks and praises that people

once cared enough to give others the opportunities

that these days we are more intent on removing.

I should also explain that the summer of 1816 was the worst on record due to a volcanic explosion. 
I know this poem is not complete and I am wondering if the end is not too much tell and not enough show.
The difference between the Victorian sense of social duty and now is tremendous. In those days it was commonly agreed that it was everyone's duty to improve the lot of the less fortunate. How times have changed.
Here's Brooke Sharkey earlier this year in Manchester.

Until next time.

AWAITING ARCHAEOLOGY

I am a little hesitant to share this poem. I am breaking one of my self-imposed rules; never show new work. This is a poem I've been working on for the last couple or three weeks. It is significant to me, and that is the worry.
Distance grants perspective; I am possibly far too close.
This is how it came about. One morning I was watching a cleaner hoover the wonderful architectural model that you see in the photographs. It is of the original Chelsea site of [what at the time was] the College of St. Mark and St. John. I am told it was made in the late 1960's prior to the college moving from London to Plymouth. It is located out of the way, under the stairs where you have to look hard to see it. You cannot get near it unless you move the photocopier out of the way.

Seeing the grass being hoovered make me think of The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham and there I was in one of the buildings watching.
It also made me realise how higher education has changed since I was a student in the early 1980's. The idea in those far off days was to give people an education for life rather than to simply fit them up with an education for a vocation [and saddle them with a huge amount of debt in the process].
In short, I felt as out of place as the architectural model that morning.
Here's the poem.

He is hoovering the architectural model,

on his back sits a vacuum cleaner,

streamlined like a jet pack

from some 1960s science fiction film,

but this is the future.

The model's location telegraphs irrelevance,

it has been abandoned under the stairs, half out of view.

Hunched over, the cleaner is finding it difficult to work,

stretching to vacuum the green fields,

and filling my bottle at the ice cold water machine,

which further obscures the model,

I wonder what it would be like to be in one of those houses,

say Hudson or Stanley, so professionally reproduced in front of me.

That giant nozzle is sucking up boulders of dust,

as if the Kraken had woken to steal the world from us.

Would I run in fear through the empty building to hide in a basement,

or to the glass walls of Hudson's top floor,

phone recording with half an eye to television news?

Afterwards I know I would walk through the deserted gardens,

film the trees loaded with dust that are too difficult to clean.

Be cowed by the concrete sky above me

and not like the modern world at all.

Later I move the barriers,

and crouching photograph the model.

Was it all pulled down once the college left Chelsea for Plymouth?

Before it all went wrong.

It is clear that present management has no time

for the model, or the past,

except as a tag line on the corporate logo.

Education for life has been supplanted

by a phoney promise of vocational learning.

If things carry on like this,

we will all be ruins awaiting archaeology. 

On a less sombre note the mellifluous Oscar Sparrow is dropping in to offer a guest post on Tuesday. What can I say? The man is a living legend and a joy to read or hear.
In his honour I leave you with Edith Piaf.

 Tune in on Tuesday!

REMADE IN GRACE

More from the Marjons workshop. 

The above document is an application form for the College of St. Marks in the 1880's. I used this and another person's form as the basis of the third workshop task.

The idea that came to me developed from thinking about the form and how small the spaces were for the applicant to reply. The man in question obviously had a full time: born in America; moved to England; trained and worked as a cobbler; joined two different strands of Christianity; a very interesting life.

The Word had reached in, kissed his heart,

sloughed off all sin, remade him in grace.

He saw the only possible course,

souls to save through education, transmutation,

he will bring this light to others.

He cannot write all this Good News down in the space provided.

What do you think?

Needs a little revision possibly open out the moment of revelation. But the idea works.

I am afraid I cannot work out how to transfer the last archive image, a clipping from a local Plymouth paper in 1969. It has a photograph of the first intake of student teachers in Plymouth, this is prior to the then College of St Mark and St John moving there from London. Its a long story but the then college moved to Plymouth in 1973 but had run a satellite B.Ed. in the city. The women posed by a photographer interested me.

MARJONS MAKES PAGE 5

I suspect a low news week,

examine this faked photographic opportunity,

a pretend weaving class.

Wooden poses of what the photographer thinks education looks like

The headlines tells a truth but fails to add

that the men will be paid more

and have better jobs from the start.

This news clipping is an echo from a war that is still being fought.

The difference in pay between men and women was worse in 1969 and shamefully it has not been eradicated today. It seems incredible in the twenty first century that one's biological gender can affect one's earning capacity. But perhaps that is a discussion for another time.

Here's the magnificent Annabelle Chvostek singing Peter Tosh's Equal Rights.

GRAPHITE SMOKES

On Monday I facilitated a workshop. The focus of which was to use some more items from the University of St Mark & St John's archive to spark poems we can use at our October poetry reading.
I began the day with a quick exercise. Think of an card that describes something from the archive. Perhaps there is a photograph on one side.
For some reason or other an event I have not thought anything about for thirty plus years came into my head.
The photograph is of the view from my window when I was a student. Half of the people in featured where my house mates. One Sunday night a rather drunk student stood in about that spot and attempted to seranade the woman who is standing in the photograph.
Of course this drew us all to look out of our windows, just in time to see the singer step backwards and his foot though the borrowed guitar.

exhibit: 3B47i5.

On one side of the card a photograph of an acoustic guitar broken in half. The sound board is shattered.

On the other side if this:

hesitant of tune

he sings with passion

too drunk to care

his late night serenade

all our laughter

as he steps back 

and puts his foot through his mate's guitar

This next poem was inspired by a clipping from a paper describing the first curriculum of St John's back in 1840.

There is plainly an element of social control in this curriculum, how the educational opportunities of the lower classes are to be chanelled. 
I thought about how the student teachers needed to master all the skills they would teach and how much I had liked Technical Drawing when at school.

TECH DRAWING

pencil pointed til it could tear skin

he wipes the wooden set square

graphite smokes his handkerchief

turns the paper when told

reads the question three times

a rough sketches

the lines barely feather the sheet

in time he presents three elevations

his text could be mistaken for print

I did not want to write anything about social control aspect of the curriculum but I wanted to convey the idea there is a beauty in simply doing a task to the best of your abilities.
Here's a couple of videos of Anna Terheim.

THEY HAVE IT ALL

The results of the second workshop  for the reading at the University of St. Mark and St. John. 
The second photograph is entitled Benjamin Moody, St. Johns, 1912-13. 
The man in the middle of the seated row is holding a hand written sign that says Smiler's Brigade.
The first thing that struck me about this was the date and how close to the start of the First World War it was. 

BENJAMIN MOODY, ST. JOHNS 1912-13

They are fourteen months from the edge,

the abrupt end to that particular day,

of course none of them have an inkling

of how their world will crumble into mud.

All that is to come.

At this moment,

a Saturday in June, 1913,

they have it all.

This pride of privileged white men,

top of the heap,

the In-Crowd.

Smiler's Brigade of what?

You don't need to know to appreciate

just what an exclusive bunch they are.

Cock of the walk of St. Johns.

The bird will crow three times,

how many of them will be left in 1918?

At the workshop we were all intrigued by seated man fourth from the right, the one who appears to have a dog collar and square sun glasses on. 
I wrote this light hearted verse about him:

that argument

you know the one

if Mr. Wells' time machine was real

why haven't we met men from the future

is a load of crap

history is snigh with time travelling thrill seekers

we just chose not to reveal ourselves

this century I'm playing a vicar

Smiler's right hand man

and today

fifty or so years too early

it's the electric cool aid acid test

Snigh is an old English word which, when I looked it up, means to pour. I know it as a dialect word in the north west of England from when I was growing up. For me snigh means crowded, tight packed.
If you want to know about the electric cool aid acid test, you can follow this link.
Here are the Mountain Goats with Amy/Spent Gladiator pt1.

And here's some more: