TALKED OF NOTHING IN PARTICULAR

Seasons greetings! This post's poem contains a dialect word local to Runcorn - baggin'. I can find no online definition. In the 1970s when I worked in the chemical industry the common term for the food we brought into work was baggin', so the room you ate your meal in was known as the baggin' room. 

At Castner-Kelner Chemical Works in the 1970s,

the baggin’ room of K-Unit Maintenance,

was not conducive to the reading of great literature.

No thick tomes, with dense plots

and serious titles were to be seen,

for we were not there to broaden our horizons

but to repair broken down machinery.

So we were offered no clues about those books

that may have helped us understand,

why we were there in the first place,

in overalls and educated only to a specific level

that meant we could maintain the unit

but that offered no other possibilities.

So every breaktime we drank tea

and talked of nothing in particular.

The poem is concerned with access to education and how in those days people's opportunities were less. The school I attended was designed to provide the workforce for the factories and manufacturing industries. Opportunities for tertiary education were more limited. This version is a draft. It may make it to a further draft, at the moment I cannot see what to do with it. Time will tell.

On that note I will leave you with a Bob Marley song.

Until next time.

GATEWAY TO THE LUCK

I think this poem draws on vague childhood memories. I have a hazy notion of looking for a four leaf clover in the playing field near my childhood home that I have turned into this.

It was the topic of our summer

one we would return to every so often

as we sat in the central school playing field

looking at the clover

counting leaves one two and three

on the lookout for number four

the rock solid gateway to the luck

You told me that your uncle once known a man

whose life had been turned around

more luck than he knew what to do with

We renewed our search

the days were long the field was large

our prize glittered just beyond our fingers

It is far from complete. The last line is in question, I am not sure that I can get away with clover glittering. I thought of tangible but it worked even less well. I think this poem has legs though. We await developments.

Plumes has a splendid new album out, you can buy it here.

Until next time.

WALKED TO RUNCORN

The town of Runcorn is situated on the River Mersey across from Widnes. I was born in Runcorn, next to the Manchester Ship Canal which is separated from the Mersey by a wall. There have been a number of bridges built between the two towns, the oldest being the Railway Bridge. This poem is about being dragged across the Railway Bridge as a child.

she dragged me snivelling across the Old Bridge

my hand in hers my head not in her reality

for my Mother the wooden walkway was solid

immutable older then her 42 years

I only perceived the spaces between the boards

each held a view of the Mersey far below

and I expected to fall through every gap

somersault the thin air and be lost in the tidal race

cold swift and patient as I knew it to be

this was not to be the last time we walked to Runcorn

Thanks to the Secret Poets for their invaluable assistance. 

Here is a redraft, again with the Secrets help. You can read the first version here.

Witches

Witches want your empty eggshells

so they can sail to sea

and summon storms to drown the sailors.

This is a fact. I know.

I was born beside the water

in the shadow of the old Transporter Bridge.

My uncles worked the Ship Canal

tugmen, exempt from The Call Up

free to drink each St Monday dry.

My mother was at war with them

the hostilities endless.

I could never fathom the reason

and she was not the kind you’d ask

even when I was grown and she frail

with aching hands of knotted oak.

Besides by then we lived across the river.

A word to the wise though -

always break your eggshells.

The layout has changed, as have a couple of words.I suspect this is possibly the finished article.

Here's some Soca from Black Stalin.

Until next time.

1974

I spent the other weekend with the Secret Poets on a writing retreat. It was both great fun and very productive. Here's a poem that came from one of the writing workshops. We had to focus on a specific year and try to put ourselves back there in the moment. 
It was surprisingly easy to do once I got going. We were asked to write down a sentence in response to a series of questions. The poem had to be 20 lines long.
This is my take.

1974

I spend more time on the green buses

travelling there, or coming back

than I do where I am going.

There is the occasional milky coffee,

chipped cups in bus station cafés,

windows misted, cigarette smoke and coughing old men.

The park is empty.

The sun slopes through the trees,

reddens the lake and the municipal ducks.

Winter comes calling.

My patch pocket, button front, black loons

are no match for this lazy wind.

I don't know where or what we eat,

but we are either at The Grand, or the Beer Keller,

or in a doorway kissing.

Once in a while your house is empty.

I say I love you.

I have no idea what those words mean.

The set of answers left me with a series of images from 1974 that I wove into the above poem. I think it may be near completion.
Sadly I have not been able to find any photographs from the time on my hard drive. You are presented with some photographs of the New Bridge instead.

I've been listening to Ryley Walker recently. His third album had some good write ups, though I could do without the hyperbole. Why is it we have to compare new musicians to older artists? Is it to make the job of selling them easier?
Here he is playing Roundabout.

And here he is live.  

He's touring in May. Should be worth seeing.
Until next time.

PRAISE

Two brief poems of praise this post.
The first was written recently and is about the end of summer, the cycle of the seasons.

The rain surprised me,

ambushed as I was

by my own indolence.

The summer, falling hot,

had led me to believe

such days as these

could go on forever,

until outside of Exeter,

the rain began to freckle the train windows.

The first intimation of what is to come,

the axial tilt and the fall

towards the shortest day.

There is a symmetry here – rejoice.

The second is an older poem that I have been working on for a number of years. That is to say I have never felt that it worked and every so often I pull it out from the pile of half completed poems and fiddle with it some more.
Here is the latest version:

now my four hour drive is forgotten

this winter afternoon

a string of starlings circle the bridge

they wheel and flow in beauty

I praise The Creator

who makes such things possible

I had driven back to Widnes from Taunton, a journey of usually three and a half hours, it had taken me over four and I was feeling fed up. In the afternoon light that winter's day I did see a murmuration of starlings and the journey was worth that moment.

I have been in a Mountain Goats frame of mind this week but I leave you with Vidar Norheim. He has an ep out on the 25th August. You may know him from his work with Lizzie Nunnery. 
You can read my interview with Lizzie here, and my review of their second album here and their last ep here.
Until next time...

THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL

The mighty Widnes-Runcorn Bridge
The "New Bridge" to the locals

I recently went on a trip from Manchester to Liverpool along the Manchester Ship Canal. I had been looking forward to the journey for some time and the trip did not disappoint. There is a little family history connected to the canal.

I was born in a house that looked out on the canal too impatient to wait for either midwife or ambulance. My grandmother had been a child in arms when the canal was opened by Queen Victoria on the 21st May 1894 and had seen her sail past Runcorn in her steam yacht.  So the canal holds some family interest for me.

Collier Street today, as seen from the canal.

What struck me on the six hour journey was the massive scale of the engineering. Everything is monumental, even the two new bridges that swing out of the way. In fact the swing footbridge at Salford keys is a thing of beauty in itself.

The Salford Quays footbridge.

The Barton Swing Aqueduct was an eye opener. It carries the Bridgwater Canal across the ship canal and swings out of the way to enable ships to pass! It is a wonder to see. It is the sort of engineering project that the Victorians delighted in. I was amazed to see a section of the aqueduct effortlessly swing out of the way. 

Barton Road Aqueduct

I was struck by the way in which the canal has changed since my childhood. For one thing it is cleaner now than it ever was. The amount of wildlife is encouraging as well. The number of herons we saw was impressive.

Sailing under the New Bridge

The significance of the Dechlorinater will be apparent to a select few... 

I shall be posting more photographs in the week but for now I shall leave you with a poem.

In a way this poem is the opposite of the Manchester Ship Canal. It speaks of an ending, whereas the Ship Canal endures and there is a quiet pride in its working.

End of the Line

I empty the car of meaning

of all I can use again

load memories into a shopping bag.

Inert beyond repair,

the metal husk awaits

professional gleaning.

This will be all of ours future.

ANOTHER POEM ABOUT MY FATHER

Another poem about my father.

Why do I write as many as I do? I am not sure how many I have written, but there are at least five poems about some aspect of his life or other. I think, though, I write to make sense of my experience and to try to understand what life must have been like for him.

Regular readers will probably know that he worked for ICI for a large chunk of his working life and may know that he was in the Second World War. He served from 1939 until 1945. He was with the Eighth Army at El Alamain, through to Monte Casino in Italy.

I still have trouble getting my head around what his life must have been like in those six years. How different his experiences were to mine. I have had it easy. Born, as I was, into the world that the sacrifice of that generation had bought us. We owe them a great deal.

What I have written so far does not convey the man just the epoch changing events he was involved in. He was quiet until he’d had a drink then he would talk about anything. He liked music and his tastes ranged from Steve Earle to Joan Baez taking in opera and Leonard Cohen along the way. 

There was something unformed about my father:

Always tip the barman when you first buy a drink,

that way he’ll serve you before all the others.

He made his way through this world, survived the war.

Returned with tales of food and opera

that he only ever told when the beer was in him.

I tried to probe once when I was a child,

to tap the depths of hidden heroism:

It must be hard to kill a man…

He laughed and said it was easy to fire back

when someone is shooting at you.

On reflection, as an adult, I am not so sure,

some men freeze.

My father was up for anything, a rough neck,

a rugby league fan, a man among men.

I often wonder what he made of me…

But I know he smiled when he read a poem about his life.

What I have written so far does not convey the man just the epoch changing events he was involved in. He was quiet until he’d had a drink then he would talk about anything. He liked music and his tastes ranged from Steve Earle to Joan Baez taking in opera and Leonard Cohen along the way. like father like son...