You can be anything that you want to be. A quick web search of the phrase brings up in all manner of annoying motivational memes and posters, with sunrises, horizons and stuff. There are even ones featuring Freddie Mercury and Barbie. It makes me think of the song from Bugsy Malone with we could have been anything that we wanted to be in the lyrics, mainly because it has a good tune. A similar philosophy came to me at the age of 16 through Do Anything You Wanna Do, the 1977 top ten single from Eddie and the Hot Rods. Like a lot of the songs that came out in the golden age of punk music, it spoke to me.

It was the philosophy that got me into a band with my mates. I wanted to be Johnny Rotten, so I became a version of him. I even transformed my Hull accent into a London snarl. I still cringe when I think about that. I hadn’t yet come across Be yourself; everyone else is already taken which is another popular motivational quote. (It is often attributed to Oscar Wilde, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he actually ever said or wrote it.)

After ditching the accent and an adventure in another largely ignored band, I gave up on my dream of success in the music business in the mid 1980s. Until I hit 50, at which point I remembered that I could be anything that I wanted to be. This resulted in my career as a self-proclaimed pop star which you can read all about in my book Sixty Odd Songs – the title that started my whole obsession with sticking Sixty Odd in front of everything.

I’m in my mid 60s now, but I could still be a pop star if I wanted to be, there are plenty of them about, from Bob Dylan to that bloke in the open necked silk shirt who sings in front of backing tapes down at the pub on Saturday nights. I just stopped wanting to. The pubs and venues were too much effort. Never mind about the flesh being weak, the spirit wasn’t even willing any more.

I had gradually decided that what I really wanted to be was a poet.

Here’s another annoying motivational quote It’s never too late to start

Nonsense! I can clearly remember sitting at the side of my dad’s death bed and thinking “it’s a bit late for him to start piano lessons now”

Still, there has to be some truth in it. I did another web search. In amongst all the sunrises and silhouettes of people holding their arms aloft, I found a chart listing all the people who had achieved great things at different ages. Obviously, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were at the youthful end, but the other end petered out with Charles Flint who founded IBM in 1911 at the age of 61. It wasn’t even IBM at the time. What’s the moral of that? Its never too late to start but 61 is about the limit, and it’s well over a century since anyone achieved much at that age?1

Despite all this, I still believe that I can be anything that I want to be. Perhaps it’s a boomer thing or a middle class thing that makes me believe that everyone can follow their dreams. I would rather see it is a progress of civilization thing, and hope that such progress isn’t going to be thrown away by people who would quash ambition and imagination in the name of money.

Here’s another quote – Money is the root of all evil. This one has spawned plenty of memes, but none that can be described as motivational. Apparently, Mark Twain said the lack of money is the root of all evil, and the original bible quote said the love of money is the root of all evil.2 I think that my proclamation is that thinking too much about money is just another obstacle to being anything that you want to be.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Nobody really. What we really want is not to have to worry about money. If you can achieve that, either by raising your income or lowering your expectations, or some combination of the two, then you really can be anything that you want to be.

If you can separate your desires from the ideas of wealth or celebrity, you are free.

OK. Hit me with all the things you want to be but can’t; Professional Footballer? (Professional just means paid – no one is stopping you playing football in a team), Brain Surgeon (OK, you could get into trouble with that one, but you can help people sort their brains out with a bit of friendly advice), Astronaut (Now you are just being awkward. Buy yourself a telescope or take some drugs)

Look… I know what I am talking about. I was a pop star for over a decade. I might have been a shit pop star that nobody had ever heard of – but I lived the dream.

And now I am a poet.

At the beginning of my pop star career, I wrote a small manifesto of the things that I would achieve: Go on a tour. Release a CD. Get on the radio, stuff like that. About the only thing that I didn’t achieve was to throw a television out of a hotel window. I could have done, but now that cathode ray tubes are a thing of the past, it wouldn’t have been quite as much fun anyway, and besides, I didn’t want any trouble. In the end I decided that I didn’t want to be a telly throwing kind of a pop star anyway.

Perhaps I should have written a manifesto of what I wanted to achieve as a poet. Maybe it would be the same: Go on a tour. Release a CD. Get on the radio, stuff like that. I’m not doing badly at all, and it’s not only writing, I am also getting the odd poem published in literary magazines, publishing, myself and others, and organising events. What more do I want? Not a lot really. Maybe a couple of more prestigious journals and a full collection published by someone else, but I can wait for these goals, and if they remain unachieved, I’ll still be a poet.

And to prove it I am appearing as a poet at the Bawtry Festival on Tuesday 16^th June 2026. The doors at the Bawtry Community Library (DN10 6NE) open at 6.30 for a 7.00 start, and its free to get in. They do suggest that you call (01302 734510) to book a place, but I think that is because they are offering free wine and they want to know how many bottles to get in.

If you can’t make it, come back here in a couple of weeks and I’ll tell you how I got on.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

1

Actually, I eventually found an updated version of the never too late graphic that featured a 65 year old achiever - Colonel Sanders. He’s finger lickin’ good!

If you write poetry, do you ever ask yourself why? Isn’t life for living rather than for writing poems about? Aren’t poets just like those people at rock concerts taking videos with their phone rather than just enjoying the experience?

If you never ask yourself that question, then surely other people have asked you. The parent who thinks that you are throwing your life away, wasting your time on fancy nonsense. The friends and family, mainly the partner, who see time spent at the writing desk as time not spent with them. Why bother? they ask, there is no money in it.

We have been brought up to see money as the primary measure of value. Even though the Beatles were correct to point out that money can’t buy you love, it is arguable that it can attract a more desirable lover, and it can certainly buy physical intimacy.

Unless you are either extremely good or extremely fortunate, there is no money in poetry, and there is no sex in it either. Even if there was a suggestion of sex in it, that partner would have even more reason to complain about you devoting so much time to it.

So if its not for money, and not for love or sex, what are you in it for? Some sort of intangible comfort? Like the phone video person at the gig, you want to be able to say, I was there, to create something that sees the event from your unique perspective? This is who I am. I go to gigs, I like music, I notice things, I write poetry, I create!

Perhaps that is why the poet writes - In the name of creativity. Flexing the creative muscle - like any artist, painter, sculptor, musician, photographer. Only with poetry you need nothing more than a pencil and paper. Not even a pencil and paper. A poet could do the whole thing in their head. It may require more concentration, practice and determination to write poetry that way, but a lot less than it would to play a game of chess by just imagining the moves and speaking them to the opponent with no reference to an actual board. There are chess players who do that, and the probability is that they don’t do it for money, love or sex. Do you think that they are weird? Well -thats exactly what non poets think of you.

Still, It feels good to develop your creative muscle and create some sort of art or poetry, just as it feels good to develop physical muscles and engage in sport.

But now I have another question for myself. Because it is not just the writing. It is the reading too - unearthing poetry in lit-mags, collections and anthologies, as well as on websites and social media. It is also the listening, on the radio, Soundcloud and YouTube, attending readings, recitals, and open mics, hearing the words delivered by human voices.

Reading and listening: Exposing your mind to the words of others. Searching for the pieces that resonate. Sifting through oceans of stuff that does nothing for you. Willing it to make a connection and when it doesn’t wondering if it is down to you, or down to the poet? To some extent all of us who read poetry are playing the Simon Cowell in our minds, deciding who has got talent and who you can dismiss (although you would never tell them that you were dismissing them). More than that, we are honing our own craft by emulating the strengths of the best, and avoiding the pitfalls of the worst.

Do you enjoy all that? Or is it an unhealthy compulsion?

And all those poems/poets that you dismiss - are they really as worthless as you perceive them to be? Is their poetry of less value than yours? What makes you think that? Their poetry must serve a purpose for them in much the same way that yours does. Maybe it doesn’t trigger any dopamine in you, but it might well do the trick for others.

To achieve that, poetry has to have something to communicate. Good poetry communicates something well and that good poets hit the target more frequently than poor ones.

This idea lies behind a further development in the tale of how poetry is taking over my life like a virus, like a tumour, a malignant creature that causes me to use too many similes and metaphors. I find myself wanting to run poetry workshops.

Why should I want to do that? There’s no money in it (although admittedly it would probably be a bit easier to make money out of that than to make anything out of actually writing poetry). Sex - Don’t even go there - There’s apps for all that - why go to all the bother of running poetry workshops?

Maybe it is some sort of evangelistic motive. perhaps I am saying I enjoy this . You should too - it will change your life! Or maybe it is born of a desire to help people who want to get to know poetry, or are concerned that their poetry isn’t hitting the target? I have (a limited amount of) experience with this sort of thing. I can share what I have learned, you might find it useful.

Or perhaps it is just another excuse to talk about poetry with people who are interested in talking about poetry.

And this brings me back to the library, to the week in which no one turned up for my fun and informal poetry workshop, leaving me to spend two hours alone with my thoughts, hatching plans to make sure that it never happened again.

Well. It didn’t happen again. But no thanks to any plans that I had hatched.

The following week, I went into the session armed with one of those bells that are used on shop counters, hotel receptions, and old fashioned quiz shows. I hand wrote a sign which said Ring the Bell to Summon a Poet, reasoning that this would enable me to leave my designated corner unattended, and wander around the rest of the library in search of people, conversation, and ideas for poetry.

Only, before I set off on my travels someone walked into my area and sat down. It was partly my fault for removing all the Reserved - Sorry for any Inconvenience signs. This woman had just put her car into a nearby MOT centre and wanted somewhere comfortable to sit and pass the time for the hour or so before she could go back and pick it up. (How the knit and natter women laughed later when I told them about that.) Still, she was happy to chat and tell me how she was spending her retirement and enjoying U3A (which is now a name in itself and no longer an abbreviation of University of the Third Age) where she did conversational Italian and photography. She was sure that, if I was interested, there would be poetry opportunities, as culture and the arts are well represented in U3A.

Then something amazing happened. Whilst we were conversing on such matters, the librarian came over with an actual real, live, poetry curious customer. She didn’t even have to ring the bell as I was still sitting in front of it. We all had a lovely chat about poetry and the arts until the MOT woman got her call, after which that actual customer and I got down to working on some poetry. She had brought in a couple of pieces in the hope that they could be discussed and tweaked. I was happy to assist in that process and we had an enjoyable time. Sadly she told me that she would be unable to come the following week due to other commitments, but I didn’t let that small matter dampen my enthusiasm.

The following week, things got even better. I had three customers. This equalled the total number that I had had over the entirety of the previous three sessions. The bell remained unrung, and I was able to get out the poems that I had prepared for the week that no-one came - Simon Armitage, Joyce Kilmer and additionally, one by Charles Bukowski on the subject of his cats. We read, discussed, and wrote together on the topics of encounters with nature, and everyone seemed to get something from the experience, including myself.

Having done the groundwork, I really ought to have promised to return the following week and build on it. But i was only booked in for four weeks and I have so many other things to do, that I sadly had to finish it there. (Don’t worry, I ensured that my three companions knew about future events in the ares

I never did get to write a poem about the knit and natterers (who were actually cake decorators - or rather practitioners of sugarcraft - which is a fabulous word and would have mede a great title.) I may go back and do that sometime. On a day when I won’t be disturbed by people wanting to talk about poetry.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

It’s not that poetry is inherently lonely. Yes it demands periods of solitude and concentration. But concentration is a good thing, right? And if concentration thrives on solitude and concentration is a good thing, then solitude is a good thing too, as long as one doesn’t make too large a habit of it and become a hermit, stopping off the interaction and stifling opportunities to gain the insight and inspiration that enables decent writing to occur.

Yet here I am unexpectedly, and not exactly comfortably alone in a library. My third library of the week. Totally alone but for the knit and natter group behind the bookshelf next to me, the librarians manning the desk at the other side of the room and a handful of customers browsing at either screens or shelves.

I was expecting to be holding a fun and informal workshop on writing poetry: the second of a series of four - one a week throughout the month of May. I had two punters at the first one. A bloke who had taken it up since his retirement and woman who had never done any poetry before but had a friend who dabbled and who she suggested that she might bring along next week. She didn’t. Nobody returned for a second go. Was it something I said? Did I fail to make it fun and informal enough? Who knows? All I know is that I now have a corner of the library to myself with three round tables all marked “Reserved - Sorry for any Inconvenience” and every chair around them unoccupied but for mine.

I can’t leave because the minute that I am gone, someone is bound to come in expecting some fun, informality and poetry.

I am prepared for that eventuality, ready to talk about encounters with nature, in parks, gardens, woodland, hills, dales, or beaches. I brought copies of poems too. I kicked a Mushroom by Simon Armitage and Trees by Joyce Kilmer - one recent, one older - one rhymed, one not. Lots to think about, to discuss, dissect, and emulate, all in a fun and informal manner.

I even had some backup pieces about cats and dogs in case the first two fell flat. But my preparation was all in vain.

After skimming through a library’s copy of Carol Ann Duffy’s selected poems, I opened my laptop. And now I am writing this.

I actually love libraries. As I said, this one is the third that I have been in this week. I helped to run a successful poetry workshop in the first of them, the Balby Community Library near Doncaster. Although this was a with a long established group of keen poets – Read To Write, who were already working on a collection of poems based loosely on the concept of the Chelsea Hotel, and hotels in general.

In the other one I have been working at creating a small museum style display for the Mexborough and District Heritage Society. The local council’s department of culture actually provided some swish new display cabinets, which in the current climate is something to celebrate. I have also led shared reading groups there, which have been rather more successful than the one which I am currently not delivering.

Never mind. Maybe I am a little to blame. When I was approached to run the sessions, I was under the impression that the purpose of them was to attract people from the local community to come and use their library. Therefore, I didn’t publicise it amongst people who I already knew, none of whom were local. I imagined that If I came with a group of people who were already familiar with both me and each other, then I would be creating a sort of barrier to the local punters getting involved. This was more than likely a mistake. Firstly my immense ego had probably overestimated the amount of friends and family I could attract to a suburban library on a midweek morning in spring. And secondly, I suppose that it is easier to join a group that is already gathered, than to join an odd looking bloke sitting on his own in the corner of a library surrounded by notices apologising for any inconvenience.

There are two weeks left to run. The library had posters printed, so I am committed to turning up for them. Not that I think that they are displayed in many places outside of the library itself.

So how should I spend those two remaining sessions? I suppose that I could read some more Carol Anne Duffy and type out a few more articles. But that seems almost like giving up.

I could also make the attempt to attract people who I already know to the session. Of course, this runs the risk of finding out exactly how unpopular I am, but I have a thick skin. And at least I could say I tried. I don’t want to give the name of the library in question in this article, just in case the librarians or punters might consider that I have broken some confidence, but if you live within striking distance of a mid-point between Doncaster and Rotherham and are not particularly busy on Tuesday morning – drop me a line and I’ll send you details. I would be grateful for the company.

A third possibility occurs to me. I could actually be more proactive within the library. I could move away from my designated corner and start to openly write poetry about the place and the people using it. I could engage with the librarians, the browsers, and the knit and natter group. Even if no one wanted to join in and write with me, I would still have something to show at the end of the session.

This actually sounds like a plan. Of course I might lose my nerve before I get properly started, but if I steel myself. It can’t be any more difficult than standing up at an open mic night when all the other poets are only interested in reading their own stuff, and I have done that before. If I am honest I have actually been one of those other poets.

Dear reader. I shall return in a couple of weeks and tell you how it went. I may even include some of the resultant poetry. There! I have said it now, so I am jolly well going to have to do it, or suffer the indignity of silently returning to Substack, deleting this article and never mentioning it again.

Right, before I go, I think that I shall have a natter with the knitters1.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

Work on all my other projects ground to a halt in the middle of this month, and I name Charles Dickens as the principal culprit.

Last year, some dear soul had put it about that I can give a lively and entertaining talk, and The Doncaster Family History Society contacted me on the strength of their recommendation, kindly asking me to pick a topic that would be relevant to their town and prepare a lecture on it. I had been reading something about Dickens and his reading tours of the country. With a few clicks of the mouse, I confirmed that he visited Doncaster in 1857. I suggested Dickens in Doncaster as my title.

It wasn’t until I started preparing in earnest that I discovered that he hadn’t visited merely to read a few chapters of the Pickwick papers, and a bit of Nicholas Nickleby and be on his way the next morning. He had come for a very different reason. He had come because he was lusting after an eighteen year old actress who he had recently met in Manchester. Scandalous! He was a married man of 45 years old, and two of his nine children were older than she was!

The woman in question was Ellen Ternan, or Nelly, as everyone called her. And although the week he spent in Doncaster that September (During the week of the St Leger horse racing) was something of a letdown for him (he referred to it subsequently as the Doncaster disappointment) he continued his pursuit of her in the following months, supporting her mother and sisters, taking her on holidays to Europe, and generally making himself irresistible (at least financially). He was soon living separately to his wife with Nelly as his secret lover and companion until his death in 1870.

The trip to Doncaster came about after Dickens discovered that Nelly, along with her theatre family were to appear at the Royal Theatre there. he quickly persuaded his friend and fellow writer, Wilkie Collins, that a trip up North would be a great source of inspiration for them both. They were engaged in producing a magazine, Household Words, together and had to produce new material for each weekly edition. They badly needed inspiration.

The exercise provided a portmanteau of stories and anecdotes which were collected under the title The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, in which the two writers, thinly disguised as Mr Goodchild and Mr Idle, take some time off their work and enjoy the delights of Northern England, including the Doncaster Races and an evening at the Royal.

As I researched the story for my talk, it occurred to me that I might as well put out a slim book on it, another attempt to enhance my pension from the world of literature. Therefore, as well as producing a lecture with lantern slides - (or PowerPoint as they are known these days) I compiled a short monograph as well.

Of course, you can find The Lazy Tour in its entirety elsewhere on the net, including original editions on the excellent Internet Archive, but if you would like to read just the Doncaster bits, with accompanying notes on Dickens’ marriage and his affair with Nelly, details of where he stayed and the places he visited in Yorkshire, along with information on the play that he and Collins had put on at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, which had first brought them into contact with the Ternan Family, all accompanied by contemporary photographs and illustrations, then you could do worse than purchase my volume Dickens in Doncaster which is available worldwide under the auspices of Mr Amazon and Sons of Seattle, Washington, USA.

I sold one or two at the lecture, which was held at a very swish venue, the Earl of Doncaster, a stunning and authentic 1938 hotel which has been maintained in all its glory and splendour and is well worth a visit just for the experience of having a drink in the bar.

I hope to arrange opportunities for people to see me deliver it again, in Mexborough - home of the sixty Odd Poets, and perhaps in Doncaster once more during the celebrations for this years’ 250th anniversary of the St Leger race. Of course, if you would like a similar lecture delivered somewhere near you, I am always open to offers.

Sadly, as a result of my Dickensian dalliance (and my week enjoying poetry and music at the Leeds Song Festival) I have failed to hit the target on my 2026 Sixty Odd Schedule for the first time. I had intended to have the Eddie Smith book finished, at least in draft form, but alas, whilst it is looking good, it is still not there quite yet. In mitigation, I have sent out what I have prepared so far to some interested parties. It is getting very close now.

But not this month. This month, I need to work on the second volume of the Odd Journal, which will be launched at 3pm on May 31^st at the Fox Gallery in Mexborough, with readings from a number of contributors and an open mic.

I have a couple of further engagements coming up. On Saturday May 23rd, I shall be one of the guest poets at the launch of David Harmer’s new publication Before It’s Too Late from the Fig Tree Press. It’s at 2pm at the Brewery Tap in Doncaster, not too far from the railway station if you fancy it.

And on Tuesday 23rd of June ay 7pm, as apart of the Bawtry Arts Festival I shall be reading and talking about my poetry and stuff at Bawtry Library (nowhere near a railway, but apparently there will be free wine – so if you can be transported there by a designated driver, your indulgence will only be limited by the amount on offer and your shamelessness in taking as much as you can get your hands on)

Clearly, it is not an Arena tour yet. But if you could possibly make it to any of these events, I would, as ever, be delighted to see you.

All the very best

Mike

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

I have always enjoyed music. When I was a kid, my mam and dad both enjoyed playing LP records on the radiogram in the front room. It was as essential a piece of furniture as the television, certainly more impressive in its design and taking up more space. A long, low chest on legs, you opened the lid to reveal a glass plated radio tuner and a record player that offered speeds of 78, 33 (and a third), 45, and 16. Then, at the other side, room to store the records. Ours were mostly budget price recordings from the supermarket. My mam liked Jim Reeves, my dad light classics such as those recorded by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. They also had a boxed set from the Reader’s Digest: The Magical Wold of Melody. Back in those days television was only available in the evenings. When they weren’t playing records, they were listening to the radio, mainly the light programme, (which became Radio 2 in 1967). I can remember the hearing The Dave Clark Five’s Bits and pieces when I was three years old, and feeling even then, that it was something daring and different.

Punk music arrived in 1977 at the crucial time of my adolescence and saw me turn my back on Reeves and Fiedler. This was my sound. My music, with an attitude and philosophy all of its own. In the following years I expanded my tastes to include David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Kraftwerk and Sparks, enjoying the fact that my parents didn’t really get any of them.

As I grew into adulthood, I mellowed a bit. From my mid-twenties onwards I allowed the light classics to edge its way back into my listening back in along with vintage and then slightly more modern jazz, occasionally wandering into radio three territory, but only to seek the sort of music that fitted into the magical world of melody.

As a man in his sixties now, I spend much more time with Radio Three than any other station, lured there because Classic FM has too many adverts. (Hurrah for the BBC).

A few years ago, my friend Ian Parks was involved in the Leeds Lieder (which became Leeds Song) and had his words set to music and performed by a young, classically trained singer, and accompanied on grand piano. I was fascinated and if I am honest, quite jealous. Then Susan Darlington, anther poet who I know and admire, who has also been involved in Leeds Song mentioned that the project was open to applications from poets to join the 2026 cohort. I applied that day. How glad I am that I was one of the ten chosen poets! The project finished last week with a fantastic concert at The Opera North Centre in Leeds. We all got to read our poems and hear them transformed into marvellous songs by fantastic young composers and musicians.

I learned a lot from the whole experience, and afterwards felt that I was beginning to develop an appreciation for music beyond the magical world of melody.

Whist some of the pieces were very melodic – others had elements which took me back to listening to stuff that I had heard on long ago radio three broadcasts by avant garde composers. Dissonant, difficult and, to me, incomprehensible.

“Ohh crikey” I thought “what have I got myself involved in?”

I have always prided myself on being able to appreciate all music. This was put to the test in the when my own kids began to listen to music performed by bands such as Rammstein, System of a Down and even Slipknot. I listened, and persevered, and eventually began to appreciate at least the intention and joy of it.

So I listened and persevered with all the music on offer in the poets and composers project.

I was still assimilating some of it when I attended another show at the Festival. A premiere of Dunwich described as “a song cycle without a singer” by Martin Iddon1, who (along with poet Hannah Stone) led the composers and poets project and workshops. There was no dissonance in Dunwich, the piano music was actually quite melodic. However, the piece wouldn’t find a place in a Magical World of Melody compilation. To my untrained ear it seemed repetitive and meandering. It never seemed to go anywhere. The same might have been said of the accompanying video, which featured grainy images of figures on Dunwich beach and occasionally at surrounding structures. The narrator told a history of the port of Dunwich along with some legends and ghostly stories, in a quiet low key voice. The whole experience felt strange and unnerving.

Then, as I listened and watched, I started to experience it differently. Gradually something started to make sense. Perhaps my expectations of what I might get from music was too influenced by The Magical World of Melody along with Jim Reeves, pop and rock. Perhaps, I had only been looking for music which made me happy, or relaxed, or Jubilant. Dunwich did something else. It made me feel reflective, and brought a sense of geography and history, triggering the sorts of emotions that I might experience on a visit to a remote place, where perhaps I might read up on the history and feel the sensations of being present there.

This led me to realise that I don’t go to an art gallery only to see pretty art which makes me feel happy or relaxed, nor do I necessarily go to the cinema or the theatre for those purposes. The penny was dropping. It occurred to me that a major part of what I enjoy about poetry is that it triggers all kinds of emotions, not always happy or pleasant ones.

Thanks for providing that insight Martin!

That isn’t to say that the magical world of melody or any art designed to trigger feel good emotions is in some way inferior. I had just become more consciously aware of other purposes.

Armed with that awareness, I seemed to appreciate the composers and poets programme even more. I could now see more clearly how the music was working in a similar way to the poetry to subtly trigger different sorts of emotion.

Perhaps this is obvious to many, but to me it was a real revelation. And I have Leeds Song to thank for it.

I must also specifically thank Joanna Ward, the composer who created the music to my words, Kelsey Thomas, the soprano who sang them and Edward Lloyd the pianist who delivered the music.

All ten poets felt equally in awe of what the musicians they had worked with had managed to do.

You can find all of the poems, along with the details of the composers and musicians in the PDF of the programme, which also contains a piece of created by a different artist for each piece. Hannah Guy made the art to accompany mine. A photographic response, which aims to translate the structure and feeling of the poem, rather than illustrate specific lines. Armed with my realisation regarding the emotional dimension of creativity, I understood this, and loved how she wrote about her thoughts in creating it.

I am conscious that I haven’t spoken too much about the poem, and my good friend Len, the man of Leeds who inspired it. That will have to await another occasion, once Sixty Odd Poems returns to a more traditional poem and essay a week format.

Meanwhile, perhaps you would like to see the video of the concert. My poem and song come just after the 50 minute mark, but if you have time to watch the whole thing, and read the programme too, I think that you would find it very rewarding. (yes, the title picture for the video is rather uninspiring - but have a click - it will instantly disappear)

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

When someone writes a poem, or a collection of poetry, with whatever level of success, they are leaving a mark, a record of their thoughts, to be shared with anyone who comes across it. This is as true as for the person whose poem is is read in the letters page of the local newspaper the following Friday evening, as it is for the person whose poem is read in a bound volume of their complete works hundreds of years after they have died. It is also true of those who keep their poetry in a locked drawer, even if, after they have died, the contents of the drawer are unceremoniously tipped into a black plastic bag and put straight into the dustbin. The potential was there even if it was surpressed and ultimately never realised.

I suppose that it is true of all art. The people who made paintings of their hunting experiences on the wall of the cave that they sheltered in were giving something of themselves in the same way as Picasso was.

Since we have had the ability to record music, by notation or by mechanical means, musicians have also been able to share something across considerable measures of time and space.

I digress. I am taking specifically about writing poetry, and thinking about it because of the two books that I have been working on publishing in recent weeks.

Me and Roger Waldron launched his Notes from Various Settees the other week in Mexborough. We hope to have an online launch for anyone who can zoom in in a week or so and you are cordially invited to attend.

At the launch, Roger recalled what I had said to him the first time that I met him in person. You don’t look like your poetry. It had amused him. It had also amused me. Roger writes short poems in the first person. Rich in humour, they collectively create a portrait of a sort of Northern English Bukowski like figure, just about surviving the trials of modern life and embroiled in complicated relationships with a collection of women. Take this poem as an example…

A Day in the Life of a Quiet Pint - Roger Waldron

I’m leaving the cut throat business
of being a love rat there’s too many ex lovers
want to take a swing at my chin it’s mid summer
there’s a cool breeze and I’m pinching myself
there’s a pint in front of me that deserves
my undivided attention and I think about the silence
behind cigarette smoke when I ask a woman
if I could grab a light she tells me smoking is bad
for me she gives me a wink and smiles and I think please
don’t encourage me I’m a complete and utter arsehole

When I met Roger, he was not a Bukowski like figure at all. And I quickly realised that the majority of his poems are works of fiction. Perhaps a brighter chap than me would have realised that before they had ever met him. There is such a variety of situations and attitudes in there, all that stuff couldn’t possibly be the experience of one man, But I hadn’t examined the poetry, or my ideas about the poetry critically enough to make that entirely clear to myself. I had got wrapped up in the magic of them. I wanted him to be a good humoured Northern English Bukowski like figure so that’s what I expected him to be. To be honest, I would have probably had a similar reaction if I had actually met Bukowski at a poetry reading in New York. Perhaps he would have been sober, chatty, polite, maybe shy even, at least different enough from the figure that emerges from reading his stuff to cause me to say something along the lines of You don’t look like your poetry.

The fact is, that appearances aside, Roger’s Poetry came from the mind of Roger, just as Bukowski’s poetry came from the mind of Bukowski. Neither of them might have lived quite the life that they present through their words, but the characters and situations that they create reside in them somewhere, and are a part of what makes them.

The cave dweller who drew the spears piercing the hide of a huge buffalo, might have never even joined the hunt, but there is something about his observation, his interest, his presentation, that says something about him, something that resonates Maybe he admired the hunters, maybe he was amused by them, maybe he just thought it made a great picture, but in choosing the subject for his art, he was communicating something about himself, as well as his subject.

I like Roger’s poetry because it resonates with me. I’m nothing like his creations either, but there is something in me that responds to the pictures he creates, and as a consequence, I enjoy reading his stuff.

On to my posthumous pal Eddie Smith, another person who didn’t exactly look like his poetry. I am now deeply into producing the long promised book of poetry and art culled from the stuff that he left in the proverbial locked drawers, only no-one placed them unread into black plastic bags and disposed of them. They were digitised and eventually found their way to me. With Eddie, I knew the man before the writing. I know that he enjoyed the ridiculous. I know that when he wrote about Hitler having a kitchen extension fitted, describing him as a nice fella, he was not expressing Nazi sympathies, any more than a fondness for kitchen extensions. He was writing about the ridiculousness of blokes and the conversations they have with one another, in a way that Roger Waldron would be familiar with.

Hitler’s Kitchen Extension - Edward Smith

My dad and his mate
Built Adolf Hitler’s kitchen extension
This was in 1933
They didn’t know what he would turn out to be
They said he was a nice fella
Always giving them biscuits and tea

Some of Hitler’s mates admired their handiwork
Himmler and Joseph Goebbels offered them work
In fact, most of the leaders of the Third Riech
Had their kitchens and bathrooms 
Fitted by my dad
And his mate
Who was called Mike

What with Eddie no longer being here, the collective effect of immersing myself in his musings on Hitler and other creations such as cheeky Jack the Lad corpses, walled in electricians, and suicidal painter and decorators, have brought him back so strongly that, corny as it seems, I feel his presence in the room as I struggle with setting it all out.

It’s the illustrations that cause most of the struggle – he created them in pens that bled through to the thin, lined notepaper he always used, and then he would create more on the other side. Actually, he did the same with his poetry. I don’t think he ever used a computer to create anything. All of his poetry has had to be copy typed, and lightly edited for presentation alongside the much edited and cleaned up illustrations.

When I say cleaned up, I mean tidied up, the lines of the notepaper removed, the stuff from the other side of the page edited away. What I don’t mean is cleaned up as in made less shocking. Eddie liked to produce shocking, crudely dawn images: The deep sea diver bravely patrolling the ocean with his cock out. The vicar pissing in an old fashioned potty. The machine that enables men to instantly create babies without the intervention of womankind. Images, which are as disturbing as they are delightful. For me they produce belly laughs equivalent to the ones I shared with him before he was promoted to glory.

I don’t know whether Amazon will publish it. If they do, I shall certainly have to list it in an adults only section. If they don’t, I will be sure to find another way. As another friend of mine said recently. The world needs a bit more Eddie in it.

I’ll keep you posted with developments.

Mike

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

It is now over eleven years since my old friend Eddie Smith died, at the age of 51, just missing out on reaching the age of Ernie, Benny Hill’s Fastest Milkman in the West, which was a shame, because he always liked that lyric…

Ernie was only 52
He didn’t want to die  

For those who have never heard of Eddie, back in the day he was the Born to Act Daft lead singer of Hull band, the Gargoyles. Watching him on stage was a wonder to behold, and the lyrics that he wrote were both amazing and hilarious. Heres a link to their first album, the critically acclaimed 1986 independent release Mrs Two Dinners, featuring Eddie’s mam on the cover.

I don’t eat eggs at easter
And I don’t get pissed at Christmas
I still think my cock’s for stirring tea
Cos I’m a Jehova’s witness

His ad-libbing between the songs and improvisation was also hilarious, he had an amazing, surreal, stupid sense of humour, which he used in other events too, with me in the Mike and Eddie disco, and the regular Sunday night Quiz he held at the Adelphi Club, which was much better much dafter, and sadly much less profitable than Shooting Stars.

Everyone who knew Eddie loved him. Well you have to say that about the dead. Perhaps not everybody. There was a bloke involved in the meat trade who once threatened to remove his balls with a bolt cutter, because of his animal rights hi-jinks, but almost everybody else loved him. And that threat never even came close to being carried out.

Eddie also applied the creativity which he brought to his lyric writing and stage appearances by writing and performing poetry, which he illustrated in his inimitable, chaotic style.

After his death, his wife Ann found a vast collection of poems and illustrations all over the house, tucked away in drawers and plastic bags, and probably stuffed beneath the mattress and under the floorboards too. A vast collection.

It was always her intention to have a selection of this published at some point, but the years started to accumulate, and the project was abandoned on several occasions.

Around two years ago – maybe a bit more, she contacted me to ask if I would do it, as she had heard that I was starting to do a little publishing. I was really enthusiastic to be involved, and she soon sent me a digital file containing loads of bits and pieces, some of which had me literally crying with laughter.

I set to work almost at once, editing illustrations and typing out poetry from which had been culled from many, many scraps of paper, exercise books, and note pads, and trying to get it into some sort of shape.

But there is something daunting about working on the opus of a beloved friend who is no longer around. I wanted to do my best for him, but in aiming to do so I became a bit of a perfectionist. It is hard enough editing your own work to present to the world, but someone dead who you think of both as a good friend and a comic genius? I became racked with indecision, by impostor syndrome, by feeling that whatever I produced would not quite suffice.

And I was involved with other projects. The development of Sixty Odd Poems, and Sixty Odd Poets and the publishing ventures that these involved. I was also working as a teacher in Special Education, and wanted to publish my own poetry and essays. There was a ton of other stuff to distract me. I kept putting Eddie off for another day… another week… another month.

When I retired from teaching last year I had a little more time and yet despite taking advantage of this new freedom, I found that I was still putting Eddie off in favour of other projects.

Then, a month or so back I decided that I would have to curtail this Substack and not pick it up properly again until I had finished a number of projects. I also realised that by publicly announcing my intentions it would become a lot harder to duck out of them. This was when I set up the Odd Schedule.

I have now completed the first two items on the list. In February I produced issue one of the Odd literary journal, and last week I finished work on Roger Waldron’s Notes from Various Settees.

Eddie is next.

I aim to have completed work on it by the end of April, whatever the quality looks like. It will be good, It will be Eddie. Clearly, after I have done it I shall have to run it by Ann, and also by Hull music expert, Nick Clay, who has also sent me a slew of stuff. But I will definitely have handed it over for their perusal by the end of April and hopefully it can be put out by the time of his birthday in May. When I told Nick of this plan, he immediately commented that although I had specified a month, I hadn’t actually specified a year. Point taken, Nick. We shall see. But I will have something for you to review by the end of April 2026. Because after that I will be staring work on Odd: Volume 1 Number 2.

Meanwhile, Roger Waldron’s book will be officially launched on March 29^th at 3pm at The Fox Gallery in Mexborough, and somehow I have to fit in reading at a performance of music, poetry and art in Leeds (including a musical setting of one of my poems delivered by a soprano accompanied by a grand piano) on April 15^th and a lecture on Charles Dickens in Doncaster on April 29^th.

I have never been busier than since I retired. It’s panning out to be the best time of my life though. Leave youth for the young – it was overrated!

I shall finish with one of Eddie’s poems

Caravan Sex - Edward Smith

Caravan Sex
My wife and I
Don’t normally enjoy sex
So, I hired a caravan
To improve it in.

It’s done nowt for our sex lives
But it has nice fittings
Like beds that appear
From hidden flaps
And tiny clicking cupboards 
Where I stash my slacks

The caravan is only small
Room for two, but not for three 
My wife’s not bothered about leg room
Because my wife’s an amputee

You can find more of Eddie’s stuff on his posthumous Sixty Odd Poets page.

You can also read an article about his funeral, written by Nick Clay.

And here’s the speech that I gave at that very funeral.

See you in a couple of weeks

Mike

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

I am happy to say that I am on track with the literary targets I set myself earlier in the year, and Roger Waldron’s forthcoming book, Notes from Various Settees is well underway. I have been working on the cover with Roger this week, which has involved various draft images being sent back and forth with suggestions about changing the colours and images within it. Basically, it depicts a settee, on a carpet in front of a wall. But the style of carpet and wallpaper is a delicate choice. Not to mention the colour and font for the title and author name. It might be a bit fiddly getting something that feels just right, but I quite enjoy that sort of thing as it gives me a chance to play around with graphics and provides a change from writing.

Apart from the occasional face to face over a coffee somewhere half way between our two houses, most of the communication between me and Roger is done through email or Facebook Messenger. Whilst this is very convenient, and most business can be transacted pretty well by these means, having such lines of communication open on the computer can be an immense distraction. Opening one email usually involves reading at least half a dozen more, and there will always be one or two of these which demand a fairly immediate response. It is really hard to close them down and leave it all until later, especially when doing so often means that I will forget all about them for a considerable length of time, despite what flags and reminders I set up. Opening Facebook is even worse. I always open up my messages on my desktop – so that I can drop files and images into it but as soon as the feed is opened, the distractions are so invidious that often I forget what my original purpose was.

Brave is my web browser of choice, with adblock plus running in the background. This keeps adverts to a minimum (even on YouTube) but it doesn’t stop me getting distracted by all manner of things that people have posted. I have to turn all notifications off and refuse to open anything up other than the word processor or graphics program that I am working on, and until I have done as much work as I can before I absolutely have to communicate with someone.

When I am researching a piece, I often have to consult Wikipedia or the Internet Archive. I have to try and do this without going anywhere else. But even if I do, distractions abound. One article or publication leads to another, and eventually I find myself down a rabbit hole, far away from where I needed to be. Sometimes I feel that the things that I find there actually enhance my writing, but often they are either fascinating but of no use or lead to me adding a set of unrelated footnotes to the writing which considerably add to its length and the time that I have spent on it.

Back to social media. Does it actually achieve anything positive for a writer? I have read many articles on Substack and in other places pondering this very question. I would say that it definitely provides me with an opportunity to put what I produce in front of a wider audience, and also a place to link up with other poets, writers and publishers. But I do struggle with how much time I should devote to this and how regularly I should do it.

Substack has developed a lot in the two and a half years that I have been using it. The Notes feature has made it into more of a social media space in its own right. And whilst it is nice to follow and engage with followers, it can take over, in the same way as the other sites that I use, mainly Bluesky1 and Facebook2, can.

Until recently I had a schedule telling me what to post on each of these three sites each day. A review here, a repost there, a bit of publicity or a link at other times. But it all seemed a bit much and I started to feel bad if I missed something one day. There is also the terrible suspicion that when you post too regularly, a significant amount of those who see your output will think, ohh crikey, doesn’t he ever shut up? and reach for the unfollow, unfriend or unsubscribe button. These days I am trying to have a more relaxed approach. I have a significant amount of other projects taking up my time and worry that obsessing about social media and numbers can easily impinge on life in the real world including relationships with friends and family, if not remembering to eat, shower and go to the toilet regularly. (Only kidding, I haven’t quite got that bad yet.)

Yet still here I am. A month or so back I solemnly declared that I would ignore the Sixty Odd Poems Substack for a few months. I almost immediately decided that rather than giving it up completely I should just replace the researched and considered piece of writing that I had been putting out each week with something more informal every fortnight. I was worried that the page would fade away if not regularly tended to, and then I would have to build it up from nothing again when I return in earnest.

Another worry is the idea that it is easy to begin to use Social Media entirely to promote one’s self without any consideration of what other people are creating and achieving3. Posts are all me, me, me! and the poster comes across as boorish and self-centred. On the other hand I feel that It isn’t too hard to spot those who engage with others solely as a means of getting engagement for one’s own creativity. Please Lord, don’t let me come across like that, and if I am a bit like that, please Lord, let me not be found out by being too obvious about it.

As Immanuel Kant said: Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.

Well, dear reader, it has been nice chatting with you. Rest assured that I regard you as end in yourself, much as I do myself and the product of my writing habit. In fact I don’t really know what either of us, or this article might be regarded as a means to.

See you in a fortnight.

Mike

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

Poetry Starter Pack
Poetry Starter Pack 2
Poetry Starter Pack 3

I am proud of Odd - the Journal of the Fellowship of the Sixty Odd Poets. There’s some great poetry in there from a fine collection of poets, along with a couple of articles of my own, a few reviews and a great cover by Sally Anne Wickenden. If I didn’t believe in the quality of the contributors, I would never have done it.

The Amazon delivery came on Thursday. Thirty five copies, which should be enough for the launch. Online, I see that I have already sold six.

I’m not proud of using Amazon. It feels very much a part of the dangerous broligarchy of American tech billionaires. In many ways it makes me feel less of a publisher. But it’s the lowest risk way of producing stuff and ensuring that it is always available - internationally too.

Those six sales have raised me £6.49 in royalties. I will get more from selling the thirty five which came on Wednesday. I need to sell fourteen of those to break even. Thirteen if I add in that £6.49. The venue for the launch (which is a gallery within the historic 1904 school building in which Ted Hughes developed his appreciation of poetry) will cost me a further £60, so I need twenty people to pay the £3.00 entry fee to cover that.

I’m not complaining. I will break even or miss doing so by an amount that I can afford. I’m not in it for the money. I’m just stating fact. The Longbarrow Press, a publisher of quality poetry books, reported on Bluesky the other day that they had sold just four books in the first half of February. (Eat the dust of my six, suckers!) They have some acclaimed works by great writers in their catalogue. Steve Ely’s Eely is, like the rest of his work, a rewarding and thought provoking read. I attended an online launch for it last year, but I haven’t bought a copy. I just can’t buy everything that I want. It’s not only that I can’t afford to do so, it’s also that I have a wall of books, of which a large proportion are still unread. Does my reluctance to buy books from other presses make me a hypocrite? Perhaps, but we all do what we can manage.

There really isn’t a market for poetry books. This is well documented elsewhere. The main ways of making money out of poetry seem to be through vanity publishing, running workshops and residential retreats, or offering awards and competitions where the prize money is significantly less than the total entrance fees. Ohh, and grants from the Arts Council or similar bodies. If you, like me, have very limited appetite to get involved in any of this, then you have to resign yourself to the fact that you are never going to find your fortune in the literary world.

And yet… The existence of poetry in books and online brings a great deal of joy into the lives of lovers of literature. Poetry is a succinct form of communication, sending messages and emotions through time and space. Perhaps other art forms do the job more efficiently or with more chance of commercial success. Despite the existence of the internet, music and film still offer lucrative employment to many fortunate creatives, at a level which poets and publishers of poetry can only dream of, but there is something wonderful in the power of using well-chosen words, which express thoughts, ideas and emotions in a way that is idiosyncratic to the poet and have the potential inspire similar thoughts, ideas and emotions in others. And it doesn’t cost much in the way of initial outlay to become a poet. A notebook and pencil will do for a start. Maybe an internet connection to share your work to a wider audience, or failing that, the will to turn up at a few open mic nights.

Nor does it cost much to become a publisher. Online it costs nothing. On Amazon, still nothing until you want printed copies, and then as little as you want to risk.

For me, calling myself a poet and a publisher is reward in itself, even if the titles don’t really feel deserved. Who cares? I spent years calling myself a pop star, knowing full well that I was stretching the concept as thinly as possible to make it descriptive of my contribution to the world of music. My philosophy then, was as it still is now, fake it ‘till you make it. Or rather, fake it, and enjoy faking it - You might actually convince yourself and a handful of others that there is a grain of truth in your claim - and in the final analysis, what does it mean anyway?

The launch of Odd will be all over just over seven hours after this article hits Substack. I will probably be in Wetherspoons, spending all the profits on a couple of pints of alcohol free Guinness. And then my thoughts will, as promised, turn to publishing a collection of the wonderful poetry of Roger Waldron as economically as I can manage whilst still producing something resembling the quality product which the undeniable quality of his work deserves.

I hope that when it is available, you will be tempted to purchase one. It would make both me and Roger very happy, and might finance a couple of visits to Wetherspoons, or more likely to the coffee shop in Wentworth Arts, Crafts and Antiques for both of us.

I’ll be back in a fortnight with another progress report.

Mike

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

Last week was the first week in well over two years that I didn’t put out an online edition of Sixty Odd Poems. It felt strange. Even though I continued with Sixty Odd Poets (with an excellent collection from Andrew Stott), I felt as if I had missed the opportunity to make contact with an old friend. You! And everyone else who reads this substack - including those who have subscribed since my last post.

Needs must though. I shall not be putting post next week either. And this post will be a quickly prepared, un-researched and largely unedited piece. I did promise to keep subscribers in the loop about how things are going with what I am working on, what is keeping me away.

I have a plan and a schedule. I am the sort of writer who needs a schedule. That’s why I love writing on substack so much. It gives me a deadline, and a sense of an audience, who I am in some way beholden to. It is not just me who I am letting down if I staying bed for a few hours extra every morning and spend the rest of the day away from the keyboard.

The plan mainly concerns a number of publications which I aim to put out through the Sixty Odd Press this year, Some of which have dragged on far too long, and were in danger of never coming to fruition unless I changed my habits.

This month I am working on the first edition of Odd - The Journal of the Fellowship of the Sixty Odd Poets. A quarterly literary journal to replace the sixty Odd Poets collections of six poets that I have been putting out at a rate of approximately one every two months for the past couple of years. I couldn’t keep up that pace, and was developing a backlog of poets who I had featured online and not in print. Now I have a long term plan which will should see the substack page and the journal running in full tandem by May 2027 (yes I am that obsessive). Its a journey, But I am well into the next step and am on target to have Volume One Number One out by the end of this month. If you have had a page on sixty Odd Poets and have not had any of the poetry in it physically published in a Sixty Odd Collection, your time will come. I will be in touch at some point over the next six months.

The project is an exciting one as it allows me to include other features such as reviews, catch ups with old friends, information on events and some art. The forthcoming first edition will feature art by the excellent Sally Anne Wickenden on the cover, and I hope to feature more amazing artists in future editions. Illustration inside the book is a little more difficult as costs restrict me to black and white, and my personal taste restricts me to line drawings, but if anyone wishes to submit under those restrictions, I would be delighted to see their work.

By the end of March… I am to publish a collection from the excellent throwaway poet Roger Waldron “Tales from Various Settees” I am really proud to be able to do this, as Roger’s work is fascinating, full of humour, and wry observation on often little explored avenues of modern living. Also Roger is a fine fellow who deserves a wider readership.

By the end of April… I aim to complete a project that I have been working on sporadically for almost two years now. (Or is it three) A posthumous collection of the poetry and Illustration of my old friend Edward Smith. (Provisionally Titled Being Dead is Shit.) Eddie was an amazing, spontaneous, funny man, the lead singer of the fabulous Hull Band the Gargoyles, and prodigious producer of usually hilarious but often also thought provoking poetry and illustration. He can be compared to Vic Reeves, Spike Milligan and David Shrigley, but comparisons like those only put you in the rough area. Eddie had a style of his own. He produced so much that I have been quite overwhlelmed, and his wife, Ann tells me she has only sent a faction of what she found squirrelled away after his untimely death in 2014. I have been sitting on it for far too long. This year it will happen.

By the end of May… I aim to bring out Volume 1 Number 2 of Odd. With a second selection of twelve poets (I already have their names on a secret spreadsheet), and hopefully more features developed during the lessons of preparing volume one, (which I am learning now)

By The end of June… I aim to have my own publication, based on the first set of (Sixty Odd Poems) published. Like all the other publications I have mentioned so far. The lion’s share of the work is already done. It is just a case of tidying up the rough edges and editing to satisfaction.

By the end of July… I aim to have the second set of sixty Odd Poems ready for publication - but probably not published. I wouldn’t want to release it too quickly after the first set. I would just like to have it in a position where it is just about ready to go - maybe in time for the fabled Christmas Market, although I always have pipe dreams of creating a Christmas Miscellany - maybe that should wait for another year.

By the end of August… Odd Volume 1 Number 2 will be out. Featuring work from the poets that you may have read since last November on the sixty odd Poets page.

By the end of September I shall be Sixty Five years old! Also, The Substack of Sixty Odd Poems should be a regular Sunday morning feature again. I haven’t settled on the theme yet. My own poetry as in the first series? Analysis of classic poetry as in the second series? Or something different? Involving poetry, other classic writing, history, speculation? Who knows. Maybe you might like to make a suggestion to get me thinking.

There.

I feel better now. I always find that sharing something make it more likely to happen. Most of this stuff just needs a final push to get it over the finishing line. Its not as if I am starting each project from scratch. So I think that I should succeed with the bulk of it. The Eddie Smith is the one I fear the most, but I am determined to have at least something out, even if it is not the towering tribute that seems to be always just out of reach. The world needs more Eddie in it.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a progress report.

Mike

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

…

Before I close this section of Sixty Odd Poems, I must take one more visit to the poetry that I both suffered and enjoyed in the late 1970s as a pupil at Sir Henry Cooper Senior High School in Hull. Mostly with the good Mr Shearing.

Whatever was on the syllabus, we all delighted in sniggering at the faintest suggestion of smutty bits, whether intended by the poet or otherwise.

Narrative poetry was definitely on the syllabus. I have recalled St Agnes Eve by John Keats, elsewhere, and touched upon Elegy in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Grey in my story about his friend’s unfortunate cat. I am pretty sure that we did Tennyson’s Morte D’Arthur too, but I shall have to write about that on another occasion. There was not a lot in the way of smut or double entendre in any of those poems. But Robert Burns’ Tam O’Shanter was another thing entirely. The one about the fellow who, on his way home from the pub, stumbles upon a coven of witches who strip off to their underwear whilst dancing with the devil.

Even though this poem was written in a Scots dialect of English (as most of Burns’ work is). It was still unco (uncommonly) difficult for us to get to grips with, but even at a space of fifty odd years a few phrases stick in my mind, mainly because they entered it through the channel devoted to smuttiness.

For instance, the devil screwed the pipes and gart them skirl. We loved that one because it had the word screwed in it, but I also liked it as a description of someone playing the bagpipes. For me screwing the pipes became a sort of physical twisting of the instrument and the devil’s body around it, and even though gart them skirl means “made them squeal” I just loved the phrase because it seems to have more musicality to it than the English alternative.

We also had a bit of a titter at the witches duddies. Perhaps I was still getting my ‘d’s and ‘b’s confused. Because I was convinced this was a synonym for bubbies. I am disappointed to learn that it only means clothing – as in the quaint old word duds which is related to dude (one with nice clothing) Burns has each of his witches beginning to sweat and reek – swat and reekit, and coost her duddies to the wark (cast the clothes to the floor). I can’t remember what we thought they might be doing with their bubbies, swinging them to the rhythm of the skirling pipes or something, but it didn’t matter. Duddies was hilarious.

On the other hand, we didn’t find anything funny about open pussies; the rude connotations of that word were unknown to us at that time. I still think of Fanny as the go to comedy word for a vagina. Burns uses the pussy in his description of how the witches chase after him, like startled mice running as fast as open pussie’s mortal foes when, pop! she starts before their nose.

Burns lived from 1759 to 1796, a short life, but a very productive one. To put him in a historical perspective, he was a contemporary of Mozart (1756 to 1791). He was 11 years older than Wordsworth, 13 years older than Coleridge, and a generation ahead of Byron, Shelley and Keats. When he was a boy, Thomas Grey was still alive. There is something about Burns’s use of the Scottish language that makes him stand apart from all those other poets though. He is like a northern punk, who turns his back on the established way of doing things, and therefore his poetry has a streak of rebellion hard wired into it. Like Chaucer, who insisted on writing in English rather than the French which had been the language of the ruling classes since 1066, he was saying, take me as I am, I am using this voice, and it is more than equal to your fancy language.

Not that Burns was incapable of writing sensitive romantic poetry such as that of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Beano comic’s Walter the softy would have loved his poem A Red, Red Rose. He would have sniffed an actual Rose whilst reciting it.

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

Unlike Walter the softie, whilst Burns was reading it, he was internally calculating what favours it will get him from the woman (or women) he was reading it to. He enjoyed sexual conquest and had twelve children from four women who he had professed eternal love to. Who knows how many other ‘unofficial offspring were wandering the glens of Bonnie Scotland?

Knowing Burns as a bit of a lad as modern parlance has it, one wonders how many of the pussies and duddies and screwings in his poetry were intentional?1 Was he aware of the delight he would bring to generations of smut lovers when he wrote Cock up Your Beaver2? Or was it just an innocent call to arms against the English? Cock your military beaver-skin hat and go teach them a lesson!

Cock Up Your Beaver

When first my brave Johnie lad came to this town,
He had a blue bonnet that wanted the crown;
But now he has gotten a hat and a feather,
Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver.

Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu' sprush;
We'll over the border and gie them a brush;
There's somebody there we'll teach better behaviour,
Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your beaver.

The only reason that I even consider Burns knowingly using these words, is that I have a treasured book in my possession. The Merry Muses of Caledonia, which contains Burns’ collection of extremely rude folk songs, which he copied out, enhanced, and kept in a special notebook only to be shown to close friends. Amazingly it was published in 1800, As it is out of copyright you can easily obtain a copy today. Mine is a 1965 edition with a preface by one J DeLancey Ferguson (1888 – 1966, one of the foremost scholars of the life and work of Robert Burns) along with introductory notes from the editors, Sydney Goodsir Smith (New Zealand Born Scottish poet) and James Barke, who wrote five novels on the life of Burns, and takes the opportunity of his space in the volume to deliver such gems of erudite thinking as…

… “Fuck” I take to be an onomatopoeic word equivalent of the sound made by the penis in the vagina.

I can almost remember my jaw dropping and my eyes popping out of my head when I read that line.

I first came across The Merry Muses of Caledonia as a teenager, after voraciously devouring another book, The Bawdy Beautiful (the sphere Book of Improper Verse) written by another Scottish poet and Burns fan Alan Bold. This came out in 1979 and is now is out of print but not yet out of copyright. However, you can pick one up on amazon for about £12 or read it for free on the internet archive. It mentions the Merry Muses amongst other filth ridden classics in the preface. Even in those pre internet days, I couldn’t rest until I had a copy in my possession.

Strangely enough my very favourite poem from The Merry Muses isn’t actually about sex acts or sex organs, it just concerns two women, possibly farmer’s wives, one of whom has a mishap

There Was Twa Wives

There was twa wives, and twa witty wives
As e’er played houghmagandie
And they coost out upon a time 
Out o’er a drink o’ brandy
Up Maggy rose, and off she goes 
And she leaves auld Mary flytin
And she farted by the byre-en
For she was gaun a shiten

She farted by the byre-en
She farted by the stable
And thick and nimble were her steps
As fast as she was able
Till at yon dyke back, the hurly brak
But raxing for some dockins
The beans and pease cam down her thighs
And she’d cackit a her stockins. 

Just for the sake of clarity here’s a rough translation (mostly done by consulting the index of the book) - Its nowhere near as good in English, but it does help a reading of the original if you understand what some of the words mean.

There Were Two Wives

There were two wives, two of the wittiest wives
Who ever fornicated
And once, they got into a quarrel
Over a drink of brandy
Up got Maggy, and off she went 
Leaving old Mary scolding her
And she farted by the end of the barn
As she was going for a shit

She farted by the end of the barn
She farted by the stable
And thick and nimble were her steps
She was running as fast as she was able
When she got around to the back of the wall, the storm broke
And whilst she was reaching for some dock leaves 
The beans and peas came down her thighs
And she’d shit all over her stockings. 

And that’s it for the second set of Sixty Odd Poems. As promised, I am suspending all payments from those who have subscribed financially until I resume regular posts - hopefully in the mid to late summer. In the meantime shall be posting a little just to keep those who are interested up to date with how I am getting on with the projects that I am doing whilst not writing these essays. (at least five publications and a few live events), but not every week. However, Sixty Odd Poets will continue for the foreseeable future, with plenty of opportunities for you or other poets you know to get involved.

Bye for now

Mike

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats is regularly referred to W.B. Yeats, which is odd, because Butler was part of a double barrelled name, rather than a fancy middle name. It had been the family name since His great-great grandfather, Benjamin Yeats had married Mary Butler back in 1773. Nowadays he would more than likely be called William Butler-Yeats, but they did things differently back then. At least they did in the Butler Yeats family, who were rather posh.

Although William was only two years old when the family moved to England in 1867, he grew up really interested in all things Irish, including the myths and legends of that country. And this was reflected in much of his poetry. He returned to Ireland in 1881

Despite being from a protestant background, he was also a supporter of Irish Independence. He believed in a united Ireland with both Protestants and Catholics governing together.

When The Irish Free State was formed in 1922, Yeats became a senator. Shortly afterwards he was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” Clearly, Yeats was a fine and accomplished poet, but this particular Nobel Prize possibly owed a little more to the politics of supporting a newly independent nation than celebrating his work. Or am I being mean? Surely the awarding of any Nobel Prize could never be taken without due consideration of the talents of the person to whom it was awarded in their field, otherwise you would end up in a situation where divisive warmongers who do such things as turning guns on their own civilian populations would be considered for the peace prize.

Suffice to say that Yeats is a considerable figure in Ireland’s cultural and political history.

He died in early 1939 at the age of 72. These days whenever I read the death dates of famous people, (those who died older that I am at any rate) I can’t help but do a grim mental calculation in my head. If I die at the same age as Yeats did, I’ve got eight years left1. Of course I am thankful that I have already lived longer than Philip Larkin (who turned his toes up at 63), William Shakespeare (52), and (obviously) Byron (36), Shelley (29) & Keats (25), not to mention Sid Vicious (21). But I can’t help envying the greater mark that each of them left on the world than I have managed.

And here is where the W.B. Yeats poem that I have chosen for this week comes in. What Then? was posthumously published in Last Poems (1940). Apparently he had sent it to the headmaster of his old Dublin school, when asked to provide something suitable for young lads. It is the work of an old man who has achieved many worldly successes, but wonders what it has all meant. The subject of the poem (who seems very like Yeats) has led an enviable life with success in writing, had many good friends and has a good family around him, but at every stage, the ghost of Plato asks him what then?

It could be that he is asking something more like what next? Focusing the mind on what the next chapter will be. In this reading, the old man in the final stanza is contemplating what will become of him, or his legacy, after death. But I like to imagine that each what then? Is asking about the significance of what he has achieved. In the final analysis, what has it all been worth? Perhaps It is asking both questions. As ever, I would be interested to read the thoughts or opinions of anyone who has them in the comments.

For me the poem is a comfort2. I have expended a fair amount of time in writing, with significantly less acclaim than Yeats enjoyed. Admittedly I have written with significantly less ability too, but I am proud of what I have done, and enjoyed creating my little opus, possibly as much as he did his. Although I don’t compare to him as a writer, I like to feel that I have achieved as much as he did in the field of friendships and family. And at the risk of sounding clichéd, friendships and family are perhaps the greatest treasures of life.

Next week will mark the last of these weekly essays for a few months at least… What then?

What Then? - William Butler Yeats

His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. ' What then?'

All his happier dreams came true -
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
poets and Wits about him drew;
'What then.?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'

The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought';
But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'

A Note on the Illustration

The illustration at the top of the article was not generated by artificial Intelligence. Honestly! I made it by digitally manipulating a photograph and an old illustration which are both out of copyright and available online. It took me ages and I really enjoyed doing it. (I often enjoy making or finding an illustration as much as I do the writing.) I coloured it, tweaked it, edited it, and made lots of tiny almost unnoticeable modifications. Then, when I had finished, it looked as if it had been created by AI. That is the curse of AI and creativity. Also, I hadn’t intended to make a green rabbit, clasping its paws together behind Yeats’ shoulder. But when I noticed it, it seemed to be saying What Then? even more loudly than Plato.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

Ahh, the tumbleweed blowing over open plains and prairie, the ranchers drinking coffee from cans, the frontier, the sheriffs toting six shooters and Oscar Wilde.

Perhaps I am indulging in too much of a flight of fancy, but I have only just found out that Oscar went on a lecture tour of North America and Canada in 1882, and that is still in the period of the Wild West, isn’t it?

I love the nineteenth century with its Dickens, Brontes, Tennyson and Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and all the other literary goings on in this sceptred isle to the East of the Atlantic Ocean. I love the way that people came to terms with the rise of science and religious doubt, and how Oscar Wilde chipped in with his championing of the aesthetic movement, emphasising that morality need not be the purpose of poetry or indeed any art. (At one point I thought that Art for Art’s Sake was just a song by 10cc)

I love all that, but I find it hard to reconcile it with the fact that over in America the Wild West was in full flight. Yes, there was Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain over there, but there was also Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickock, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It blows my mind.

And then Oscar Wilde, the wisecracking wit and dandy of London society went over there on a lecture tour where he spoke about Aestheticism, probably in Saloon bars with swinging half doors, where the anxious steward would put his bottles and glasses under the bar at the first sign of trouble and the piano player would continue to play a ragtime melody even as the chairs and bullets started to fly. Well, something like that.

The tour had been organised by none other than Richard D’Oyly Carte, the man whose name is now forever associated with Gilbert & Sullivan. He had recently built the Savoy Theatre to stage their operas. At the time Wilde was not regarded as the literary giant he was to become. He had graduated from Oxford University in 1878 ditching his Irish accent and moving to London where he had gained a reputation as someone who dressed extravagantly and talked eloquently and endlessly. Many people asked, what real talent does he actually have? He had edited a few magazines and written a play and a book of poetry (imaginatively named Poems) both of which had failed to make any real impact. But he was a society celebrity, people wanted to know about him. They either ridiculed him or were fascinated, and D’Oyly Carte decided that he could make a bit of money by promoting him over in the United States. So off he went, and as he was such a charming and fascinating figure, the tour was a success.

Of course, he was still lampooned and criticised in the popular press, but many of his lectures were sellouts. Imagine that! Sellout lectures on Aesthetics by an effeminate man in the Wild West! He also got to meet one of his literary heroes, Walt Whitman. Some commentators suggest that he did more with him than just sip wine and chat about poetry1. He also met with a group of miners in the small town of Leadville, and ended up drinking whisky with them at the bottom of their pit, despite having been warned that warned that they were more likely to shoot him than enjoy his company. What a card, what a character.

On his return to England, he became a successful novelist and playwright, enjoying over a decade of success before it all went wrong in 1895 when his lover’s father, the Marquess of Queensbury accused him of being a sodomite (or more accurately a posing somdomite). Sodomy (or somdomy) had been a capital crime until 1861 and people had actually been executed for it as recently as the 1830s. Despite trying to sue Queensbury for libel, he was eventually charged with gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labour.

This involved six hour stints on a treadmill grinding flour, and when he became too weak to complete such tasks, picking oakum (separating the tiny strands of fibre from lengths of coarse rope, which scarred his hands for the rest of his days). When he was eventually released in 1897, he was a broken man. He died in 1900.

During those last years he wrote what was to become his most famous poem, The ballad of reading Gaol. It is quite a long piece which portrays the harshness of prison life through the story of his and his fellow prisoners’ reactions to the hanging of Charles Wooldridge, (a soldier of the Royal Horse Guards for the murder of his wife).

Plenty has been written about this piece elsewhere online, I would like to look at another of Oscar’s poems, from that ill fated first collection. Resquiescat is a piece written in memory of his younger sister Isolda Wilde, who had died suddenly after a bout of fever just a couple of months before her tenth birthday. Oscar would have been 12 years old at the time. He kept a lock of her hair throughout his life, in an envelope marked My Isola’s Hair (she is not dead, but sleepeth).

Reqiescat by Oscar Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

It is a lovely, if to modern tastes, morbid poem, but to my twisted mind it forges another link between Oscar and the Wild West in that it makes me think of a song released in 1940 by Gene Autrey, the Singing Cowboy - That Little Kid Sister of Mine.

I am not a big fan of Country and Western music, but it seemed to be really popular in Hull when I was growing up during the 1970s and 80s. Perhaps it was popular everywhere at that time, but there was an awful lot of it about in Hull2. When I became old enough to go out of an evening in the late 70s, it seemed as though every other pub used to have a large selection of Country music on the jukebox, along with the average 70s fodder which we remember as representing the decade today, such as Abba, Slade, and the Bay City Rollers. They also often had live acts performing country music standards.

Long before I was old enough to go out of an evening, I was aware of the popularity of the genre through my mother’s taste for Jim Reeves, and through the local radio Station, BBC Radio Humberside, which ran a country music show presented by a bloke called Tex Milne every Sunday. Despite the name Tex had a lovely Hull accent, I understand that he was really called Terry, but his friends and listeners called him Tex. (He might have been related to Disco Tex and the Sex- O-Lettes: then again, he might not).

I remember teasing my little kid sister with the lyrics of that Gene Autrey song, which just goes to show that I was probably less fond of my sister than Oscar Wilde was of his. It was written by a country music artist named Eddy Arnold. Oscar Wilde died at the age of 46, if he had lived into his late eighties, he might feasibly have heard Gene or Eddy sing That Little Kid sister of Mine. I like to think that he would have enjoyed it.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

A happy new year to one and all!

In a break with my normal routine – I shall start with the poem this week. It is a puzzle poem and as it mentions a New Year, and New Year newspapers are usually full of puzzles and quizzes, it seems appropriate.

It is a sonnet, by none other than the potato eating, baccy smoking, puddle cloaking, El-Dorado seeking and death defying Sir Walter Raleigh.

Sometimes, it is given a title which gives away what it is actually about, but I’m not going to tell you that title. Where would the fun be in that? Have a read first, and we can discuss things afterwards.

A Puzzle Sonnet - Sir Walter Raleigh

Before the sixth day of the next new year,
Strange wonders in this kingdom shall appear:
Four kings shall be assembled in this isle
Where they shall keep great tumult for awhile.
Many men then shall have an end of crosses,
And many likewise shall sustain great losses;
Many that now full joyful are and glad,
Shall at that time be sorrowful and sad;
Full many a Christian's heart shall quake for fear,
The dreadful sound of trump when he shall hear.
Dead bones shall then be tumbled up and down,
In every city and in every town.
By day or night this tumult shall not cease,
Until an herald shall proclaim a peace;
An herald strong, the like was never born,
Whose very beard is flesh and mouth is horn.

At first reading the poem is quite frightening. It would be easy to believe that it had been written by Nostradamus, Mother Shipton, Russell Grant, or some other character who made bold predictions which might just become true one day. And these days many rational people do quake with fear at the dreadful sound of tump, worrying that it might herald the tumbling up and down of dead bones in our cities and towns. Have you guessed what it’s actually all about yet? I’ll stick it in a footnote - you know how much I like footnotes.

Walter Raleigh was a real colossus of British history. He is one of those figures of whom it is possible to say love him or hate him, you can’t ignore him, and it is actually true, unlike other people of whom that is said – Jeremy Clarkson or Simon Cowell for instance, both of whom it is quite easy to ignore. The more I think about him, the more I like Walter Raleigh. He reminds me of the kind of bloke that inhabited my home town of Hull in the 1970s. Blokes who weren’t afraid to speak their minds who enjoyed smoking and playing with cards and dice. Many of them worked on the docks or on trawlers so had a knowledge of ships, a taste for adventure, and delighted in bringing home interesting things from overseas.

I first heard of Raleigh when I was presented with a bicycle bearing his name – the Raleigh Wayfarer, when I was about 13 years of age, although I had possibly met him before that, in the picture card shown at the beginning of the article1.

Raleigh was born in the 1550s, about 10 years before William Shakespeare. Some people actually believe that Raleigh actually wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, but this is nonsense. Although Raleigh was a bit of a poet – as evidenced in the sonnet above, he was far too much of a man of action to have had time to be writing 38 plays on top of all of his other output. He only really wrote poetry when he was in prison, which he quite often was, because although he was very useful to the powers that be, (Queen Elizabeth I and later King James I) he also had a habit of doing or saying things that annoyed them. In fact, he got into so much trouble with James the first, that he was eventually beheaded.

It is claimed that he was writing poetry in his condemned cell right up to the last hours before his execution. The poem The Farewell (also known as The Lie) being cited as evidence, (it fits the bill, although it was published quite a few years earlier)

Extract from The Farewell - Sir Walter Raleigh

Go, Soul, the Body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

He had been executed to appease his old enemies the Spanish, after an officer under his command had unilaterally decided to ransack a Spanish held town in South America. There was a bit of a national outcry after the execution, with King James being accused of kowtowing to Spain and doing away with a real hero. Raleigh faced his death bravely though, with tales of his execution showing him as fearless and philosophical as Socrates. Apparently, his last words were to boldly tell the executioner to get on with it. Strike, man, strike!

Coming from a generation when everyone smoked and romantically thought of cigarettes as friends who would never let them down (and yes, I was as daft as everyone else on this matter for a number of years.)2. I like to think of his last words as being the ones that they found written on the tobacco pouch that they found in his cell. Comes meus fuit in illo miserrimo tempore. (he was my companion during that unhappy time)

Back to the sonnet. Have you guessed the riddle yet? Would you like to go back to the top and read it again? Ohh very well then. As promised, I have put the information in a footnote3

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

Maybe it is something to do with the internet frying my brains, but I find long narrative poetry very difficult to digest. Tennyson wrote stacks of it. Earlier in the year I struggled to come to terms with his poem Maud. I only attempted it because the song Come into the Garden Maud is so well known and I wanted to know what the story was behind it. To be honest I still wasn’t entirely sure after a number of readings, although I did find it fascinating. I remember thinking that Robert Browning could have told the story just as effectively in a couple of pages, whilst Tennyson took over ten thousand words, with multiple sections and stanzas.

Of course he could be brief when he wanted to be, The Charge of the Light Brigade has only fifty odd lines, and could be read through in a few minutes. Much more suitable for modern audiences. However, much of his stuff goes on, and on and on, much like his American contemporary, Walt Whitman who only wrote one poem in his entire life - Leaves of Grass, which he enhanced, extended and edited over the nest 40 odd years.

Similarly, Tennyson began work on his huge poem In Memoriam, in 1833, published the first edition in 1850 and continued to add new bits until 1871.

Clearly both Leaves of Grass and In Memoriam are best regarded more as collections of poetry rather than single, long poems1. The best course of action when confronted with such humongous works is to pick out the most interesting bits and serve them up as more easily digestible lumps of poetry. That is what most anthologists have done over the years, and this is how I came across Ring out Wild Bells.

The whole of In Memoriam is a tribute to Tennyson’s university friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, who had died in 1833 at the age of 22.2 Hallam was regarded by all who knew him as a genius, not only did he write poetry, but he wrote and debated on other matters too, including philosophy, metaphysics and politics. he was one of the first to recognise Tennyson’s worth as a poet and bring him to the attention of others who might be able to further his career3.

The poem is filled with grief, and was a favourite of Queen Victoria’s. She said that she found great comfort in it after the death of Prince Albert, and this probably led to her delight in offering him the role of Poet Laureate in 1850.

Amongst all the grief is a lot of discussion of the way the world was changing with science starting to seriously challenge religious beliefs. It was much harder to grieve in a world in which it was becoming increasingly uncertain that you would meet the departed at some future time in heaven4.

Ring Out Wild Bells is a fabulous New Years Eve poem. You could do worse than to memorise it and regale your friends and relatives with it before the inevitable Auld Lang Syne.

Much of it has great relevance today. This stanza ought to be dedicated to Nigel Farage and his chums…

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

In an earlier couplet, Tennyson even seems to be having a laugh at his own expense

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

In fact there is so much good stuff in it, that I could carry on quoting for some time, finding verses for many of our world leaders and other folk besides. But there are still turkey sandwiches and Quality Street chocolates to be eaten, so I shall leave you to read and enjoy the piece for yourself.

Ring Out Wild Bells - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

3

Some people have suggested that there was a homosexual relationship between the two, but this is unlikely, despite the fact that in the poem Tennyson speaks of Hallam’s death as making him a widow. That was the sort of overblown language that Tennyson liked to use. In truth Hallam was engaged to Tennyson’s younger sister Emilia, That’s not even the tiniest bit weird, they didn’t look very much alike at all, and Arthur would have put Alfred far from his mind in his intimate moments with his sister.

Christmas Day in the Workhouse is a true classic. Like The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, it is a piece of poetry that everyone knows of but few know. All the lads in my class at school knew it, even though it was written well over eighty years before we were born. We didn’t know the words beyond the opening line. But we had our own verses. My favourite was…

It was Christmas day in the Workhouse
And the Goose was getting fat
Then Tommy Cooper came along 
And killed it - just like that. 

I actually believed that the second line was: and the goose was getting fat. In fact I was still a little surprised to see that it wasn’t when I looked the poem up for this article. Another version that I recall started

It was Christmas Day in the workhouse
And the snow was raining hard
And a barefoot boy with clogs on
Stood sitting in the yard. 

You probably know something much more daring than either of these. The BBC presenter Terry Wogan knew an excellent version1

But what of the original? Written by George Robert Sims, it was first entitled In the Workhouse - Christmas Day and published in the 1877 Christmas edition of The Referee newspaper in a column Mustard and Cress. Sims wrote this weekly column under the byeline of Dagonet. Two years later, a collection of poems was brought out under the name Dagonet Ballads.

The collection was very popular, filled with melodramatic tales of crime and punishment, evil men and wicked women, deathbed repentances, and many other sensational yarns, but the sentimental ballad Christmas Day in the Workhouse had a life of its own, and contributed to ongoing campaigns to improve conditions for the poor which had been going on throughout the 19th century, supported by such literary figures as Charles Dickens, most famously in his serialised novel Oliver Twist in the late 1830s.

The poem tells of a workhouse inmate, John, who refuses the Christmas dinner offered by the visiting guardians. He cannot forgive them for refusing to give him food for his dying wife the previous year, as neither he nor she were residents.

The matter of out-relief (the provision of food for those not resident in a workhouse) Was a thorny topic. Many areas were reluctant to provide it, feeling that If people had not reached the stage of desperation in which they were prepared to enter the workhouse, then they were not needy enough to be given handouts. You were expected to come in and work for your ration. Not lounge about outside, sponging of the state2.

There were many reasons that this was an inhumane attitude. One being the reluctance of families to enter the workhouse as it meant that they would be separated. The hero of Sims’ poem had lost his business during the economic crisis known as the Long Depression which had begun in 1873, and had considered going into the warehouse where he and his sick wife could be cared for but, knowing that they would be separated, she pleaded with him to wait because they had never been separated at Christmas time before.

In true George Robert Sims melodramatic style, after being refused food at the workhouse gate, John wrestles a crust of bread from a dog in the street, before dashing back to his wife with it, only to find her dead.

Christmas Day in the Workhouse - Thomas Haynes Bayly

It is Christmas Day in the Workhouse,
And the cold bare walls are bright
With garlands of green and holly,
And the place is a pleasant sight:
For with clean-washed hands and faces,
In a long and hungry line
The paupers sit at the tables
For this is the hour they dine.

And the guardians and their ladies,
Although the wind is east,
Have come in their furs and wrappers,
To watch their charges feast;
To smile and be condescending,
Put pudding on pauper plates,
To be hosts at the workhouse banquet
They’ve paid for — with their rates.

Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly
With their “Thank’ee kindly, mum’s”
So long as they fill their stomachs,
What matter it whence it comes?
But one of the old men mutters,
And pushes his plate aside:
“Great God!” he cries; “but it chokes me!
For this is the day she died.”

The guardians gazed in horror,
The master’s face went white;
“Did a pauper refuse the pudding?”
Could their ears believe aright?
Then the ladies clutched their husbands,
Thinking the man would die,
Struck by a bolt, or something,
By the outraged One on high.

But the pauper sat for a moment,
Then rose ‘mid a silence grim,
For the others had ceased to chatter
And trembled in every limb.
He looked at the guardians’ ladies,
Then, eyeing their lords, he said,
“I eat not the food of villains
Whose hands are foul and red:

“Whose victims cry for vengeance
From their dank, unhallowed graves.”
“He’s drunk!” said the workhouse master,
“Or else he’s mad and raves.”
“Not drunk or mad,” cried the pauper,
“But only a hunted beast,
Who, torn by the hounds and mangled,
Declines the vulture’s feast.

“Keep your hands off me, curse you!
Hear me right out to the end.
You come here to see how paupers
The season of Christmas spend.
You come here to watch us feeding,
As they watch the captured beast.
Hear why a penniless pauper
Spits on your paltry feast.

“Do you think I will take your bounty,
And let you smile and think
You’re doing a noble action
With the parish’s meat and drink?
Where’s my wife, you traitors —
The poor old wife you slew?
Yes, by the God above us,
My Nance was killed by you!

“Last winter my wife lay dying,
Starved in a filthy den;
I had never been to the parish, —
I came to the parish then.
I swallowed my pride in coming,
For, ere the ruin came,
I held up my head as a trader,
And I bore a spotless name.

“I came to the parish, craving
Break for a starving wife,
Bread for the woman who’d loved me
Through fifty years of life;
And what do you think they told me,
Mocking my awful grief?
That ‘the House’ was open to us,
But they wouldn’t give ‘out relief.’

“I slunk to the filthy alley —
‘Twas a cold, raw Christmas eve —
And the bakers’ shops were open,
Tempting a man to thieve;
But I clenched my fists together,
Holding my head awry,
So I came to her empty-handed
And mournfully told her why.

“Then I told her ‘the House’ was open;
She had heard of the ways of that,
For her bloodless cheeks went crimson,
And up in her rags she sat,
Crying, ‘Bide the Christmas here, John,
We’ve never had one apart;
I think I can bear the hunger, —
The other would break my heart.’

“All through that eve I watched her,
Holding her hand in mine,
Praying the Lord, and weeping,
Till my lips were salt as brine.
I asked her once if she hungered,
And as she answered ‘No,’
The moon shone in at the window
Set in a wreath of snow.

“Then the room was bathed in glory,
And I saw in my darling’s eyes
The far-away look of wonder
That comes when the spirit flies;
And her lips were parched and parted,
And her reason came and went,
For she raved of our home in Devon,
Where our happiest years were spent.

“And the accents long forgotten,
Came back to the tongue once more,
For she talked like the country lassie
I woo’d by the Devon shore.
Then she rose to her feet and trembled,
And fell on the rags and moaned,
And, ‘Give me a crust — I’m famished —
For the love of God!’ she groaned.

“I rushed from the room like a madman,
And flew to the workhouse gate,
Crying, ‘Food for a dying woman!’
And the answer came, ‘Too late.’
They drove me away with curses;
Then I fought with a dog in the street,
And tore from the mongrel’s clutches
A crust he was trying to eat.

“Back, through the filthy by-lanes!
Back, through the trampled slush!
Up to the crazy garret,
Wrapped in an awful hush.
My heart sank down at the threshold,
And I paused with a sudden thrill,
For there in the silv’ry moonlight
My Nance lay, cold and still.

“Up to the blackened ceiling
The sunken eyes were cast —
I knew on those lips all bloodless
My name had been the last;
She’d called for her absent husband —
O God! had I but known! —
Had called in vain, and in anguish
Had died in that den — alone.

“Yes, there, in a land of plenty,
Lay a loving woman dead,
Cruelly starved and murdered
For a loaf of the parish bread.
At yonder gate, last Christmas,
I craved for a human life.
You, who would feast us paupers,
What of my murdered wife!

******

“There, get ye gone to your dinners;
Don’t mind me in the least;
Think of the happy paupers
Eating your Christmas feast;
And when you recount their blessings
In your smug parochial way,
Say what you did for me, too,
Only last Christmas Day.”

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

Freed from my labours as a special education teacher this year, my run up to Christmas has felt very different indeed. At school, despite my best attempts to keep it to the month of December, Christmas usually started as soon as we returned after the Autumn half term holiday, if not before. From that point on we spent an increasing proportion of every day practicing carols, rehearsing pantomimes, cutting snowflakes out of sheets of printer paper, glueing cotton wool onto cards to make snowmen, and various similarly themed activities all done to a predictable soundtrack of YouTube compilations, with the kids, (and staff) getting ever more excited and difficult to manage. It’s not that I disliked Christmas, (although I did once write a song called Christmas is Shit). It’s just that it seemed the source of a lot of stress and difficulty. The demands of management to continue to hit targets and produce evidence in addition to all the premature festivities going on frequently made my head spin, and then when the break did come, it was so filled with the organisation and execution of a family Christmas, that it never seemed to be a proper rest at all and before I knew it I was back in the classroom, with the weight of fresh demands for more targets and evidence weighing down on me.

This year, December arrived calmly and sedately. By avoiding television adverts and shopping trips as much as possible, I have managed to keep a sense of proportion and am actually starting to experience some enjoyment of this festive season1.

So much so that I sit here preparing to write a Christmas themed Sixty Odd Poems a whole week before I had intended to. I have enough ideas and goodwill in me to write two, so why not start a week earlier than I might normally?

And what could gladden the Christmas heart more than a Nineteenth century ballad? The Mistletoe Bough is a piece written in 1834 by poet/songwriter Thomas Haynes Bayly and set to music by Sir Henry Bishop, the composer who is perhaps best remembered these days as providing the music for the Song Home Sweet Home.

It isn’t a Victorian Christmas song. 1834 fell before the Victorian period. Victoria was only 15 years old in that year and didn’t became queen until 1837. Christmas as we know it didn’t really take off until the 1840s with the first Christmas card being sent in 1843 (the year in which Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was first published), and Prince Albert’s introduction of the German tradition of the Christmas tree in 1848.

The Americans were a little ahead us, with ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas with Father Christmas and his individually named reindeers having been written by a New York poet2 in 1823.

Kissing under the mistletoe dates back to Norse mythology, (more German influence.) For Baldur the Beautiful, son of Odin, mistletoe was Kryptonite. He was killed by a mistletoe tipped arrow fired by his brother Hodr. Their mother, the delightfully named Frigg, wept tears onto the plant, these became its white berries, and she decreed that from that day forth it would be used as a symbol love rather than of violence.

In the light of that story, Mistletoe, amongst other plants, was used to decorate kissing boughs in Tudor times, under which much flirtation would occur, and a berry would be plucked every time a kiss was granted. Over the years this became a Christmas tradition.

Haynes Bayly’s poem The Mistletoe Bough3 is set at a Christmas wedding. that of Constance Seymour to Harry Lovell perhaps in Marsden Castle which once stood in West Yorkshire. The truth is that many of the stately homes of England now claim to be the original site of the story, many of them containing large oaken boxes said to be the one featured in the legend. There is no mention of a mistletoe bough in the poem, other than as a title and a refrain. I like it because it is a part of the long tradition of Christmas tales involving horror and ghosts, which still just about survives today, amongst all the turkey, tinsel, Marks and Spencers adverts and drunkenness.

The Mistletoe Bough - Thomas Haynes Bayly

The mistletoe hung in the castle hall,
The holly branch shone on the old oak wall;
And the baron’s retainers were blithe and gay,
And keeping their Christmas holiday.
The baron beheld with a father’s pride
His beautiful child, young Lovell’s bride;
While she with her bright eyes seemed to be
The star of the goodly company.
Oh, the mistletoe bough. Oh, the mistletoe bough.

“I’m weary of dancing now,” she cried;
“Here, tarry a moment — I’ll hide, I’ll hide!
And, Lovell, be sure thou art first to trace
The clew to my secret lurking-place.”
Away she ran — and her friends began
Each tower to search, and each nook to scan;
And young Lovell cried, “O, where dost thou hide?
I’m lonesome without thee, my own dear bride.”
Oh, the mistletoe bough. Oh, the mistletoe bough.

They sought her that night, and they sought her next day,
And they sought her in vain while a week passed away;
In the highest, the lowest, the loneliest spot,
Young Lovell sought wildly — but found her not.
And years flew by, and their grief at last
Was told as a sorrowful tale long past;
And when Lovell appeared the children cried,
“See! the old man weeps for his fairy bride.”
Oh, the mistletoe bough. Oh, the mistletoe bough.

At length an oak chest, that had long lain hid,
Was found in the castle — they raised the lid,
And a skeleton form lay mouldering there
In the bridal wreath of that lady fair!
O, sad was her fate! — in sportive jest
She hid from her lord in the old oak chest.
It closed with a spring! — and, dreadful doom,
The bride lay clasped in her living tomb!
Oh, the mistletoe bough. Oh, the mistletoe bough.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

I live in South Yorkshire, home of the River Don Engine, the most powerful working steam engine in Europe. It is a magnificent piece of 1905 engineering which is fired up twice a day from Thursday to Sunday each week for the edification and entertainment of visitors to the Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield, the town where it was made. Weighing 425 tons, it is well over five metres high and probably twice as wide. The museum was built around it.

To watch it in motion is spellbinding, even to me, a man who is not generally excited about steam engines or indeed any sort of engineering at all. The technology is all a bit beyond me, but to see that thing pummelling away with its three massive cylinders, gigantic pistons plunging up and down, and huge flywheel spinning, it is like being in the presence of a behemoth, a monster which is incredibly strong, incredibly dangerous, and has its own smells, sounds and animated motion.

In its day, the River Don Engine was capable of producing huge sheets of sixteen inch steel plate for building battleships and was still being used in the 1970s to produce reactor shields at nuclear power stations.

When I read Louis Untermeyer’s sonnet Portrait of a Machine. The River Don Engine was the first thing that I thought of. The poem was written in 1922, well over a century ago now, long after the industrial revolution had wrought its first changes in the world and even longer after the Luddites had embarked on their campaign of wrecking the mechanisms that would put many of them out of work. Untermeyer, would have been 20 when the River Don engine was built, and being an American would probably never have heard of it, but there were equivalent machines in striking distance of his Native New York. The Bethlehem Steelworks in Pennsylvania would have had something like, and the Allis Chalmers expansion engine in the Phillipsburg Pump House, New Jersey is still operable today. Then again, he might not have seen either of these and have been thinking about some other magfnificent engine when he created this portrait in words

Portrait of a Machine - Louis Untermeyer

What nudity as beautiful as this
Obedient monster purring at its toil;
These naked iron muscles dripping oil
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss.
This long and shining flank of metal is
Magic that greasy labour cannot spoil;
While this vast engine that could rend the soil
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.
It does not vent its loathing, it does not turn
Upon its makers with destroying hate.
It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn
It’s masters bread and laughs to see this great
Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn,
Become the slave of what his slaves create.

Untermeyer’s sonnet starts off as an awed tribute. It even sounds a little bit homoerotic with its naked iron muscles dripping oil, but by the end, there is a sense of foreboding. Those last four lines with the mention of malice towards its makers and the possibility of us, the Lords of the earth becoming slaves to the machines that we have created.

We have seen many revolutions since the 1920s, the rise of telecommunications, computer technology, the internet, and now the rise of artificial intelligence. Are these creations, like Untermeyer’s machine, laughing at us, as we have become slaves to them?

My dad used to call the television the one eyed god in the corner. It didn’t stop him watching it virtually every night from teatime until bedtime though. I remember people applying the famous Karl Marx quote about religion to television, calling it the opium of the people. Nowadays the power of the television seems almost benign compared to the power of the internet enabled smartphone. I have largely avoided the influence of the television for years, cherry picking the best stuff it has to offer and doing my damnedest to avoid the adverts. But I cannot resist the lure of the smartphone and the internet, and no matter how many ad-blockers and filters I apply, it still holds a considerable sway over me. It isn’t just advertising that is the danger, it is those persuasive opinions, founded on dubious facts, that can’t be avoided. They creep into the consciousness of all of us, eating away at our ability to concentrate, corroding our sense of reality, influencing our relationships with others, manipulating our political beliefs, changing the outcomes of elections. The telly never did much more than try and sell us detergents, clothing and food. It was working for Capitalism, yes, but after a brief golden age of discovery, the internet is working to influence our every thought, all at the behest of a small minority of billionaire technocrats.

And now artificial intelligence. If any of our creations are able to laugh, at us artificial intelligence is laughing the loudest and hardest. I am not even thinking in terms of taking over the world and eliminating the human race. I am just thinking of the ability of Large Language Models to gobble up all of our words and ideas, chew them up and spit them back out at us disguised as original thoughts. Obviously as someone who enjoys writing, I worry that such machines will put writers out of work. Not just poets, novelists and journalists, but scriptwriters, philosophers, politicians, and any kind of communicators including those in visual arts, even music. The internet is now beginning to groan under the weight of artificially produced content. And content is all it is. Just as television and radio have largely gravitated towards ‘content’ which is cheap to produce and gives us a reason to watch the adverts which make the money, the internet is shifting towards cheaply produced content which not only leads us towards advertising, but towards lazy opinions and ideas, crushing our creativity and individuality as it does so.

Because artificial Intelligence creates its content by examining the stuff that is already out there, chopping it up and feeding it back to us, there is nothing original in it. Worse, the more of the content out there that is created by artificial intelligence, the more of it will be gobbled up again by the machine learning itself and fed back to us as second third fourth generation ‘content’ ad infinitum. The danger is that the majority of both consumers and creators of ‘content’ will not be human at all. All we will be doing is reading articles on the ten best ways to avoid reading anything actually interesting, and then flicking on to the next twenty second video clip, which is also probably created by artificial intelligence.

The bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) epidenmic in the 1980s caused British Beef industry to go into meltdown. The CJD variant was transmittable to humans too, causing all kinds of problems including dementia and death. It was eventually determined that a major cause of it was feeding cattle on the waste products of the meat industry, their dead relatives. The produce of artificial intelligence seems like that. It will eventually be fed largely on its own produce, and who knows what the damage will be.

Am I ranting? I’m sorry if I am ranting. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps in some distant future, Artificial Intelligence will seem as benign as steam power, or television. And yes, I am sure that it has some fantastic applications in identifying the early signs of cancer and performing really delicate surgery and lots of other scientific processes that I can’t begin to imagine. But I can’t help thinking that once we have no incentive to think for ourselves, then we will be in decline as a species. What do you think?

I had wanted to wrap things up with a poem that I had written some time ago on the subject. I was sure I had it somewhere on the my hard drive. After a long search I found it in a folder marked accepted. According to my notes it will be published in late January 2026. I’m not boasting of anything but persistence. It had already been rejected by Penstricken1, Eunoia and the Frogmore Press before Ionosphere accepted it. Not to worry. I give you another one on a similar theme, one which both Ionosphere and Penstricken have rejected. It’s not quite as appropriate, but it will have to do.

My New Device - Mike O’Brien

My new device had finally arrived
I could hardly wait to get it out of the packaging and fire it up 

I carefully put my fingers into it
A manicurist in Paris polished my nails

Feeling a little braver, I put my hand into it
A masseur in Singapore eased its tired ligaments

Excitedly I put my arm into it
A tattooist in Tokyo decorated it with a fire breathing dragon

Regretfully, I put my arm back into it
A surgeon in New York removed the tattoo

Enjoying myself by now, I put my foot into it
A chiropodist in Baltimore trimmed my corns 

Really buzzing, I put my leg into it
A tailor in Harrods measured it for some trousers

I took the plunge and put my head into it
A barber in New Delhi gave me a haircut

Recklessly, I put my whole body into the device
I was downloaded
And digitised
Into binary
Transcoded
To Hexadecimal
Optimised
Transcended
And cleansed of flesh and bone
Forever

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

After reading that quote on Keats1 from Algernon Charles Swinburne whilst preparing for last week’s article. I really felt the need to find out more about him and the sort of poetry he wrote. But was there any need for me to use such a shocking and provocative subtitle? (By Bummed a Monkey, I don’t mean ‘borrowed’ five hundred pounds) I daren’t use it as the title, but I just couldn’t resist including it2.

I’m sure that Algernon would have approved, shock value was a device which really appealed to him, at least it did in the earlier stage of his career. The title of his first collection, Poems and Ballads (1866) was innocuous enough. but the poems that it contained were calculated to shock the unsuspecting reader to the core. There were anti-God poems, poems about lesbianism and homosexuality, poems about sadomasochism, and one, The Leper, which dealt with not only leprosy, but coercive sex (with a leper) and necrophilia.

The popular image of the Victorian period was one of repression, where most people would find it difficult to speak about sex, let alone write about it. A refined version of that viewpoint is one which admits a bit of furtive sexual discussion in Victoria’s day, but claims that most of it was vanilla flavoured, and anything more extreme than the missionary position, practiced in silence behind the curtains of a four poster bed was never to be spoken of. Of course this was nonsense, but even so, Swinburne’s poetry was a a long way beyond what one normally expects, at least it was in the first decades of his career. Queen Victoria was certainly not amused, and even when he was seen as a reformed character, writing on more traditional themes of nature and beauty, she vetoed the suggestion that Swinburne might become poet laureate after the 1892 death of Tennyson.

Up until at least 1879 Swinburne had revelled in being as shocking a figure as he could be, actually making the claim that he had once had anal sex with a monkey, which he ate afterwards. This is almost certainly not true, but what a click bait headline!3 . Oscar Wilde didn’t believe the story. He had little respect for Swinburne, calling him a braggart in matters of vice, who had done everything he could to convince his fellow citizens of his homosexuality and bestiality without being in the slightest degree a homosexual or a bestializer.

The Leper is a poem that revels in such depravity that I feel as though I really must give the year in which it was written again. 1866 for God’s sake! - only five years after the death of Prince Albert. No wonder Victoria was not best pleased. The 1860s saw Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations in print. There might have been slight hints of sexual obsession in the minds of the creators of any of those classics, but nothing to match Swinburne with his tales of bumming and eating monkeys and having his way with dead lepers. He was a towering figure of nineteenth century depravity.

It is a long poem, and easy to get lost in. I preferred to read it in digestible chunks so I have provided a commentary, as much for me as for you. Feel free to ignore all that if you would rather fly solo4.

The piece starts easily enough – on a theme of the unrequited love of a servant for his lady. Parker and Penelope? Or Mellors with a less obliging Lady Chatterley? This servant is sick with his desire

The Leper - by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Nothing is better, I well think,
Than love; the hidden well-water
Is not so delicate to drink:
This was well seen of me and her.
I served her in a royal house;
I served her wine and curious meat.
For will to kiss between her brows,
I had no heart to sleep or eat.
Mere scorn God knows she had of me,
A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,
Who plucked his clerk’s hood back to see
Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.

Soon after this relatively mild opening he drops the bombshell moving swiftly from recollections of the past to a present in which the Lady is dead and having her body in his cottage, the servant can do what he likes with her.

I vex my head with thinking this.
Yea, though God always hated me,
And hates me now that I can kiss
Her eyes, plait up her hair to see
How she then wore it on the brows,
Yet am I glad to have her dead
Here in this wretched wattled house
Where I can kiss her eyes and head.

What sweet release for him. In his previous role, he could only watch (through the keyhole?) as she made love with a knight, who he had helped (probably at her bidding) to sneak in to her room. That experience fed his fantasies and he claims that the memory of that knight, and what happened that night as the first two of three thoughts that he makes his pleasure of…

Nothing is better, I well know,
Than love; no amber in cold sea
Or gathered berries under snow:
That is well seen of her and me.
Three thoughts I make my pleasure of:
First I take heart and think of this:
That knight’s gold hair she chose to love,
His mouth she had such will to kiss.
Then I remember that sundawn
I brought him by a privy way
Out at her lattice, and thereon
What gracious words she found to say.

The third thought that brings him pleasure is of how her attitude changed to him once her circumstances had changed. She no longer regarded him with obvious scorn. Now she seemed grateful for his companionship, and as a consequence he felt able to take liberties.

(Cold rushes for such little feet—
Both feet could lie into my hand:
A marvel was it of my sweet
Her upright body could so stand).
‘Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;
Now am I clean and whole of shame,
Nor shall men burn me in the face
For my sweet fault that scandals them.’
I tell you over word by word.
She, sitting edgewise on her bed,
Holding her feet, said thus. The third,
A sweeter thing than these, I said.
God, that makes time and ruins it
And alters not, abiding God,
Changed with disease her body sweet,
The body of love wherein she abode.

That disease which had changed her sweet body was leprosy. In the middle ages, the period in which the poem is set, it was thought that God gave leprosy to sinners. Some folk still held on to this belief in Swinburn’s time. It followed that God had made the lady a leper as punishment for her night of passion with the knight. That knight wanted nothing more to do with her when she was diseased, Nor did anyone else… Apart from her faithful, lustful servant…

Love is more sweet and comelier
Than a dove’s throat strained out to sing.
All they spat out and cursed at her
And cast her forth for a base thing.
They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought
This curse to plague her, a curse of his.
Fools were they surely, seeing not
How sweeter than all sweet she is.
He that had held her by the hair,
With kissing lips blinding her eyes,
Felt her bright bosom, strained and bare,
Sigh under him, with short mad cries.
Out of her throat and sobbing mouth
And body broken up with love,
With sweet hot tears his lips were loth
Her own should taste the savour of,
Yea, he inside whose grasp all night
Her fervent body leapt or lay,
Stained with sharp kisses red and white,
Found her a plague to spurn away.

After she is abandoned by her lover and thrown from the royal house in disgrace, the servant takes her to a hovel where they can be together. Now he is not off his food and sleep because he is sick with desire. Quite the opposite, he neglects to eat properly or rest because is so consumed with the fact that he can fulfil all of his fantasies with her.

I hid her in this wattled house,
I served her water and poor bread.
For joy to kiss between her brows
Time upon time I was nigh dead.
Bread failed; we got but well-water
And gathered grass with dropping seed.
I had such joy of kissing her,
I had small care to sleep or feed.
Sometimes when service made me glad
The sharp tears leapt between my lids,
Falling on her, such joy I had
To do the service God forbids.

As he was living his dream, her life became a nightmare. Whatever comfort she got from his companionship at first must have quickly worn off. She was dying, and he wasn’t really looking after her. She was nothing but his sex plaything. She begged him to stop and let her die.

‘I pray you let me be at peace,
Get hence, make room for me to die.’
She said that: her poor lip would cease,
Put up to mine, and turn to cry.
I said, ‘Bethink yourself how love
Fared in us twain, what either did;
Shall I unclothe my soul thereof?
That I should do this, God forbid.’
Yea, though God hateth us, he know
That hardly in a little thing
Love faileth of the work it does
Till it grow ripe for gathering.

Eventually she does die. This doesn’t stop him though. At least not for the first six months…

Six months, and now my sweet is dead.
A trouble takes me; I know not
If all were done well, all well said,
No word or tender deed forgot.
Too sweet, for the least part in her,
To have shed life out by fragments; yet,
Could the close mouth catch breath and stir,
I might see something I forget.
Six months, and I still sit and hold
In two cold palms her two cold feet.
Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,
Thrills me and burns me in kissing it.
Love bites and stings me through, to see
Her keen face made of sunken bones.
Her worn-off eyelids madden me,
That were shot through with purple once.

Perhaps after that six months his conscience kicks in. He starts to reflect and wonder if she ever felt anything for him.

She said, ‘Be good with me, I grow
So tired for shame’s sake, I shall die
If you say nothing:’ even so.
And she is dead now, and shame put by.
Yea, and the scorn she had of me
In the old time, doubtless vexed her then.
I never should have kissed her. See
What fools God’s anger makes of men!
She might have loved me a little too,
Had I been humbler for her sake.
But that new shame could make love new
She saw not—yet her shame did make.
I took too much upon my love,
Having for such mean service done
Her beauty and all the ways thereof,
Her face and all the sweet thereon.
Yea, all this while I tended her,
I know the old love held fast his part:
I know the old scorn waxed heavier,
Mixed with sad wonder, in her heart.

The end of the poem sees him quite depressed about how things turned out.

It may be all my love went wrong—
A scribe’s work writ awry and blurred,
Scrawled after the blind evensong—
Spoilt music with no perfect word.
But surely I would fain have done
All things the best I could. Perchance
Because I failed, came short of one,
She kept at heart that other man’s.
I am grown blind with all these things:
It may be now she hath in sight
Some better knowledge; still there clings
The old question. Will not God do right?

That last line brings to mind Robert Brownings’s Porphyria’s Lover, which predated The Leper by thirty years. And yet God has not said a word! I don’t suppose that God said anything about Swinburne and the monkey either, but maybe come judgement day, words were exchanged5.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets

After having recently torn into John Keats for my dislike of The Eve of St Agnes, I set myself the target of finding something to like about him. And as Anjie Wastling pointed out in her reply to the article, there is plenty to like. Unlike Anjie, For me, it isn’t so much the poetry, that attracts me, but the earnestness with which he approached it. He badly wanted to succeed as a poet and had big ideas about his art, working hard to put them into practice. Here he is in 1818 writing about his ambitions in a letter to a friend

I am ambitious of doing the world some good: If I should be spared that may be the work of maturer years - in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in Poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of Poems to come brings the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs - that the solitary indifference I feel for applause even from the finest Spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will - I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night’s labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them.

Just two or three years after writing that letter he was dead at the age of 25, not having had all that much time to make an impact. During his lifetime, he never really became the popular titan of English Literature that we know him as .

I imagine him as being a serious young man, determined to live by the principles which he had developed. I remember having friends like that in my university days, I admired them but my overriding principle at the time at the time was avoid hard work as much as you can and live as easy a life as possible.

One of Keats’ major big ideas was that of Negative Capability. He felt that a true poet had to negate himself, by which he seemed to mean that the poet should not be present in his poetry, but rather report on what he observes in the world without adding his own thoughts and ideas into the mix.

In an earlier letter to his brothers, George, and Thomas, Keats suggested that this was something which Shakespeare possessed so enormously… Negative Capability… is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. It was a point of difference, between him and older romantic poets such as Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Coleridge, he said (was) incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.

We all know poets whose work is not much more than thinly veiled preaching. We have listened to them at open mic nights and read their stuff online, and sometimes in lit mags and other publications. Much of what their poetry contains is a rehash of their own opinions. I am sure that I have written lots of pieces like that. Keats didn’t see this as true poetry. He wanted to communicate his observations rather than his opinions. Perhaps he would do this in conjunction with giving his reaction to it, but that reaction wouldn’t be a preaching sort of reaction that asked the reader to join him. It would be another observation. He would observe something and also observe how it made him feel. Or he would observe how he felt and also observe how the things around him impacted on his feelings.

I like that approach. It still doesn’t necessarily make me a fan of his poetry, (and the Eve of St Agnes is still a lost cause to me), nor does it have me instantly dismissing any poetry that does contain more opinion than observation, but it is an idea that I can understand and sympathise with. It is also something to be considered when I am writing my own stuff.

Perhaps Ode to a Nightingale is a good example of what Keats meant. Some would say that this poem is his finest work. In fact the Pre-Raphaelite poet Algernon Swinburn lavished praise upon it when he wrote an article about Keats for the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1882. I can’t resist giving you a longer quote than is necessary, as it shows that Swinburne is even more extreme in his opinions on Keats than I am.

The Ode to a Nightingale, (is) one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages… (it) is immediately preceded in all editions now current by some of the most vulgar and fulsome doggrel ever whimpered by a vapid and effeminate rhymester in the sickly stage of whelphood.

The ode opens with Keats describing his own mood…

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

And then he not only speaks to the Nightingale, but also imagines what it is like to be the bird. Happy, and singing, with easy gusto.

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

I imagine that a lesser poet would have written something along the lines of –

When I am feeling down in the dumps, 
I listen to the beautiful twittering of the birds 
My cares fall away
And my spirit is lifted.

Which would be doggerel of such quality that Hallmark Cards, the Reader’s Digest and the People’s Friend would be competing to hire the services of the poet despite the fact that he was in the sickly stage of whelphood.

It could even be made into an explicit piece of advice, like this…

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go 
Downtown
When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, 
Downtown

Not that I have anything against Petula Clark, But I fear that Keats would have been unmoved, not just by the urban setting, but by the writer1 giving his commentary on the feelings rather than describing them, and giving explicit advice rather than leaving it up to the listener to decide how to respond to what (in Keats’s hands) would have been a marvellous description of a downtown district, and all other downtown districts in the history of towns

At the end of his Ode to a Nightingale Keats is still pretty down in the dumps. The reader can take what joy or misery they want from what he has written. The joy comes from his focus on the nightingale and the endurance of its song through history and in the future.

The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

It’s still hard going to modern ears, and I had to look up the story of Ruth2. But the presentation has its delights. And perhaps, having just nursed his dying brother, and suspecting that the big C (consumption) was coming for him next, he envied the nightingale and hoped that maybe his poetry would somehow survive like the bird’s song.

You have to hand it to him, because it did.

Ode to Downtown - by neither John Keats nor Tony Hatch

The sun sank westwards, purpling the sky
Bringing closure to suburban day
Lethargic and world weary did I lie
My mind devoid of joy and giving way
To ennui and its twin, apathy.
- I thought I heard Petula sweetly sing
An air about the vibrant city squares
And shining in my eye’s periphery
Distant coloured lights were shimmering
With sounds of folk forgetting all their cares

Downtown, flocks of people congregate 
On evenings such at this to sing and dance
To stay awake until the hour is late
Their souls can mingle, perchance find romance.
- Though citizens of Carthage are long dead
And Persepolis and Memphis are now gone 
Their once proud buildings now reduced to dust
Other cities sprang up in their stead 
Where downtown life goes on and on and on
It will for all eternity I trust

Many taste its pleasures in their time
The rhythm of its traffic and the din
The liberation of the finest wine
The joys of being with their kith and kin
Yet, far from them, my soul is solitary
And much as I may yearn to join their throng
My destiny lies on another plane
Too soon shall I rest at the cemetery.
Still, vibrant towns will ever sing their song
Long after worms have fed on my remains

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Other Ways to Help

Sixty Odd Poets