Cultural References

Some stories and poems are packed with them. The classic examples is ‘The Day Lady Died’ by Frank O’Hara, which mentions buying a copies of New World Writing and The New York Post, a book by Verlaine, a carton of Picayunes (whatever they are), a bottle of Strega (that Italian liqueur), a pack of Gauloises, and a concert by Mal Waldron. Phew! (The poem is also specific about location, but that, as my tutor Bernard Tschumi used to say, is another conversation.) Other poets, however, though they may be specific about location, never include references to products, publications, performances, or politics. Wallace Stevens is a good example. I always wonder whether I should use more. David Morley set a workshop exercise to use references like O’Hara’s, and I managed Flash, Sifta salt, Brasso, Mrs Mopp, the overture from Carmen, and ‘Enjoy Yourself it’s later than you think.’ All very dated, but the poem was addressed to my mother. Recently I’ve managed references to T.K.Maxx in one (or rather T.J.Maxx because the poem appeared in America), Drive and Shine and the Swedish list (in fact Gudrun Sjödén) in another, and a novel set in Maine and a Bunsen burner in a third. It's not a lot, is it? Let’s compare ‘The Red Dress’ from the excellent story collection Attention Seekers by Emma Brankin. It includes Hamilton (the musical), an Uber, The Aristocats, the Emmys, Spice Girls dolls, and DKNY. It would be a mistake for me to try to imitate all that. I have to console myself with my many references in stories to specific or barely disguised placesthe subject of another blog. One I’d like to mention here, though, is in my prizewinning story ‘Whiskey and Halva’. The settingnot specified in the storyis Khartoum, and the manhole cover bore the words (again not specified) Needham, Stockport. On a final note, I remember the thrill (for such it was) when in Berlin, high up on an old building, I saw the words Kapp and Petersen. A brand of tobacco pipe mentioned in Waiting for Godot! And another occasiona shock rather than a thrillwas in Grand Central Station in New York City. As teenagers friends and I enjoyed a song with the lyrics ‘We’ll drink-a-drink-a-drink to Lydia Pink-a-pink-a-pink, saviour of the human ra-a-ace . . .’ (Recorded later by The Scaffold as ‘Lily the Pink’why Lily?) Imagine my amazement when I saw in the window of a kiosk a bottle labelled Lydia E. Pinkham’s medicinal compound. All that time it had been real!

A Manifesto

To me the most important destiny of a poem is to be remembered, even if only one line sticks in the memory. I carry each line I remember like refreshment, like a talisman, like a sugar rush. Here are some that pop up in my mind when I’m walking, weeding, or just watching the clouds: In a while they rose and went out aimlessly riding This was a week in February that was of rain Miles of pram in the wind and Pam in the gorse track In the house of odd cups it is time for supper Christ’s body smelt of Goddard’s silver dip Even greater satisfaction, entertainment, sustenance, encouragement – I’m not sure how to describe it – comes from whole poems I remember, or from which I remember long passages. ‘Ulysses’ is one. ‘If’ is another. ‘Claire de Lune’ and ‘Le Vierge, le vivace, et le bel aujourd’hui’ are others. These poems appeal to the sense not only because of their piquant imagery but because they flow nicely. To paraphrase le Corbusier’s definition of a house, a poem is a machine for capturing and displaying a feeling. A machine that should be well oiled. A poem should also be a kind of catacomb a reader can get lost in, or a playground with swings and slides. I don’t know where I am with exploded poems, where lines or bits of lines are set left and right with white space between. I don’t know how to read them aloud and therefore memorise them. I’m not even sure how to read poems with extra spaces between words in a line, whether those are meant as pauses, and if so, are they different pauses from the ones created by line breaks? (I use line breaks as pauses, however slight.) I have happily done readings but I am NOT a performance poet. My favourite poets are Chaucer, Donne, Keats, Laforgue, Eliot, Frost, cummings, Empson, Plath, Williams, Wallace Stevens, W S Graham, and Mark Halliday. A lot of my poems are clear imitations of one of the above, and of others such as Charles Causley, Stevie Smith, and Ogden Nash. And jusy for the record, myy work has appeared in: Agenda, The Dark Horse, The Independent, Iron, Lancashire Life, Orbis, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Reactions, The Rialto, Scintilla, Smiths Knoll, Stand, and Yorick in the UK and also on Radio 3; in Apalachee Review, Hole in the Head Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The MacGuffin, Rattapallax, and silverbirchpress.wordpress.com in the USA; The Antigonish Review, Grain, Quagmire Magazine, and BlueHouse Journal in Canada; The SHOp in Ireland: culturecultmagazine.wixsite.com in India; and in several anthologies published by the Arts Council of Great Britain and various festivals and prizes. I won third prize in the National Poetry Competition 2000.

I.m. John Whitworth

I'm sad to learn, from the introduction to Poetry South East 2020, that John Whiworth hads died. He was someone I always felt I would like to meet. I thought we would get on really well. I 'met' him when we both had poems in New Poetry 2 published in 1976 by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Only on re-reading do I realise what distinguished company John and I were among in that volume, and that our work was selected from nearly ten thousand poems submitted. As a poet he was much more successful than me. He went Oxford, which I would have done if I hadn't wasted precious time on physics. But I'm not going to devalue my own modest successes by comparison. And I'm still alive. Anyway, farewell, John, and thank you again for 'Jenny'.

Things I made (part1)

'The Tower', a five-storey 1:12 doll's house for my great-grandchildren, with design input from each of them for their level in the building.

A mirror with characters from the Nestor Burma books by Leo Malet.

Door for the Hutt made from offcuts. The window is by a stained-glass artist.

'Shangri-La' was started in 1988 and still being worked on.

The latest of twelve equipages made for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Life

 Oh look! Look at the little pantiles, what would we call that color? Buff? Orange? And the wonderful position, at the head of the Marine Walk, looking down on the boats -- ah, the boats -- stiff-legged if we can call them that, waiting for the tide, the tide that waits for no man in the affairs of men.

 

If you’d taken that job . . .

 

And that weathervane, a cutout peacock or maybe a phoenix, twisting to point into the breeze. 

 

. . .  we could have brought our children up in a house like that.

 

Yes? All of us looking seaward from three neat bedroom gables just like those, all slightly different. Gazing through just such a wide wide lounge window in the style of Voysey at the horizon -- ah, the horizon! -- at the clouds, the gulls, the boats. From the boats you can almost see speech bubbles rising: “This is the life, the life, the life.” Yes?

 

Instead of a grimy landlocked metropolis.

 

The kids could have cycled out from a grand garage like that one with its white finials past big, stone, big-stone gateposts onto a promenade. The house name on those gateposts -- what does it mean? Why inscrutable? It could explain everything. 

 

You didn’t consult me when you decided against it.

 

Put on the spot. Then or never. Never, then.

 

Jeannie might have turned out different.

 

Kissed her love by the factory wall.

 

We could have lived in a small neat city by the sea.

 

With its rows of dockyard workers’ row houses seen from the train. Its elegant sailors’ war memorial on greensward. Its big sky. One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Living in a house like that one whose weathervane twists the night away.

 

Does it point where the wind is going, or coming from?

 

Ah, now then.