Below Every Board

Down to foundations:

floors’  rot dry

years after settling

crumbles into morning.

Hacking our way,

there are voids under joists.

Mortar shifts between bricks.

We review footings,  clumps

strong to tamped earth

by bundled paper,

mourning print clear

through dust,

two unstrung puppets.

Pomegranate

I buy one every year,

a ritual since childhood.

This time I left it

until it browned and cracked,

skin thin, hard,

all moisture out.

Last night I split it.

The seeds lay dark and packed,

flesh gone,

under a slow irregular cramp.

It might be what you said it was,

Persephone’s child up in the light

some way down the future,

but not for me.

For three years now the

heat that drew red from the seed

has continued to fade;

I pulse colder when each moon shows.

At the end

it will be the decay of fruit,

the rot of my own lie

that stops the tide in my blood.

What the Wind Brought

Beer recalled swilled Boer suns

in the backwater inn on the fens,

rain on the wind abroad  

as glossed glass shone.

He sagged in the high street,

pension gone as a market morning,

rain on the wind a town away,

propped by landlord and friend.

Cheered weight flopped in the trap,

bridled gelding nosing uproad;

rain, a-flick on the wind, skipped by

the plodding pacing farmwards

away from footings in Flanders

thumped down to muck.

One left son lived slant rain

on stabbing winter winds.

Time to Write: A Career in Poetry?

I've seen on my Facebook feed that some poets, even if previously published, now have difficulty finding publishers. Ageism, not being the flavour-of-the-month and disability, among other reasons, have been cited as causes. These weren't why I chose not to publish in the conventional way, but my commiserations go to those poets who'd like publication.

My reasons were different. In the 70s and 80s I did the usual rounds of belonging to a poetry group/workshop in London, Arvon courses, book launches, readings, reading poets old and new, networking, entering competitions, sending stuff off for publication and having some published in poetry mags., going to all kinds of poetry events until I realised what was involved in getting established. As I had a full-time job, was working at a part-time Ph. D. (never finished because I retrained in my 40s for a different career) and running a home, I simply hadn't the time to pursue another work strand, so backed out of the poetry scene, wrote and studied poetry for myself. 

I continued, though, to familiarise myself with what was going on in the poetry world, even to the extent of joining, in the late 90s, a couple or three of online poetry workshops. Those helped me improve technically, but I left on realising that, essentially, only poetry-by-committee was acceptable and that my work most often stood outside the crowd. After that, I continued to write on my own. Then, a few years ago and being semi-retired, I started my own poetry blog; that gives some satisfaction and an outlet for seeing my stuff in 'print,' as it were.

Now, the most I go for publicly is that maybe every two years or so, I'll enter a competition, knowing my work will never be selected. Few judges or publishers like polemical, political poetry and my other work doesn't and won't follow fashionable dictates. Too, I've always been a loner and am happy to be so. It doesn't matter and I'm neither bitter nor resigned, but just continue to write what I please as well as I can because I can't not write. A particular poem, once written, may go on my blog or back into the revision pile.

What does make me angry, though, is publication of other poets’ work turned down for reasons outlined in the first paragraph and more like them, e.g. racism, sexism, bias against working-class writers, non-recognition of provincial poets, none of which are acceptable, but are often the reality when taking part in what is essentially a competitive field. Of course there are individual and group solutions to this, finding like-minded groups of poets, starting up poetry magazines, protesting to the extent that the poetry world does hear about issues that rankle, and so on. I’ve seen a few changes over the years, but the fundamental issues haven't gone away; people have just hived off from the mainstream and done what they needed to do.

Often those fundamentals aren’t tackled because many publishers, judges, etc. may not question or even realise their own built-in biases. I’m aware, too, that it happens in other literary and arts genres than poetry. There’s not much that can be done about that in the short-term, except to keep raising the issues and protesting where possible. In the long-term it’s probably a matter of keeping poetry and its publishing life before the public’s eye, in the hope that minorities among poets become minorities no longer. Whatever, I shall just keep going my own way and be ever thankful for the people who do read my work.

Digging Deep

It's clay and clings, this earth.

Chopped and shaped, it lies

in lumps where weeds decay

and garden debris burns.

New soil fills the pit

it came from, strong for flower

after flower down where roots

keep, distant from upper air,

where next year's shoots stay safe.

They race over the lawn, scrap

their game away, stopped by

the bite of bright geraniums:

your daughters argue above

tough docks growing,

your son’s eyes aslant of grass

that shivers resilient

on the clot of clumps

still and long in your sight.

Time to Write: W. S. Graham

I know it's the centenary of W.S. Graham's birth and that there are quite a few celebratory pieces and a book or so being published about him this year and most of them stress his 'outsider' status because his work seemed to suffer under the proliferation of Movement poets. I've recently been re-reading his 'New Collected Poems,' an article by Ross Wilson in 'The Honest Ulsterman,' but have yet to read 'The Caught Habits of Language.' From the reviews, it's obvious that Graham has been placed in the-needs-to-be-revived category, almost as though his work had been declared clinically dead.
 
Was it, though? Was he really such an outsider, or without influence? An outsider in the sense that he didn't join particular schools, yes, as if that matters when the work can stand up for itself, but I question that he's influenced no poet. Nor was he outside being influenced himself: his earlier poetry strongly suggests Modernist tendencies. Of poets of my generation who I know are familiar with his work, more than a few think (and thought) highly of his poetry. He was and is better known among poets than the reading public, but that may be put down to publicity and hype. In the end, the only movement he seems to have been outside was the Movement.

I had come across his work in my twenties and was interested enough to seek out his earlier books and pamphlets, but was blown away by 'Malcolm Mooney's Land' published towards the end of that decade in 1970 with its emphasis on language, its uses and inadequacies. That was over two decades before Geoffrey Hill's breakout with 'Canaan' in 1998. I've often wondered about the similarity of theme, though I've as yet done no definitive analysis. I can't think that a poet of Hill's calibre was unaware of Graham's work. Hill's work on language was more declamatory and fiercely ironic in his later books whereas Graham's could veer between the declamatory and the lyrical with great ease and effect; savage irony used against British institutions Graham rarely used, though he returns just as often to his Scottish working class roots as Hill did to his Worcestershire and sometimes Mercian ones. Too, his work, to my knowledge, was always well regarded in Scotland, though some criticised his seeming desertion of the motherland and lack of engagement in Scottish politics.

Much more research needs to be done in this regard, but there's enough to make me question what are in danger of becoming a couple of too easy truisms in this centenary year. Ho, hum! Hype attempts to win out again?

Dies Irae

The old dog shaking off fleas,

earth heaves on its foundations.

Shattered, highways demand

their toll at the flopped bridge

while buildings and bastions crash.

Seven gods explode above us,

floods tip over the frail land

where fires char the southern skies

and mountains squat.

Shockwaves over the city,

we endure the floor of the pit,

hugging our turbulent selves.

History’s shat out of naure.

Sit.

Stay.

Wait for the drumming of hooves,

twilight, the procreative silence.