I will be offering this as a free download from this evening as it Bastille day. GRASS CLOUDS contains everything I have written as ‘poetry’ since I arrived in Nottingham in 2002 so about 20 years worth
Contains 80 poems and some illustrations. I will be reading from it on Tuesday August 2nd at the Organ Grinder Canning Circus with Neil Fulwood who celebrating his new Smokestack Press publication.
Includes the following pamphlets and projects:
Drifting Village Poems 2001-2011
Edwin Smith Commission 2014
Burning Books and Buying time 2017 – 2018
My Father’s Things (illustrated) 2019
At the Organ Grinder I shall also be reading from the new volume ‘Substitute’ which due in Fall 2023.
Is mine and always will be it is my birth-right I am born to this and never shall let it slip I am the world king and God’s chosen one To let go of power is to betray you all
I will make the problems disappear All it takes is character as my masters told me Drilled with a sense of purpose and entitlement From a young age to handle the reins of power
The ethos at Eton and Oxford is always to be right even if found out never let the mask slip For that is a sign of weakness and I am not weak I am the firm hand, the strong voice, the liar
Who can not ever be found out to lie The philanderer who can buy secrecy The fool who cannot be judged wrong For there is no other King
This morning the cloak of privilege Is torn and stained but still wraps me round With banker friends and people of high birth who will take me in and bathe my wounds
I will return to the battle with my Excalibur Smite my enemies and ride again into battle This county needs me in its darkest hour I watch re-runs of Churchill in a darkened room
This is my right my destiny I am alone A King of no country
I have been collating a selection of poems written since coming to Nottingham in 2002. It hasn’t been a particularly inspiring location for my poetry and hardly anybody realises I actually published in 2010. I surprised to find 96 poems in 20 years which was my yearly output back in the 1990s. So once I thought of an appropriate title and found an image for the cover I will release a pdf of the ‘Nottingham Years’ 2002-2022 in advance of my 20 years in waiting reading at Neil Fulwood’s fine poetry event at the Blue Monkey in August when he will be the main act.
Perhaps I should crowdsource a title..’Dark Tarn’..Guntown… Wordy Poet Hood? Forest and City :-)…..’Play on the Grass’……maybe that it …
North Berks Cup Final Long Wittenham F.C. my father second left back row.
A poem about a true story. I do not know if anybody still alive would remember it. I have a vague memory as a child.
The match was organised by Ernie Butler who was then working as a driver at Smiths Crisps on the Trading Estate Station Road in Didcot and the club was the Marlborough Club. The park is Edmond’s Park as my family lived in Glebe Road and Newlands Avenue.
I played for Didcot Boys (THE team) briefly before being substituted too many times and my Dad moved me to Didcot Eagles….where I played a lot more and lost every game but happy as larry .
SUBSTITUTE
Looking on from the sidelines came naturally, a boney slightly effete lad who wanted to be what his Dad wanted him to be. Every Xmas Meccano and Scalextric (or a cheaper version from Bosleys toy shop) When all I wanted was pen and paper or an Airfix Saturn V and some comics. Happy with my mum’s Encyclopedia of Animals and a set of colouring pencils. I even built my own museum of antiquities in my bedroom. Including a glass topped case of oddments my Dad dug up with his JCB. A meteorite, a bit of roman pottery, fossils or so he told me and who was I to argue.
I spent hours kicking a ball against my neighbour’s shed. The smell of tarmac and sweat oozing from his pores after a day labouring as he showed me how to dubbin my boots. How to pace myself, avoid injury. In kick-arounds I wasn’t bad, no Tony Adams I struggled at left back. A position the better team I clawed my way into could not fill so there I was. Sunday morning in Edmond’s Park living my father’s dream in his position. Trying to live up to the photograph of his team shot at Reading FC ground before winning the North Berks Cup ( I have photo, medals and programme.)
My mother watched me take a few knocks and struggle as a defender. Not ‘filled out’ enough to stand up to the bigger boys. Immature and sensitive. The inner poet derailing my ambitions to play for Arsenal from an early age. I look at photos of me aged 14 and wonder I didn’t break something. But my father’s advice came good. Don’t get angry get even. They score one you go back and score one against them. Remember your second wind. I wrote a poem titled that. Mum played the long game wanted me to go to University. First in family.
The rest all drove trucks, laid tarmac or went into the police or army. One Sunday my Gramp Ernie challenged a semi-professional team to a match. His family and mates from the Working Men’s Club against them as a bet. Our whole family of Butlers and Belchers turned out on a frosty morning to watch them win on the park I had been substituted most games on. My Dad and Uncle Dennis and others ran rings around the so called professionals. There was a big celebration at the club that evening. Ernie had won his bet. I learnt then that there is no substitute for perseverance, talent and a bit of luck.
Now I stand on the sidelines again.
Recovering from a host of bad tackles, unlucky injuries and plain bad-timing.
Always a substitute never a first-choice.
Stepping across the poetic line. Taking on the professionals at their own game.
I have spent the afternoon reading the beginning of Yvor Winters ‘The Function of Criticism’ which I acquired about 30 years ago.
I also read a couple of interesting articles online.
The first by the poet David Yezzi is interesting and makes a case for his continuing relevance. The second is a wider career over-view from the now defunct Contemporary Poetry Review.
I also mused upon the slow demise of the ‘Poet-Critic’ a sad reflection of the sorry state of contemporary poetry where popularity and social media profiles count for more than intellectual rigor. Even with Larkin, Heaney and Hughes there were solid publications of other writing. Can one imagine a serious book of Simon Armitage or Helen Mort criticism ..no because it too dangerous an occupation in the ‘blow-back’ noughties where any -expression of opinion is frowned upon. Books are reviewed but mostly to further mediocre careerist blogs but serious criticism that gone the way of decent classical music radio i.e. popularised out of existence.
So reading the opinionated Winters is refreshing. He was wrong as much as right but at least he expressed an opinion.
Talking of opinionated tody I also picked up this Further Requirements book by Larkin to add to Required Writing which again I had for over thirty years. I wonder how long before Larkin is ‘Decolonized’ from the local university stacks which considering his lifetime devotion to maintaining library collections is beyond sad.
Doff your cap, Toe the line, Do a good job, Know your place, Speak when spoken to, Don’t talk back, keep mum, Be reliable Hold your knife properly, Don’t leave the table until told to, Watch your step, March in time, Defer to your betters, Salute the flag, Be punctual, Do a good job, Never argue, Be polite, Bow, Scrape, Be invisible.
If you do not do as you are told you have…
A chip on your shoulder, Are bitter, Difficult A maverick A born troublemaker An outsider A thief Or worse Political
Working Class
A writer
2010 – White Van Town – Didcot Council Estate Each van a different worker living on this road it a Sunday.. the Thatcherite Dream made reality.
Sparkling green walls covered in frosted webs A thousand hedges grid-locked our estate at dawn October school-runs on foot, lawns damp with dew We’d strip privet sticks and collect them in loops
One web on top of another until a sticky shivering Vibrated in our hands, dew running down stalk to palm. We knew nothing then, spun our own stories as we traipsed Slowly toward a school playground fuzzy with chalk
Circles on walls, boards, exercise books and balls Punctured and hiding below those spun nets The exhaled breaths of football careers not yet dead We curved balls endlessly at bare walls
They came back every time,thuds ricocheting Against the garage walls our only release Drum n Bass lives before we knew the words Stamping out glam rock tunes in our heads
Now the lawns and hedges torn up turned to gravel Commuter belt rentals cars packed in like terraces Nothing breathing just dead ground that floods easily The earth covered and the dreams we had floating away
Over the hedges, nets, lawns like vapour trails Heading west to unknown futures no longer there.
A new boy in my old bedroom repeats an overhead kick On a digital platform. Dreams of escape as a ball lands in a net. Cannot hear the milk train on the loop.
Ignores far sirens and sticky hands cradling the dead.
The Loop:
The London – Oxford railway line bypasses my hometown of Didcot on a single track known as ‘The Loop’ to thirteen year old trainspotters…
Shaun Belcher was born Oxford, England in 1959 and brought up on a down-land farm before moving to a council estate in the small town of Didcot in 1966 just as England won the world cup..
He studied fine art at Hornsey College of Art, London from 1979–81 where he sat under a tree with Adrian Mitchell.
Began writing poetry in the mid 1980s and subsequently has been published in a number of small magazines and a poem 'The Ice Horses' was used as the title of the Second Shore Poets Anthology in 1996.(Scottish Cultural Press).
He now lives in Nottingham, England after two years in Edinburgh studying folk culture and several years in the city of expiring dreams working as a minion at the University of Oxford.
He is currently enjoying retirement from 20 years of teaching and hopes to write something on a regular basis again. He has been involved in various literary projects including delivering creative writing workshops in Nottingham prison for the ‘Inside Out’ project.
He supports Arsenal football club.
Favourite colours therefore red and green like his politics.
We have not won the world cup again since 1966 and Shaun Belcher is not as famous as Simon Armitage although his songs are better.
