NORMAL TOWN POET
So finally here it is the all new revised second edition of Thames Valley Texas published to coincide with the reading I giving at Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot on Friday 7th November. I will be supporting the acclaimed new country singer Hannah White and The Dreaming Spires whose new LP ‘Normal Town’ is a suite…
I just read some of this volume at the Open Book reading is Thames Valley Texas (updates at link above or direct here https://shaunbelcher.com/writing/?cat=106) This is a kind of auto-biography of myself and my hometown of Didcot where I lived for a good part of 30 years. The title is a reference to the love…
DEAD CENTRE If England was a target and you were looking at cross hairsIn the centre of the cross hairs would probably be DidcotThe most normal town in England according to the pollstersThe 11th worst place to live according to crap towns My home town, the town my family still live in, die inA town…
Privilege Is mine and always will be it is my birth-rightI am born to this and never shall let it slipI am the world king and God’s chosen oneTo let go of power is to betray you all I will make the problems disappearAll it takes is character as my masters told meDrilled with a…
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…
The agency have been at work again He just didn’t look like a poet so they set to work Told him to lose a few pounds and get a new stylist The shabby chic look to match his fake poverty lyrics Helped sell the gig and books in the provinces Bolstered the teenage girl clickbait…
Doff your cap, Toe the line,Do a good job,Know your place,Speak when spoken to,Don’t talk back, keep mum, Be reliableHold 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…
Loops Sparkling green walls covered in frosted websA thousand hedges grid-locked our estate at dawnOctober school-runs on foot, lawns damp with dewWe’d strip privet sticks and collect them in loops One web on top of another until a sticky shiveringVibrated in our hands, dew running down stalk to palm.We knew nothing then, spun our own…
THUNDER CIRCLING He needed to talk to someone.It happened to be us.His rolled tobacco slipped from his fingersas he went over events fifty years before.The harbour, Singapore, thunder circlingand lightning flashing across the sea.A merchant navy man,sitting on deck with his mates,watching a free show.‘lf they’s could only ‘arness that energy’. The same bar two…
DIVING FOR CHANGE Below and to my right from this window a Volvo lorry crunches gearshredded leaf, dust and gravel trickles from bumper and wheel-arch. The digging of the new pool has been going on now for two weeks. Yellow digger-buckets mouth the park’s soil and turf into lorries that rumble off, indicators flashing, down…