No not a reference to Sergeant Pepper that was 20 but out of curiosity here an unseen poem from 1991. Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now.. ENGLAND SWINGS Soho doorway, December ’66sleet melting on daisy-patternedplastic raincoat, seeping to salt linesup purple suede slip-onsHer front teeth bite her bottom lipas…
poetry
Michael Longley and ‘The Fallow Period’
Looking back at those difficult years now, do you feel that the silentstretches were detrimental to your work? If I hadn’t been fighting battles on other fronts, I might have been scribbling boring middle-aged verse – like MacNeice who twittered on for a decade until the miraculous final poems. It seems that the Muse favours…
My Back Pages: The Empty Stair
For my sins I have been watching ‘The Crown’ and it reminded me of a poem I wrote back in the 1990s before the death of Diana….. As you can see I was always a staunch Royalist… The Empty Stair A fleur-de-lys fissured by sulphuric rain crumblesbut still hangs, paint-peeling, above an entrancethat is being…
Edwin Smith – Catching Light – Recordings
EDWIN SMITH POEMS Back in October 2014 (now six years ago) I was on the first term of a Creative Writing M.A. at NTU. I was also with uncanny timing commissioned (the first and so far the only time I been commissioned) by R.I.B.A. through Apple and Snakes to write in response to a lovely…
My First Telephone Call: Thames Valley Texas
The new grey phone in the hallThat never rangUntil one day nervouslyI had to answer It was my uncle from SpainHis father had died that morningWhilst he was on holiday My first conversation was cut short“Yes dead, your dad is dead”. Silence and then a sobThen his wife Sue saying “We’re coming home”. I could…
My Father’s Things: The Optical Level: Thames Valley Texas
I am currently working on a project called ‘My Father’ s Things’ which is a series of drawings I did last year to stay sane amidst the chaos of my life then..don’t ask…the chaos has departed and is now far away. This is the first draft of the first poem that I plan to attach…
The New World
Poetry and I have not been getting on…. In fact I have been ignoring poetry, shelving it, filing it and generally pushing it to the back of my mind for the past decade.To start with this was deliberate as the combination of employment in an art school (note word art there not a writing school)…
The Rattle Bag
This rather nice vintage French leather bag came my way yesterday and I am going to use it to carry my poetry around in and hence the name ‘the Rattle Bag’ which I copped from the Heaney and Hughes anthology title… As Heaney said :Ted suggested we call it by the name of a strange…
Memoirs – Ford and Morrison- Dealing with Death
I have just read these two linked memoirs. In discussing his memoir of his parents Ford specifically mentions the influence of his friend’s earlier book. Both are very strong works although maybe because of its particularly English subject and atmosphere the Morrison just shades it for me especially as my own parents both died…
What I am doing…
I wrote this statement in 2010. Nothing has changed. I am using this ‘credo’ as the basis of my new ‘great leap forward’ with the Thames art and technology idea.. Delineation of ‘Theory’: An artist’s personal statement Throughout my ‘art-working’ life some things have remained stubbornly, one might even say obsessively’, constant. Be it…