Category: Nottingham Poetry Festival
CHARLIE AND THE LACE FACTORY
Monday 4th May 1904, Grand Theatre Radford Road, Hyson Green
Evening performance of Sherlock Holmes over, Charles Chaplin aged 15
Collar askew from a swift costume change leaves Billie the page boy behind
And cheekily slaps the final drop curtain just below King Charles head
The sun-light overhead sputters and dies leaving the stalls gloomy
As he exits through the corridor of mirrors, flickering like a film
He turns left on to Gregory Boulevard which is quiet now, audience departed
The half-moon illuminates the Forest park to his right, a few stars above the trees
Cold now he huddles in his thin jacket, stuffs hands in pockets and half-runs
Ahead the last tram descending the Mansfield road clatters in the darkness
A cab rattles past him headed toward Hyson Green its two jovial occupants singing
Then silence, just his own steps and far off an occasional cry, or clack of hooves
Latecomers emerging from the Grovesnor Hotel or workers leaving late shift
At the Mansfield Road a sudden burst of steam and noise as a train exits the tunnel
Then silence again as just Charlie and his shadow dance their way up Sherwood rise
Carrington Market is busy with late drinkers fresh off their factory shifts
The rumble of machinery echoes across the granite sets, mixes with brewery smells
A quick tap at the door and Mrs Hodgkinson lets him into his digs at number 100
From the back high window he looks down on the Burton and Sewell factories below
Their dark brick walls dotted with illuminated floors of workers making lace
Women on one floor tending the bobbins and un-twirling long lines of thread
Below men tending to the machines as they endlessly repeat their movements
He thinks he catches a smile from one young girl but she is gone in an instant
He is left hanging out of the top window watching clouds cross the moon
His only companion a rabbit hidden beneath the bed can be heard scratching
He feeds it leftover stale bread he’d been given that morning
Watches the endless repetitive machines coming and going over and over
The steady hum of machines that brought him to this place, steam and iron
The flicker of images that will be with him throughout these modern times
He thinks of his mother in confinement, his brother tending a bar in London
He hardly speaks except when on stage and wanders a different town weekly
Too late to play loudly he picks up his fiddle and bow one more time
And stood in the window, in moonlight, imagines himself a famous musician
He glides the bow gently across the strings, hardly a sound can be heard
He serenades the men and women below, all the world his stage forever…
- The lace factory now a care home behind imported plastic net curtains
A woman in her 80s suffering dementia suddenly remembers her mother speaking
About a night she saw Charlie Chaplin playing to the stars but no-one believed her
How one day he’d return and play one last reel for her….forever.
Last year I did a reading for Nottingham Poetry Festival in which I produced a small ‘polemical’ pamphlet called ‘Burning Books’.
The pamphlet was a one off and most of the poems after ‘outing’ in paper form were then hidden away as ‘too political’ for my readers by myself!
I censored myself which crazy but shows the agonies of being in any way ‘political’ or writing from a stridently working-class viewpoint in the contemporary middle-class ring-fenced world of ‘proper poetry’.
It only now and post Kit de Waal’s article in the Guardian that I realise that in doing so I hiding from my true self.
So here again is the ‘real’ ‘Burning Books’ pre-edit and I stand by these poems…..a lot of pretentious middle-class ‘poets’ will hate it but frankly as I don’t spend much time listening to their whinging I don’t care. I will be ‘re-categorised’ as a ‘performance poet’ I expect and described as having a ‘chip on my shoulder’ which a frequent method of negating anything which threatens the middle class.
Here a taste of what I talking about…
Proper Poetry
I used to write proper poetry
Not the really proper stuff
You know packed full of classical allusions
Or invented lives based on obscure photographs
No I gave up on proper poetry
Because it is so fucking boring
So I write an occasional diatribe
And raise two fingers to the academy
These are the times for less poets, less experts
Less academics and more UKIP candidates
When a military chaplain’s daughter from Wheatley
Is playing Joan of Arc in the Wars of Brexit
With only God and King Billy to save us.
Download as a pdf here
The Horseshoe Press
http://www.horseshoepress.co.uk
is my self-publishing of poetry website.
The latest ‘Mini Pamphlet’ is ‘Burning Books’ published to coincide with Theresa May’s attempt to drive this country even further to the right….
Eight poems about politics, books and poetry to be given away free at the Jermy and Westerman reading on Wednesday 26th of April.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1926856314212991/
The Ltd. Ed. of 25 was given away at the reading so that’s it no more. In the tradition of pamphleteers of the 18th century..subversive and gone…..
Reading with one of my favourite poets at my favourite bookshop Jermy and Westerman on Mansfield Road as part of Nottingham Poetry Festival in April.
The past two weeks have been both liberating and slightly scary. Having jumped ship so to speak from the Cruise liner NTU ( currently headed for Corporate Tax Haven Islands with a monetising Captain whilst flying a pure blue Tory ensign) I have had a few days to ponder what next…
I currently have two phd applications in one of which I have written off and cannot comment on until I given some more information but I not expecting much. The second I much more optimistic about BUT I have to factor in that at my age I may not be successful. Organisations run on ‘outcomes’ and that means long term outcomes from an academic career when done a PhD. At 57 I may not have so much time as others. If that the case then my last PhD application will be done and dusted by Easter and time to move on….to ..what…
Life post-Academic may be beckoning and it quite exciting to meet someone like Henry Normal last night who not tainted by the academic environment. So there is water on Mars then…at the moment I feel like Major Tom having been stuck in a Tin Can for 8 years. I will not be going back to academic teaching..I done that..it over. I would love to do a really good PhD then become a researcher..a reader say..but that it with Academia. HE teaching no.
It was interesting to talk to Henry Normal who had gone the exact opposite way to me. Started writing poetry early then got involved in TV and then started writing again recently following his father’s death. I wrote fairly steadily through the 90’s but the Naughties were tainted by the diagnosis and subsequent deaths in 2004 of first my father and then my mother in 2012 from cancers. That pretty much ended my relationship with Oxfordshire too..symbolically the Salt pamphlet ‘Last Farmer’ went in my mother’s coffin. Done and Dusted….
Until now. I have finally thrown off the mantle of Academic Teacher which I never felt entirely happy with. Especially as the Progressive Rightists Corporate Zealots ripped the heart and soul out of the system and impose what is fast becoming a training regime staffed entirely by a compliant workforce.
I have started to think positively about writing again…and narrative..how it comes out I no idea but at least I have time to think about it. Even the aborted NTU MA was too precious and compressed to really feel able to get on with it….
I had simply exchanged one outcome regime for another..only this time on the wrong side of the fence.
So if there is anything poetry wise left in the tank it will probably happen now.
Chocks away like the early flyers above……I may fly.. I may crash …
but at least I holding the control stick this time.
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