from lewisham to watchet by cormorant

“I didn’t know you wrote poetry, I didn’t know you wrote such bloody awful poetry.”

If this had been a normal August Bank Holiday weekend, I’d have spent it at Watchet Music Festival. We’d have been catching up with old friends, making new ones, drinking Sheppey’s Sweet, having those random conversations you tend to have at music festivals, dancing to the Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican, you name it. This time next year, God willing.

At Watchet, I usually end up reading some of me poems into a microphone at the Something Else Tea Tent – because there’s nothing I like more than further confusing some twenty to thirty hungover and fragile-looking souls on a Sunday lunchtime, apart from perhaps a well-cooked vegan breakfast. Oh, and pina coladas. Getting caught in the rain. Alphabetising my CD collection. Actually, there’s quite a lot of things I like more than further confusing…

Enough of the Monty Python impersonations.

I don’t take my own poetry terribly seriously, you understand; it was a weight off my mind when I decided at approx. age twenty-five that “I am not T.S. Eliot, nor was meant to be.” The Pam Ayres de nos jours, perhaps, only slightly more influenced by Pavement than the original; certainly I wish I’d been more diligent about regular dental check-ups. But in lieu of getting those emotional self-immolation kicks in person (“your poetry is basically comedy, isn’t it, Dad?”; yes and no; just because people are laughing, this doesn’t mean it’s a comedy; just because they look confused, this doesn’t mean it’s a puzzle), here are a few which at least look alright on the screen.

Okay. So this next one comes to mind in a music-festival context, because Saara and friends worked it up into a song when she was in the band (and then there was ‘Yvonne’s Pickaxe’, the best socialist-feminist anthem I ever wrote… though in another Richard Curtis style timeline, I wake up after a minor car accident in a world in which Billy Bragg never existed; gifted with perfect recall, I then successfully claim to have written ‘Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards’).

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Lewisham. Monday. 10:47a.m.

Elaine, there’s a cormorant
Outside the One-Stop Shop.

It says it don’t want
Housing Benefit help
And it says it don’t want
Energy-saving lightbulbs
Or Community Arts and Leisure News.

It screams that it’s
The crack in every windowpane
The asymptote of every graph
The gap in our integrated service provision.

Elaine, it’s thin and gaunt
And walking on the wall
Intimidating passers-by;
Plus its press releases and live webcast
Could give Lewisham a bad name
At this critical juncture.

I’m telling you Elaine:
You’d better call the Seabird Outreach Team.
Its claims to dwell in the ruined castle
In the back of every social worker’s head
Are scaring me. Bye for now.

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The next is a bit religious and it partly takes place in Sainsbury’s. YES: turns out I'm George Herbert, only with Nectar points).

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Stigmata

Mrs K.M. of Leatherhead, Surrey writes
“Can you get carpet burns from laminated flooring?”
Well, Mrs K.M., the answer to your query is no,
Those subtle but perceptible marks on your upper thigh
Are, in fact, stigmata, representations of Christ’s suffering
Showing where the nails entered his flesh.

Also, the light in your fridge is the light of life
Factories and outlet villages are the Spirit’s creative power
And the queuing system at the deli counter
Is the fearful soul waiting upon judgement.

Mrs K.M. of Leatherhead in Surrey,
My heart yearns to be with you –
You and your husband Alan,
Your lovely children John and Chloe
And the Alsatians Joe and Lizbet;
Our ordinary yearnings are images of that great desire
The restless soul panting for its God.

Do rest assured, Mrs K.M., Mr L.W., Ms G.F.
And everyone crouching out there in the warm darkness
That God will return at the same time next Wednesday
To answer more of your household and DIY queries. Amen.

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The last of these three I probably wouldn’t read at a music festival; wrong mood.

When I did read it out at a poetry evening, it provoked “a sharp intake of breath.” This I like, just as I enjoy reading both hostile and appreciative responses to fanzine articles; a mixed response reassures me that I’m doing it right.

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Rotterdam

My link worker visits; asks, “and how are you in yourself?”
I think: how am I in myself? As opposed to what, exactly?
How am I in a bag? How am I in a suburb of Rotterdam?
What, exactly? But Agnetha’s not so bad. She says,
“I’m going to put you down as a Level Five.” I think
She just wants to close the case, to step me down.
I can see she’s busy.

And how is Agnetha in herself? Agnetha pities me
If she thinks of me at all – I mean, outside of working hours.
Agnetha is getting married; Agnetha dislikes her name,
Tells friends she keeps it out of loyalty to her dead dad.
Perhaps he was called Agnetha also.

Today Agnetha feels scared when she watches the news
And that’s how Agnetha is in herself –
But how is she in a bag? How is she in a suburb of Rotterdam?
I voted to leave the European Union
But please don’t think the worse of me for that;

I am a Level Five.

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(Oh, and speaking of the EU...)

The best poem I’ve yet written (in my own estimation) is a long sequence called ‘Burnham Beach Amusements’ which took a weekend to write and about fifteen minutes to read; it reworks Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’, quoting from it, extemporising and folding in various other found texts and fragments of overheard speech. If you haven’t noticed a long, withdrawing roar lately, you haven’t been watching the news. 

By the way, I don’t include poetry collections in twenty-seven word reviews even though I read them. This is because there’s something inherently glib about summarising something you’ve read or watched in twenty-seven words; I just don't want to be or sound glib about other people's poetry collections (poets are delicate, prose writers can look out for themselves).

Quick ‘heads-up’ and ‘thank you’ then that I’ve recently enjoyed poetry collections by Ama Bolton, Rachael Clyne, Michelle Diaz, Jo Waterworth, and also that I’ve enjoyed listening to work by Ben Banyard, Chrissy Banks, Beth Calverley, Jinny Fisher, Tom Sastry, Louise Warren, and Pam Zinnemann-Hope. Much of this has been through Fountain Poets - for me, to look through the Fountain Poets website is both to remember some standout evenings (etymologically speaking, to ‘ex-ist’ is to stand out) and to look forward to meeting up again ‘when all this is over’ (and it will be).

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(If you're a Christian or other festival-goer who'd normally join the Churches Together worship service on the festival site on Sunday mornings, here's a virtual act of worship put together by local Christians. Hopefully next year we can get together and lift our voices!)

(For more details of family leisure pursuits - and, frankly, what could possibly go wrong? - see Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind).