Category: Poetry

If music be the food of love then poetry may just be the language of emotion. Home for my personal poetic journey. Joint home for Pele’s Poetry Podcast

Learning by rote

I hadn’t learned anything by rote – apart from my bank PIN number – since playing Friedrich Von Trapp in the Parkfields School production of The Sound of Music. And that was back in 1972. So when my poetry coach, Pele Cox, asked me to commit to memory Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas I wasn’t even sure I could do it. Running to 467 words over 54 lines and six verses, it was certainly longer than the script for my stage debut (and, as it turned out, finale). Plus, a 61-year-old mind was surely going to be less malleable than that of an 11-year-old used to reciting his times tables to teachers armed with knuckle-rapping rulers?

But it turns out I needn’t have worried. It took time – nearly two months in all (although I reckon I could have done it much quicker if I’d been able to commit to it full time like, say, an actor doing it for a living). And it took discipline – reading each line again and again and again… Probably more than 100 times in all.

That repetition was instrumental in cementing the words in my memory. But to give those words voice and to imbue them with something more than their narrow semantic meaning required me to occupy the poem and, therefore, by extension, the poet’s head. This, of course, sounds like pretentious twaddle! So let me explain…

I don’t mean that I read the poem in a Welsh accent (although I did) or that, like Thomas, I occasionally combined my task with alcohol (although I did). I mean that I strutted around my own garden from “under the apple bough” to the “lilting house” listening to the “tunes from the chimneys” and watching my farming neighbours in their “hay fields as high as the house.” Each time I walked by the brook that flows “all the sun long” at the bottom of the lane I declared (to any passerby who cared to listen) that “the Sabbath rang slowly in the pebbles of the holy streams.” Every swallow swoop was a reminder of the “loft by the shadow of my hand.”

Being inside the poem in this way helped me both to learn it and to feel it. If at any point a word or line was lost I could, in a very real sense at least initially, look for it. Not in Fern Hill in South Wales but in my half-real, half-imagined recreation of that landscape in South Shropshire. I am “blessed among stables” and realise this process might have been more difficult had I been living in South London.

So what have I learned from the exercise – apart from the obvious – and was it worthwhile?

That my brain isn’t as knackered as I feared it might be.

That poems – or certainly good ones – are like onions and can be peeled back layer by layer to reveal things you miss in a single, cursory reading. Forgive the crass metaphor but for me it’s not unlike the difference between a one-night-stand and a lasting relationship. The superficial may be gratifying – beautiful even. But intimacy – spending longer with a person, poem or poet – is revelatory and ultimately so much more rewarding.

One such reward revealed to me by spending days on end with Fern Hill is that eventually you can move beyond the words (like a couple of old lovers sitting in silence) and hear in that quietness the “breathing” – the rhythm, tone and cadence – of the poem. That musicality is one of Thomas’s many gifts.

But I guess the biggest lesson is that to achieve anything remotely close to the mastery of language demonstrated by Thomas I must spend as much time living and breathing my own poems. Anything less will make them superficial.

Fern Hill

by Dylan Thomas

My poetry coach, the wonderful Pele Cox, has asked me to commit this poem to memory. It’s proving to be a tough gig. Not least because the last time I learned lines was probably as Friedrich von Trapp in the Parkfields School production of the Sound of Music back in the early 1970s. I had to dress in lederhosen for that role. For this one I’m not sure what I’ll wear. Something Welsh maybe?!

It’s a beautiful poem by the way. I’ve reproduced it below from my copy of Dylan Thomas Selected Works.* I’m not at all sure I’ll be able to do it justice. I’ll keep you posted on this pilgrim’s progress. 

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
  • Published in 1976 by Book Club Associates with the permission of the Trustees of the copyrights of the late Dylan Thomas.

So Sunflowers Grow

Of all the tear-jerking images of war on the edges of Europe, one or two have stayed with me: birds shocked from their treetop roosts by the deep boom of artillery fire; a woman handing out sunflower seeds to occupying Russian forces.

Ukraine sunflowers. Woman offers Russian soldiers sunflower seeds so they grow where they die.
Courtesy Guardian News and Media

This poem has grown from these images. Like In Flanders Fields (from which it borrows heavily and compares badly), it’s a rondeau. Sadly, John McCrae had first hand experience of war to inform his work. Glady, I have none. So please forgive any unintended insensitivity. It is, necessarily, a work of imagination.

So Sunflowers Grow

So sunflowers grow where you die
She said with hate-and-hope-pierced eye
Then handed the soldier a seed
It will grow when Ukraine is freed
Rooted in your blood, in your lie.

Air sucked from a bird-shrapneled sky
Lungs emptied before the reply
No thanks heard. Silent, unstaunched bleed
So sunflowers grow.

Shot once they said: sniped; head too high.
Crumpled camo, no time to lie
Unregimented – pulled up weed
Withered. Lifeless. Yet in that deed
Of decomposting spirits fly
So sunflowers grow.

Lost Words

Here’s how the dream unfolds:
behind the gritted lids of night is told
the story of an ironed-flat sea - 
moonlight over mercury. 

Soon out. Beyond the beach. 

Deep down below the folds and creases. 
Rapid eyes. Heart beat increases. 

Mouthing silently as they sink like
drowning men who twist and pike 
then slip, unsaved, beneath the surface
an un-remembered shoal of twisted faces. 

By morning out of reach. 

Untold. Unseen. 
So all that’s left is this blank sheet
damp and crumpled from the dream.

You know that feeling of loss when you have a really good idea at night but you’ve forgotten it by morning? Well this is a poem about that!

I used to keep a notebook (yes, a stupidly expensive and pretentious Moleskine) by my bed to scribble down random words and lines as they came to me. That, of course, meant turning on the bedside lamp. So now, for the sake of my long-suffering partner, I jot them down in the notes of my smartphone although I’m sure the blue light of the screen is playing havoc with my sleep pattern.

A Postcard from Tenerife

Dear Mum

Wish you were here!

El Medano reminds me of Swanage. 
Sand, sea, sunshine, taut salty skin. 
The tide of geological time turning as the waves wash in and out and in…
But then these days everywhere reminds me of Swanage. 

Wish you were here

In that jumper I’d now give anything to possess, dad playing on the beach. 
You camera shy just out of reach. 
A pair of empty sandals* in the cradle of the deckchair. 
There but not there. 

(How I) wish you were here…

Dear Mum

Like many parents my mum and dad dutifully plotted their children’s travels around the world by sticking our postcards home to the downstairs toilet wall. Partly geography, partly social history, it’s a family A to Z covering literally everywhere from Aberystwyth (my stay-at-home sister) to Zanzibar (her globe-trotting baby brother). But follow the path (easier when you piss standing up) you’d see the journey comes to an abrupt end. By the U bend…

A section of the downstairs toilet wall rescued before mum moved out.

The sticker-upper-in-chief (our dad) died. And shortly afterwards so did the tradition of sending postcards because, let’s face(book) it,  #holiday is a whole heap easier than buying a stamp and finding a postbox. Trouble is mum – like many women of her generation – has never really done social. “They’d have called in Wrinkly Facebook if it was for us,” she joked. Before dementia wiped the smile off all our faces. She’s still with us though. Her name is Sheila. And this poem is for her.

*This line was inspired by my mum’s sandals sitting on a deckchair in a family photograph I’d looked at a hundred times before but not properly seen. For me poetry is all about seeing things properly.

Mum’s sandals circled in red.

The poem was also written because I’d been asked to pen something on the theme of travel for The Big Live Breakfast Burrito on LinkedIn. If you haven’t listened check it out. I also penned an alternative based on the shows hosts...

Dear Mum

Wish you were here. You’d love Burritonia
Will couldn’t make it so I’m here with Antonia. 
Eric’s the rep a right Tam o Shanter
With a fella called Matt who’s a bit of a Ranter
Then there’s a woman named Van – Vin Extraordinaire
And Simon (and Craig with a chin-ful of hair). 

Day Two. 

The sun’s been quite strong so Eric’s turned pink. 
And Matt’s prone to whingeing so he’s kicked up a stink. 
And Van’s poured a glass of Canarian wine. 
Though it’s barely past breakfast and hasn’t struck nine. 
Now Simon’s got factoids he can’t get the cream
Craig’s knitting his beard like he’s lost in a dream. 
Antonia’s mouthing a mysterious word
And from Will only silence nothing’s been heard. 

Wish you were here. 

The father, the son and the surgical spirit

* wuldres wealdend || woroldáre forgeaf

“Take as long as you like he’s ready for you.”

Shit and surgical spirit. 
There, I’ve said it
It’s only taken 22 years 
A forehead kissed. No words. No tears 
Too airless. Two chests deflated. 
His dressed in half Windsor-knotted Sunday best. But on a Thursday. Curated. 

Dead cool. 
The book tented open at line *seventeen
Steepled where his stomach would have been
His word. Diminished. Unfinished. Small. 

Eviscerated. 

I can magic all this back. Son. Father, wholly ghost. 
But it’s the shit and the spirit I remember the most.
That and the piped music. Bland enough not to wake the dead. 

“Go up to his room. He’s waiting for you,” she said.

The print of him was already smudged at the edges of the unmade bed. 
Sheep hollow filling with snow.
So by mourning there’d be nothing left to show. 
Except a bible-shaped drift

Undisturbed.

Pure white. An allegorical rift
Between Christian and pagan. Beowulf stabbed with a pencil (marked thus * by heart line 17)
Now in the other scene. 

Morning. Curtains open shut then close. Blinking behind the veil as book and body burned. 

* The glorious Almighty, made this man renowned.

This is a poem about loss. About christianity and paganism. And how, ultimately (by which I mean in the end) they are one in the same thing. When my dad died there were two books on his bedside table: Beowulf (Seamus Heaney’s translation of the unknown poet) and the bible.

The patron saint of paint

He spoke to me in a dream on the road to Santiago
The pilgrim father. Ochre boots. Lamp black hair. 
“Any path can be a Camino.
“Just start walking. You’ll know when you get there.”

Now forgive me if I refer to the map. It’s long since I saw the legend - turned the key.
Winsor and Newton artists’ oils.
Humbrol enamels. Sable brushes. Airfix toils. 
Sunday school. St James the Apostle. Follow me…

Back. Past the pond. Iced over. 
Goldfish. Koi. Shubunkin. Locked in
Scarlet lake and silver slowly sparkling
Right at the tar-trunked pole. Under gunmetal transformer. 
Beneath blood red risk-of-death label and verdigris cable. Arc-ing…

To the garden shed

Drab olive door stuck in its dark oak jamb. 
Dull zinc hasp. Chrome padlock bright. 
Entrance to the relic of the saint
Fly-stained glass. Webbed light.
Burnt umber urn. Penumbra of paint. 

Gloss. Emulsion. Undercoat with a crust.
Cans made of plastic and tins turned to rust.
A screw top. Hand sized. Kilner-like. 
Scratchy thread. Preservative of the dead
And transfigurative. 

The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. 

Inside now. Muted. Hushed. Pewter. 
But every colour there ever was shouting:
“Son, you’ll know when you get there.”

Shaving

I see him still, his face in mine.
In this grey hair, that laugher line.
Me on a chair to match his height
Dad shaving in the morning light. 

Reflecting back a boy and man
The man now gone the boy a man
Dip the brush and whip the lather
Foamy-faced now I’m the father

And on the chair stood next to me
A little boy his dad to see
Now wet the razor scrape the skin
From neck to jaw from ear to chin

This morning though I’m all alone
The boy’s grown up and left our home
But when I look into the glass
I never let the moment pass

I see three faces not just mine
Young shavers standing in a line
Across the years and out of time.

The featured image is of my father, Brian, with me and my sister, Joanne, I think on holiday at Swanage, Dorset, in the early 1960s. Clearly the photograph was taken (by my mum I’m guessing) well before I started shaving. But sadly I don’t have anything other than mental images of the daily ritual that unites fathers and sons everywhere (or certainly those who aren’t bearded)!

Swift

First south and west, then north and east, I quarter up the sky.
I’m watching for your sickle wings to scythe across my eye.

I look, I look, then look again and listen for your scream.
But bar the clap of pigeon wings there’s nothing to be seen.

The mewl of buzzards overhead, spirals on upward air.
An aerial feat, though quite a treat, no answer to my prayers.

And still they go unanswered though the grass is growing long.
And the swallows and the martins have joined the heavenly throng.

I love their eaves-slung mudhuts and their lineups on the wire.
But you dear swift, my absent friend, you set my heart on fire.

So I look and look again for gracious airborne crescents.
Vesper flights in evening light please grace us with your presence.

And then you’re here and I thank god for sending you to me
Although I never crooked my neck the vicar’d church to see.

You are my priest of summertime. Your pulpit is the skies.
And when you leave and head back home a bit inside me dies.

The cock cranks north, the wind is cold, your ministry I need.
My neck cranes south beyond the spire I’m wishing you Godspeed.

The modest spire of St Peter’s Church, Coreley, across the orchard from our Shropshire home inspires many of my equally modest scribbles. This poem was written for when the weathervane swings back to the south and heralds the return of one of my favourite birds.