I was asked to be a guest of the inimitable Eric Doyle on The Crux Cast which is streamed live on LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. If you’re interested in what makes me tick – and fancy a bit of a hoot – here’s an insight into my lifelong passion for words. Pull up a beanbag, pour yourself a drink….
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.
A birthday poem
I was asked to pen a birthday poem to celebrate the first anniversary of The Big Live Breakfast Burrito – perhaps the weirdest, most eclectic but nonetheless wonderful LinkedIn live you’ll ever see. Follow the Burrito link to see the reading in context. Here it is with captions in not-so-splendid isolation.
Lost in the woods – a Catholic shrine
This is a story that resonates with what is happening today. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio Norfolk and features an interview with my good friend and former BBC colleague Conal O’Donnell.
It’s the extraordinary story of Paul Hoda’c who fled to the UK during World War Two after his native Czechoslovakia was overrun by the Nazis. He settled here and as reminder of both his faith and the forests of his native country he built a Roman Catholic shrine near Dereham in Norfolk.
Here Conal explains how his own family is connected to the strange story of the shrine in the woods.
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.
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…
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.
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 laughter 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)!