Dochter van de mijnen

This poem is in memory of my auntie Margaret Nagelkerke-Hooper who died in November 2016. She was born in Clay Cross, moved to the Netherlands in 1963 and lived there until she died.

Daughter of the mines
In childhood you played here
Your family steeped in coal
You tasted the dust in the air
Saw the men blackened from work
Their weary post-shift mile
Almost at an end

Smoke of chimney, train, tobacco
clouding the air;
insidious, covering, seeping
into every nook and crack
The nemesis of the wives
their daily battle joined
and most often won but
they knew the war raged on

This was not for you
Not for the star that gleamed
so bright in the greyness
No Long Rows for
the Coronation Queen
who had so much more
to give; so much more to see

In a land so foreign
from the green hills and grimy town
where a new language was no barrier
and a new career mastered
among the windmills and tulips

Long after the soot-stained rows
had turned to dust
not even ghosts of pitmen
walk the streets
Your roots were never torn
but held firm beneath two plots

Dochter van de mijnen
Je hart geraakt door twee landen
Je hield van het eerste;
in het tweede vond je

liefde en vrijheid

Daughter of the mines
In your heart you have two lands
You loved the first;
In the second
you found love and freedom

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

After the Bang

This poem was inspired by an excellent Horizon programme on BBC2

Published in the e-zine "Until the Stars Burn Out" in September 2018.


 

A cloud of
lonely hydrogen
atoms floating in a hazy fog.
Gravity the matchmaker
that brings them together;
in the absolute coldness
of space they bind in pairs;
their numbers grow as
the pressure builds
so too the heat
more gas arrives
falling into the protostar
releasing energy; more heat
and then

LIGHT

Across the void
the universe is lucent;
illuminations like giant glow-worms
in an infinite cave
burning blue
the ultraviolet piercing
the opaque vacuum
as stars are truly born
then quickly die
their glorious heat
fusing atoms
carbon, oxygen, silicon
then exploding;
hypernova scattering
their bounty
of the heavy elements
from which everything is made
concocted in the primordial forge
of the first stars
bringing into being
our sun, our planet and us
for we are stardust
from after the Bang.

Tim Fellows 2017

Locked Away

Sometimes you have to see things from a different viewpoint.

Locked Away

You are locked in your prison
In the dark and the cold
Millennia pass by but
You never grow old

Your power ne'er fades
It's just locked away
You wait and you wait
For your liberty day

Above you the humans
Discover the flame
That ignites their fires
And changes the game

First they used wood
But then they found
Shining black diamonds
Just lying around

That burnt with such heat
So they dug down
To reach for more treasure
Found under the ground

Yet deeper they went
Extracting the coal
Millions of tons
Brought from that black hole

You feel the vibrations
As they hack and they claw
You wait for a crack
Just one tiny flaw

You begin your escape
Silent at first
Invisible, hissing
Trying to burst

To open the hole
So you can be free
You spread on the ceiling
Until you can see

A flickering light
By which the men hew
You edge ever closer
To see what they do

Then you meet the light
The life giving fire
Not understanding
What will transpire

As your energy's freed
Into a great burst
Of heat and light power
So quickly dispersed

They had not a chance
Those desperate men
You couldn't be seen
They didn't know when

You would come calling
The dangerous cousin
Of their friend the coal;
Men killed by the dozen

And now you are gone
But the lads from the mine
Are trapped in the rock
Locked away for all time

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

Ten minutes - in memory of Jim Hooper

Ten Minutes

In the long history of mining there are many large scale disasters that made the news - scores of lives taken in a single, horrible incident. But there are also thousands of individual accidents where men were taken. On 21st February 1935 my great-uncle Jim Hooper went to work at Parkhouse No 7 colliery in Clay Cross (known as the Catty Pit) and never came back. I did some family history research and uncovered the full story in a newspaper article of the time. This poem is a simple retelling of that article - the thing that was so striking for me was that he was so close to the end of his shift.I had the honour of reading this at the National Coal Mining Museum on June 8th 2017

"Just one more tub
Give it a shove
Ten minutes we'll be done
Get out of here
at ten o'clock
And we'll be going home"

But fate had plans
For a mining man
No journey home for Jim
His pals were scarcely
yards away
when the roof caved in on him

Thirty tons of
rock and coal
A groan was all they heard
His comrades dug
and cleared in vain
their desperation shared

The doctor came
down in the mine
Four hours it took in all
But life had gone
when he was found
The doctor made the call

Around the quiet
grave they stood
His grieving widowed mother
Teddy, George and
My grandad Bill
His three surviving brothers

His sister, girlfriend,
working pals
they came to say goodbye
Just a lad
a score in years
They must have wondered why..

In a Clay Cross pit 
he was lost
One more brave mining lad
Swallowed whole
in the quest for coal
What life may he have had?

Ten minutes more
that was all
Jim would have walked away
From the face
back to his mum
To live another day

When he'd return
to that dark place
To hew the black coal seam
Day on day
his life to pass
Ten minutes killed the dream

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

In memory of James Ernest Hooper 1915-1935

The Tees flows slower today

The Tees Flows Slower Today

The Tees flows slower today
From Cross Fell to its wide bay

The Black Poplar stands less proud today
Its branches in tribute languidly sway

The music has less joy today
The whistling gently fades away

The kipplers do not bat today
In the Rud yard where they play

The world is a lesser place today
in many ways we can't convey

The world is a lesser place 
the kipplers do not bat
the music has less joy
the Black Poplar stands less proud
and the Tees flows slower today

In memory of Vin Garbutt (1947-2017)

I've not been following folk music for long but I can spot the real deal when I see and hear it. Vin's style was truly unique, both musically and in the "inbetween bits" that separate the best from the rest. His meandering, slightly surreal, gentle humour would be punctuated by his own songs and his interpretations of other people's that would often carry a powerful message that was heightened by the contrast to his humourous, laid-back intros.

I'll lift a glass of red wine for your tonight Vin. Cheers, and thank you.

Kabul

On May 31st 2017 a massive truck bomb exploded in Kabul, killing 90 and injuring many more.

As we reel from our own atrocity and we argue about red, blue, green or yellow it barely registered on our consciousness. Yet this occurs regularly in that city and whatever proxy wars are being fought in their land it's the 4.6 million people of Kabul, most of whom just want to live their lives like normal people, who bear the brunt.



(c) Reuters

Kabul
If a city could speak, what would you say?
You have witnessed so much
Your buildings, your people have come and gone
But do you have words for us today?
Empires rise and fall
Conquerers themselves defeated
But you remain, indefatigable, ever present
From the east, the west, the north and south
they come to control you
to lay waste or to ply trade
to push their idea of God or simply plunder

In old Hindi texts they called you
an ideal city, a vision of paradise set in the mountains
Well, they did not see you today.
they would not understand a truck
they would not conceive a bomb
they would not describe as paradise
a child torn into parts and ripped from this world
not ideal Kabul, as you well know
All for yet another pointless cause
another tribe just seeking to control
whatever the cost

In the scheme of things, Kabul
Are we mere specks in time?
Unnoticed, flickering into brief bright light
extinguished without thought or consequence?
Until the angel of death truly arrives
as atom splits and you can
finally rest in peace

If you could speak, Kabul, what would you say?
Do you have words for us, today?

À la recherche du temps passé

Written as an exercise at the Poetry Business Workshop on 27th May 2017

The town is Pacy-sur-Eure in Normandy.

À la recherche du temps passé

I'm here again, I know I was here.
In this petite ville en France
where, as a boy, I culturally exchanged

I know it is here and it seems familiar
Le café, la mairie, the tricolore 
languidly waving over la place
to gently remind us of its symbolic power

I hear the unmistakable sound of the language
I so nearly speak
I catch words and phrases
As my mind catches the images of schooldays

Philippe and I; here, probably;
then I wonder where he is now
and did he have similar vague souvenirs
of a mining village and unfamiliar food

I know I was here, and yet
it resembles so many French towns
dotted around like tiny planets
orbiting the shining City of Light

Smells of coffee, Gauloises, pâtisserie
evoke and poke at my memory
Yet somehow it evades,
its shadowy form defying coalescence
as if fragmented by time

The bells sound in the church
the boy rides past
the men argue jokingly over their beers
and I must leave

But I was here, I know I was.

(c) Tim Fellows 2017