The Decoy Bird

This was created in basic narrative form at a storytelling workshop at Towersey Festival led by the brilliant Debs Newbold and refined into a poem later. I've recently been reading Charles Causley and there are some nods to him in here too.

The Decoy Bird

Soldiers were coming - from the West
Nowhere had we to hide
except an oak tree or a ditch
there was no time to decide.
The leafy tree grew high and broad
so we began to climb
when a bird appeared, so very strange,
with plumage so sublime.

It shimmered blue, its crest was green;
night black its pointed beak;
it opened up its golden wings
and then began to speak:
"This tree not safe, come not in here,
your steps you must retrace!"
and so the dank foul smelling trench
became our hiding place.

The soldiers came, their crunching boots
stopped by the old oak tree;
We thought that they must surely find
my cousin Jack and me.
When suddenly a shout rang out
and then a gunshot too;
I saw when glancing at the sky
a flash of glistening blue.

The bird was dead, the soldiers laughed
and carried it away
But what they saw was not so strange
on that enchanted day;
They just saw a plain game bird
not sparkling in the sun
They left our land, we left the dyke
and to our home did run.

Years passed by but I ne'er forgot
the exquisite Decoy Bird
who saved our lives and died for us
yet we never said a word.
And now I'm old, my time is up
I wait to breathe my last
My mind is filled with memories
of my forgotten past...

An image flashed across my sight
from when I was a child
A fallen bird on the garden path -
my tired old face just smiled
I'd put that bird back in its nest
though I could not have seen
Its blackened beak, its aurate wings;
its crest of radiant green

I closed my eyes one final time
one crowning shallow breath
The long hid mystery was now solved
so thus I met with death.
But as my soul rose to the sky
I saw my golden wings
I opened up my jet-dark beak
and I began to sing.

"At last my story can be heard
for I'm the angelic Decoy Bird."

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

The Ghost Of Emily Wilding Davison.....

The Ghost Of Emily Wilding Davison Goes to Chesterfield Bowling Club on Hearing That They Have Voted to Not Admit Women

 BBC report
 
The outraged, resolute phantom
descended on the town.
Made a beeline for the Bowls Club
and flattened down their crown

She glided round the trim green lawn
diverting all the bowls.
She took a trip to the countryside
and brought back fourteen moles

She flew into the clubhouse
and put laxative in the beer.
She listened to the members chat;
wondering what they could fear.

About a missing chromosome
and the ability to give birth?
She'd died a hundred years before
to allow women to prove their worth.

As she sat there eavesdropping
she stopped being quite so mad.
And just felt pity there instead
because they were merely.. sad.

She allowed herself a giggle
at the panic it would bring
if a transgender bowler
applied to join their gang.

They'd all join her soon enough,
those cantankerous old men.
And their grandsons would vote for
not just old cocks, but hens

So she gathered up the fourteen moles
and restored their grassy crown.
But before she left she made sure
she put the loo seats down.

Emily Davison, suffragette

Winter's Journey

This poem started as an exercise from a poetry workshop in Rossington on 12th July 2017. It is based on words taken from the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

I woke up from my darkest sleep
My skin by downy quilt caressed
A frozen landscape from my window sweeps
to the snow-covered woods so dark and deep

The stony lane banks round the bend
The house retreats as I move on
Fear and uncertainty I must forfend
As on my thoughtful, passive way I wend

Far distant bells toll on the wind
The grey, damp church cold comfort now
Where once my hopes and dreams were pinned
A melodious hint for those who've sinned

What is the course that I intend?
No stopping now, no going back
After the village lonely miles extend
The journey starts, or does it end?


First undrafted version

I woke up from my darkest sleep
My face caressed by downy pillow
A lovely frozen landscape from my window sweeps
to the snow-covered woods so dark and deep
The journey starts, or does it end?

Charles Causley - a Cornish poet

Charles Causley CBE, FRSL was born in Launceston, Cornwall 100 years ago on August 24th 1917 and died on November 4th 2003. He was a writer, poet and teacher.

Although popular as a children's writer, the accessible nature of a lot of his poetry means that it is hard to distinguish between his children's poems and those for adults. His guiding principle can best be summed up by; "while there are some good poems which are only for adults, because they pre-suppose adult experience in their readers, there are no good poems which are only for children." This shows a great respect for, and lack of condescension towards, children that in my opinion would have made him a very good teacher. 

He is perhaps best known for his poem "Timothy Winters", a sharply observed piece with some startling imagery that must resonate strongly with anyone who has taught at primary schools. Whether every class has a Timothy Winters in it or not, every school that is within striking distance of a working class neighbourhood almost certainly will.

He was very well loved and respected in the poetry community - his closest friend in that world, maybe surprisingly, was Ted Hughes - and he was considered by all who met him to be a gentle, kind man who, although private, would happily discuss poetry, life, books and teaching with friends. His work was not really received as well academically as perhaps it deserved but in recent years this is changing and he is starting to become the subject of an increasing number of academic papers, publications and dissertations either as the sole subject or alongside contemporaries such as Philip Larkin and RS Thomas. Hughes and Larkin suggested his appointment as Poet Laureate which could have happened after John Betjeman died in 1994 - maybe he was considered too old or not heavyweight enough and in fact Hughes was given the honour. 

He served in the Navy in World War 2 and wrote poems of his experiences there that would also have been influenced by the fact that his father was killed as a result of ill health caused during the first war. The poem "Convoy" is a stunning short piece about a fellow sailor who was killed in battle. "Angel Hill", one of my personal favourites, is a very strange and unsettling piece about a return from war of two sailors.

Much of his work is influenced by his native county, where he lived all his life, and by the local folk music tradition. His house in Launceston, Cyprus Well, is owned by the Charles Causley Trust, a registered charity, that exists to celebrate his life and work and promote new literature activity in the community and region in which he lived. It is open to the public on request at limited times and is used as a venue for poetry readings and celebrations, not least of which is an annual festival celebrating his life and work.

His work has been picked up by a distant relative, folk singer and Devonian Jim Causley. His 2013 CD "Cyprus Well", sets some of his poems to music and he followed this up in 2016 with a CD of his children's poems "I Am The Song".

One of his final works, Eden Rock, has clear echoes of some of Thomas Hardy's work. It deals with life, nostalgia and death in 20 beautifully crafted lines and ends with a single line of such brilliance and simplicity that you almost want to give up writing yourself.

References:

The Charles Causley Trust and Cyprus Well

Obituary by his friend Susan Hill, November 2003

Charles Causley reads Eden Rock

Jim Causley's website

The Long-Leggedy Man

The Long-Leggedy Man

There is a man who stands so tall
I don't know how he walks at all

He wears blue clothes and a smart red hat
I don't know how he walks like that

He says hello and lifts his trilby
And says "good day" to the folks of Balby

He has long legs but tiny feet
How he gets around has got me beat!

It would be great to be that high
Up there with the birds that fly

Around your head and your waving flags
As tiny kids run between your legs

Long-leggedy man,  this poem's for you
the one who walks like we can't do

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

Who'd Have Thought It?

A response to a response to the Charlottesville incident

Nigel cannot believe that he sees
(his shock and wonder absolute)
flags of slavery dancing in the breeze
a white man's defiant jackboot salute

In the land of the free, the fascists rise
Thoughts translated into deeds
So, Nigel, why are you surprised?
Who'd have thought it? Who indeed. 

Tim Fellows 2017

The Photograph

There are two versions of this poem - the draft (at the bottom) has been around a while and then I rewrote it after a workshop in Derby with Jamie Thrasivoulou where he asked us to take a poem and alter it in style, use different words and even maybe in meaning.

I'm not sure which I prefer so I've put both of them here.

Diseases of the lung continue to affect ex-miners to this day and of course are still a major problem in the remaining mines around the world.

The Photograph

The man she looked at in the frame
Looked back, half-smiling on that day
Dressed up in his best suit and tie
with his new bride, perhaps a little coy,
They seemed so very far away

So many years spent down that hole
Grafting for their daily bread
Out of the local school on Friday
Descending in the cage on Monday
An ale or two his reward (he said)

Loose forward for the village team
No opponent gave him fear
The bigger they came, the harder he hit
Didn't want paying, preferred the pit
And liked to share a post-match beer

The child, when it came, was a boy
Looked exactly like his dad
"He's not doin' what I did,
he's got your brains, not mine!"
And he was right, he had.

Little David never went below
He was sensitive, smart and shy
The miner was proud when he saw his lad
But he never let him see his dad
With a salty tear in his rheumy eye

The last strike came as a bitter blow
It was brutal, it was hard
He stuck it out a full year and more
He watched his village split to the core
But he never betrayed his Union card

One day she said "You OK love?
You're struggling with that cough;
You don't seem right to me at all."
He grunted back "I''ll be raight,
Better weather'll see it off "

But it wasn't right, not at all
Those tiny specks of colliery dust
Had seeped into his inner soul
Had shrunk the big man down in size
His body and his spirit crushed

His hand and hers as he passed away
Clasped together with unspoken love
She only saw it in his eyes
As they closed for that final time
She hoped that they'd meet again above

His work was what had defined him
The colliery was part of his life
But it took it from her cruelly short
The damn photograph was no comfort;
it was just a young man and his wife.

The Photograph (draft)

She gazed at the photograph;
in the frame, in her hands
A young man and his wife;
smiling, barely recognisable
in their post-war Sunday best

A strong man who worked at the face
for so many years,
straight from school, 
to feed his wife and son
and to have the odd beer (or six)

He loved his rugby
he could have been a pro
they said he preferred the village team;
hard as nails and liked a scrap
then shook hands in the bar

"No son of mine" he'd said
"Is goin' down that pit"
And he didn't
he went down to Oxford
A rare tear glimpsed in the collier's eye
at his boy's ceremony

First out and last back in '84
when times were hard
they fought and defied
they stuck it out to the bitter end
Aye, the bitter end.

Then came the cough
the lack of breath
She could hear him wheezing
in the night
While she lay awake

It wasn't quick, it wasn't nice
the rugged man brought to his knees
his skin almost translucent at the end
her eyes wet and his closed
as they held each others' hands

Coal gave him pride
Its dust took it away
As time ticks by she feels
the wrenching void as she recalls
the man in the photograph

Darkness Falls in London

Darkness Falls in London

Shimmering, bright, full of life
Our bustling, noisy, cosmopolitan hub
The jewel in England's shining crown

As night descends so rises the light
The mighty towers of the Docklands
disgorge their worker bees into the dusk

Emptied, they point at the stars
extinguished by the flickering lights
of Covent Garden and the West End
that attract the hedonistic and curious.

Ant-like, they criss-cross the bridges;
Those sparkling guardians of passing boats
Bright too with revellers

Further west the night shrouds
a blackened tower, its skull-eyes
piercing us, accusing;
holding within those lost souls.
Waiting for the dawn
to haunt our thoughts again


(c) Tim Fellows 2017

The Little Tear

Theresa shed a little tear

When she realized she'd not won

We played the world's tiniest violin

and peeled a minuscule onion

I shed more than a tiny tear

for the homeless and the poor

for my European brothers

who'll soon be shown the door

For the doctors, nurses, NHS

I cried 'til no tears came

But Murdoch will be laughing

as the foreigners take the blame

As HS2 tears through our land

As we let the market rip

I'm now so dehydrated

I should be on a drip

So when you play at politics

And it doesn't quite come off

Remember the people recognise

whose snout is in the trough

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

Sonnets in remembrance of mining

As part of the Poetry Business workshop on May 27th 2017 we were set the task of writing a sonnet - the subject was that of burying an old life and starting afresh.

The link to one of my themes - the end of mining - was obvious but I decided to start with something else and work towards it. I ended up with 3 sonnets, the final one being the one that addressed the challenge. Only 151 more to go to catch up with old Shakey.

At the bottom of the page is a description of what constitutes a sonnet - at least an English, or Shakesperean one.

Miner's Sonnet #1

The cage door slams and down the shaft we fall
The rope that holds our lives the first set trap
Of many heartless ways that death may call
To transport us in its eternal wrap 

The roof that hangs low o'er my lamp-lit head
May just decide to slip and down-ward drop
The work's too hard for me to dwell on dread
That comes from cracking sounds of failing prop

We hew and hack the black and shining seam
As with no warning firedamp slyly creeps
One fatal spark will light the gassy stream
A man is gone, his lonely widow weeps

Though peril tracks the collier's daily grind
We are within its thrall of pay entwined


Miner's Sonnet #2

With comrades brave to work each day I'd go
Joking as back and forth the wit and craic
We'd scarce be fear'd or cowed or weakness show
We knew our brothers always had our back

Communities were built on mines and coal
One whole and nourished, fed by that dark pit
The bond we had held tight within our soul
Strong as atoms no government could split

With pride we marched together as one kin
In war the ranks of blue against us stood
Knowing that should we either lose or win
We'd pay for our revolt in flesh and blood

Yet danger lurked and lives were harsh and tough
The death of coal did come not soon enough

Miner's Sonnet #3

The strike is lost; so back to work we go
The fire has gone; the will to fight is slain
The comradeship continues down below
But things will never be the same again 

There's coal down there and they all know the price
But no-one counts the cost of human pain
No jobs, no hope, a village slowly dies 
Our leaders arrogant in their disdain

A collier's spirit I will surely find
At school I failed; or was it failing me
I'll not allow despair to rule my mind
Can I learn a new trade at fifty-three?

Leave behind the only life I've ever known
My future I must plan and I must own

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

Sonnets

The Shakespearean, or English , sonnet has three quatrains (4 liners) and a couplet (2 liner) which follow the rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The couplet plays a key role, ideally forming a conclusion, confirmation, or even the opposite of the previous three verses. In Shakespeare's sonnet #130, the quatrains compare the mistress unfavourably with natural beauty. However the couplet refutes all that went before as the writer declares his love.

     My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
     Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
     If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
     If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
     I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
     But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
     And in some perfumes is there more delight
     Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
     I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
     That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
     I grant I never saw a goddess go;
     My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnets also use iambic pentameter - here's a quick explanation from Wikipedia

An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written as:

da DUM

The da-DUM of a human heartbeat is the most common example of this rhythm.

A standard line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

Straightforward examples of this rhythm can be heard in the opening line of Shakespeare's Sonnet #12:

When I do count the clock that tells the time

and in John Keats' To Autumn

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells