National Poetry Month 2021 Writing Challenge

National Poetry Month 2021 Writing Challenge

Here are links to all the poems I wrote for the April 2021 National Poetry Month Ekphrastic Writing Challenge, set by Paul Brookes using art work by Jane Cornwell, John Law and Kerfe Roig.

Wikipedia describes the word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, as follows: "it comes from the Greek for the description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined."

In this case I have sometimes done this, but mainly I've allowed the art to inspire a poem around the subject of the piece, often tangential. 

I don't usually create and publish poems at speed so I consider all of these as drafts and they will almost certainly be edited, revised or left in their original form if they are beyond help. I've decided to look back at each of them and describe what they are about and why I wrote them - if I can figure it out. 

 

April 1st - mummy's gone

My immediate reaction, looking back at this, is how arresting the drawing is. The child in the poem is perhaps younger than the one in the picture. Children, and indeed adults, have a place they go when things have got really bad and this is how I saw this drawing. The event itself isn't obvious - more likely to be the mother leaving than passing away, I think. I deliberately used lower case throughout, and no punctuation, to emphasis the age of the narrator. I think this one can work without the drawing and just needs maybe a little tweaking. 

April 2nd -  La Luna

I'm not sure whether the artist intended this to look like a corrupted moon, but that's what I saw.
The form is a sonnet, with some half-rhymes. These are often used when something is amiss. The turn isn't really obvious, probably comes when you realise it's only the narrator that can see this. Is the narrator mad, or is everyone else not seeing the problem? I think the poem can stand without the picture, but the picture adds to it. It's hard to edit a sonnet, but I may need to have a look at this one again.  

April 3rd - Chysanthemums

I did a bit of background research on this flower and it raised the question of flowers as a symbol - often opposite things in different cultures. In this case of a failed marriage. A simple 2 stanza ABBA rhyming scheme in iambic pentameter. I quite like this one. It's miserable, though. That's 3 doom laden poems in a row. 

April 4th - Digging a Duck Blind at Spurn

I like this one. I've never been to Spurn but I have a mental image of it, and I quite like the idea of places that are remote, and the emptiness of river deltas and marsh land near the sea. I'd jotted a few things down and then the first line came to me, and I wanted to hook the poem around it. So much that I used it twice. The idea of land masses ebbing and flowing over long time periods also appeals, although now it seems that rising sea levels will mean this only goes one way. It's a free verse poem, and I think still needs some small tweaks, but it's a keeper.

April 5th - Orbiting

This was the first day I struggled to get something out. The art work intrigued me, and I wanted to write something about having fractured images. The second one (the alien one) came first and I gratefully wrote it down and kept it. It's not particularly original, though. The first one is closer to what I wanted to say, but will be something I may work on again / change / expand rather than keep. 

April 6th - Homeless

This definitely feels like a draft - it's too much like prose in parts and isn't the best homelessness poem I've written. The ideas are OK I think - there are two ideas in one poem though (the fragility of a secure job and home, the reality of homelessness), and maybe it's best to concentrate on one. It's also structured into stanzas, but whether it needs that or not I don't know. 

April 7th - Granite 

This one's nice and short, and I think with a bit of work it could be OK. The subject is definitely that of experience and wisdom being ignored. I realised after I'd written it that, buried in the poem, it might be more personal than I imagined. Despite how good the drawing is, I was struggling a bit for ideas at first so I used the technique of just writing down any words that came into my head when I looked at the image and then incorporating them into the poem. 

April 8th - Guacamole

This simple painting of the ingedients of guacamole made me think immediately of the markets in Spain - the non-standardised vegetables and fruits. I can almost smell them. This has the feel of a draft - more prose than poem - but I like some of the bits. Probably too much exposition at the end. 

April 9th - Selkie

This is inspired as much by Nancy Kerr's song Fragile Water as it is by Jane's artwork. Selkie is the name given to creatures who shape shift between seal and human forms and is Scots in origin. In many of the folk tales the selkie is female but I decided to twist that. If they lose their seal skin they can be stuck as humans. It's written in Anglo-Saxon rhythm, which relies heavily on alliteration and is better when read aloud than it is on the page. I quite like this one, but it probably needs some work. This will entail recording and listening back as much as reading it. If you know Beowulf, there are some references or "borrowings" from that too.

April 10th - Ethereal Blue

This is definitely a bit different but I'm not sure I like it or even understand what it's about. Still, it's what came to me when I saw the painting. It feels like a dream I may have had, although I don't remember any dream exactly like this. I also use the word "wherein" which I never use. I think I'll park this one...

April 11th - Sylvia

Back on more familiar and structured territory with a villanelle. I had recently watched the (not very good) film about Sylvia Plath and this image, and her story and relationship with Ted Hughes, triggered this poem. She wrote one of the best villanelles - A Mad Girl's Love Song - and the topic of this poem lends itself to an obsessive form. I'm always pleased when a structured poem works so this one will definitely be kept.

April 12th - Pebble Bird

I like this little sonnet. It's not Shakespearean, as it's in 8 syllables, not 10, and it breaks the iambic rhythm a bit. I like the half and near rhymes that stop it being too sing-song. The idea of us all being stuck in a certain limited life, that has its own beauty, until we are washed away is quite nicely handled.

April 13th - The Harbour

This is the best of the bunch so far. A free verse poem that, unusually, started in the middle and worked outwards. I normally either find a line that ends up being first or last, or I just write prose, chop it back and add in the rhythm later. I started with "The tide has lapped to the wooden steps

as if it wants to climb and roam the town." I also like the new first line that appeared later. The last line is the only one that really links to the painting but it still works - there may be better ones but it's intriguing and, actually, appropriate to the numbness of what has occurred. The idea of the tide being a metaphor for the expectation of what should have happened, and its recession matching the reality is pretty good. Very pleased overall. 

 

April 14th - Sheffield 1979

 

This is definitely a draft of something I want to develop - there are some good lines and the sentiment is right but this poem isn't there in either rhythm or structure.

 

April 15th -  The Old Tree

Inspired by Jane Cornwell's grim image, this poem treads familiar ground in terms of mortality, but think it manages to avoid being too much of a cliche. Whether it stands alone from the painting is interesting. It only alludes to the hanging tangentially, but the theme of getting old, seeing your friends disappear and having new life continue around you is relevant. At least for some of us. 

April 16th - 孤独な月

If I'm struggling with creating something from a prompt, I find a haiku is a good option to get something flowing. That's what I did here - I didn't know which art work to pick either so I wrote a haiku for each. I then thought, why not just create a sequence - this is a variant of a renga form. As with haiku, the true renga needs multiple people and has more rules than you can shake a stick at regarding content and structure. I used a 5-7-5 followed by a 7-7-7 and did at least acknowledge the seasonal nature of this Japanese poetic form. I think it's turned out OK. I also hope that Google has got that title right and it doesn't mean "Disenchanted helicopter"

April 17th - Back from Shopping

Not a poem, really. After so many depressing poems I felt I had to write something a bit more light-hearted. Although it does have a death in it. I don't think this piece will go much further, though. It just helped me to have a bit of a break from the serious stuff. 

April 18th -  She Breathes

A COVID poem - not much to say about it really. I don't know how the NHS front line staff kept going at the worst points in the crisis, as they risked their own health watching people struggle to breathe. The poem rhymes in two ways - the internal ABAB and the rhyming of each of the extra fifth lines with each other. It also uses one of Paul Brookes' favourite tricks of using the title as the first line. It is a bit clunky in parts but it might be worth trying to rework the bits that don't work. 

April 19th - Toads

The idea of a toadstool actually being a toad's stool triggered this poem. Of course the title invokes Larkin and there may be a hint of him in there. I quite like this one, although it isn't necessarily very layered or original. 

April 20th - Folly

I decided with this one to research the folly in the painting and include its story in the poem. The second image gave me the characters. I'm not quite sure what the poem is trying to say, but maybe that's the point, since it's maybe a folly itself. It needs a little bit of work but might be worth keeping. I'll revisit it later. It sparked a discussion when I posted it on the workshop facebook page regarding "the dog and he" - it's gramatically correct but sounds a bit forced linguistically, although it scans nicely. The poem starts off in iambic but then breaks into free verse. I need to make my mind up...

April 21st - Art

This appears to be a mining poem and it was inspired in part by a drawing of a miner by John Law. However its main thrust is around the concept of art, what it is, and who judges it. the same may well apply to poetry. I quite like this one as a stand-alone piece as it is but probably won't develop it further. Warning: Contains swearing!

April 22nd - Strange

This is the most deeply personal poem of the 30 in this challenge. Jane Cornwell's drawing happened to coincide with the date on which both my Mum and Dad died. I probably would have made any artwork connect with this, subconsciously, but it seemed very appropriate to put the idea of this poem down on paper. Electronically, at least. I don't think I'll change it much, if at all. From a poetic standpoint I like it's simple structure and the bracketing of the core of the poem with the matching, although not identical, start and end lines.

April 23rd - Magic Afoot

Shakespeare's birthday inspired this, and it borrows shamelessly from the Scottish play. My words do have links to Kerfe Roig's collage, though. Not much to the poem other than that really. I'll leave it up to you as to whether the interleaving of two poems works or not.

April 24th - Snipe

I had to resort to haiku again, but this time it's just 3 standard 5-7-5 form haiku. I quite like the idea here of linking the snipe and the sniper. I may have to extend it outside the haiku form, but maybe I'll leave it. 

April 25th - April Shower

I quite like this - I'm not sure why it's laid out as two line stanzas but it seems OK. There may be some parts that could be refined - for example I'm not sure the snake simile works.

April 26th - Apparition

If I remember, I was struggling to connect with the 3 pieces on offer so this was almost a stream of consciousness based on what I saw in Kerfe Roig's interpretation of the Tarot card. I'm not really happy with what came out so this will probably join the pile of "never rans". 

April 27th - The Trap

This is written in the "Mirrored Fib" form, based on the Fibonacci Sequence. The Fibonacci Sequence is a mathematical sequence seen often in nature, and many spider's webs have the spiral form linked to it. See the blog for full details. The form requires you to expand from extremely small lines (1 syllable) to very long ones then back again - it's easy to expand out and much harder to slam the brakes on. I used internal rhyming on the long lines to make them sound less like prose. I'm not totally happy with the words at the end as it still sounds a little forced. I'll keep this one but probably have another go at the ending. 

April 28th - The Hill

A strange ghostly one, written in blank verse. Definitely needs work, or perhaps rewriting in another form. The Latin's probably wrong too. 

April 29th - Ikaros

Ikaros is the Greek spelling of Icarus, who in mythology flew too close to the sun in the wings his father made of feathers and wax. He fell to his death. The birds in the painting are waxwings (see what I did there?) and this triggered the story. The poem is intended to be in the style of Constantine Cavafy, a Greek poet of the early 20th Century. Or, strictly speaking, in the style of one of Ian Parks' translations of Cavafy. I quite like it, but can probably ramp up the Cavafyness a bit in places. 

April 30th - The Death of Dignity

The painting for this seemed Victorian so I decided to go for a Romantic-style ballad form with personification of human traits, where a famous example would be Shelley's Masque of Anarchy. The rhymes are not always full, and sometimes quite tenous, but this is deliberate to keep it from being too smooth and to focus on the somewhat grim message. It's appropriate as I had a friendly Twitter exchange yesterday with someone who said we should just all believe in Britain and not worry about being exploited and robbed by the ruling class.

Here is my personal ranking of the poems

Ranking

1 - The Harbour
2 - Strange
3 - Ikaros
4 - The Old Tree
5 - Digging a Duck Blind At Spurn
6 - Sylvia
7 - April Shower
8 - Pebble Bird
9 - Chrysanthemums
10 - La Luna

11 - Art
12 - Granite
13 - Toads
14 - Folly
15 - The Death of Dignity
16 - Selkie
17 - She Breathes
18 - Snipe
19 - 孤独な月
20 - The Trap

21 - mummy's gone 
22 - Guacamole
23 - Sheffield 1979
24 - The Hill
25 - Apparition
26 - Magic Afoot
27 - Back from Shopping
28 - Orbiting
29 - Ethereal blue
30 - Homeless

Ten all-time favourite poets

Recently I was interviewed by Paul Brookes and I made the statement than no living poet would get into my top 10. When I read this back I thought - is that really true? Who are my top 10?

In the end I went for non-living (a.k.a. dead) poets. 

I was going to do this "in no particular order" but I decided in the end to get off the fence.These poets are not just poets who would appear in many such lists as they are genuinely great but speak directly to me and influence my own work - some that inspired me when I started and some whose work I have become more aware of and are increasingly growing in influence.

But hang on, you say - where are Hardy, Keats, Milton, Byron, TS Eliot? What about Shakespeare? I quickly discovered that getting down to just 10 was going to hard and I had to think about whether their work influenced me directly or influenced poetry as a whole and whether I actually liked the poems rather than just admiring them for their technicality. I also had to decide whether it mattered if the poet themselves were likeable. I decided that I had to like the poetry but didn't worry about whether I would invite the poet to dinner.

Five of the poets pretty much wrote themselves in but then it started getting tricky. In the end I've gone with my gut instinct and used a ranking technique that I use at work. Ask yourself - whose poetry would I miss if it didn't exist? Keep comparing contenders until you have you cut-off.

Oh, and by the way Tim, where are the women? Yes, I know. I apologise in particular to Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou, who were both contenders up until the last few knock-out rounds.

I would also like to mention Pablo Neruda and C.P. Cavafy. With these poets, you are looking at translations of their work so you have a combination of the original work and the translator. I have no doubt that in both cases the work itself contributes greatly, but in the case of Cavafy I don't think the older translations do him justice and it's Ian Parks' recent translations and insights that mean I am starting to feel Cavafy's influence in my work already.

Anyway, here goes, counting down from 10 to 1.

10. Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

A difficult and perhaps controversial choice to start with. Larkin was not, at least in his public persona, a likeable figure and his private life had some quirks too. Sometimes his poems are acerbic and you aren't quite sure if his targets deserve it. However, I can't help but like his work. The poems are deeply layered and beautifully constructed yet you can get an immediate hit from them even before you start to analyse and unpick them.

"What are days for?

Days are where we live.   

They come, they wake us   

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:   

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor   

In their long coats

Running over the fields." - ("Days")


Personal favourite -  Aubade

9. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

A deeply flawed genius who met a self-inflicted early death but who left behind work of such verbal beauty that he shines like a beacon in 20th Century poetry. Without the intellectual pretencion of Eliot or the variation in form and tone of Auden he nonetheless becomes a favourite of many because of the sheer joy at the sounds his words make when read out loud.

"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."   (from "Fern Hill") 

Personal favourite - Fern Hill

8 - William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

We now enter a run of "Romantic" poets with the pre-eminent figure in the movement. You cannot escape his influence and he epitomises what the general public still consider poetry to be if you ask them. Ask them for a poem and they'll probably name "I wandered lonely as a cloud" even if that's all they know of it. And if you've been brought up with that view then it has to rub off somewhere in your work. He was technically gifted to the point of showing off - writing his autobiography in blank verse, for example. You can read his work and it's like taking a warm bath - very comforting, even if it doesn't particularly challenge you.

"Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls

That they might answer him.—And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,

And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause

Of silence such as baffled his best skill:" - (from "There was a boy", part of The Prelude)


Personal favourite - Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

7 - Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Shelley was the most radical of the Romantics and his work remains quoted to this day - "Ye are many, they are few" from The Masque of Anarchy will no doubt ring a bell. It could be argued that he was a champagne socialist, railing against authority from his villa in Italy and suggesting that people should allow themselves to be slaughtered in protests rather than use violence, while not suggesting he himself do it. However his words were seditious (see the example below) and none of this detracts from the power of his poetry, linguistically and thematically.

 "An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;

Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,

But leechlike to their fainting country cling

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.

A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;

An army, whom liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;

Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;

A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day." - ("England in 1819")

Personal favourite - The Masque of Anarchy

6 - John Clare (1793-1864)

John Clare is a lesser known poet of the Romantic era but penned a number of lovely pastoral poems inspired by the area he grew up and lived in. He was born into a working class family and was an agricultural worker himself in Northamptonshire, not far from where my ancestors on my grandma Rita's side did the same thing in that same era. After early success he couldn't sustain he began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness and by his 40's was in a mental hospital. He was the opposite in many ways of Shelley, accepting the lot in life given to him and his ancestors despite the authorities ripping up centuries of tradition in land enclosures and ploughing of pastures. As workers drifted to the towns Clare wrote passionately about a lost way of life, many while he was institutionalised.

"I ne’er was struck before that hour

   With love so sudden and so sweet,

Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower

   And stole my heart away complete.

My face turned pale as deadly pale,

   My legs refused to walk away,

And when she looked, what could I ail?

   My life and all seemed turned to clay." - ("First Love")

Personal favourite - I am 

5 - Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

Heaney's work, for me, is characterised by his ability to write with complexity and depth yet engage you in thinking about what he is saying without it being inaccessible or preachy. The literary critic Helen Vendler described him as “a poet of the in-between.” He was sympathetic to the Republican cause yet never definitively espoused it - he lifted stones and let us see what was underneath. He wrote in the language of his people's oppressors - to a great depth, and the point where he was able to produce probably the best translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. He wrote about the past yet he was not stuck in it - stylistically or thematically.

"Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it." (from "Digging")

Personal favourite - Death of a Naturalist


4 - William Blake (1757-1827)

We studied Blake at school and I was immediately drawn to his imagery - drawn in by "The Tyger" and then further by my favourite Blake poem "The Chimney Sweeper". Blake was a complex man with unconventional views. He was a committed Christian who railed against the established church - The Chimney Sweeper being an excellent example. His poem "The Little Black Boy" shows the idea of equality of people of all races. He is of the Romantic period but is perhaps slightly before, and possibly pre-empting them. He constantly questions his religion, the Church, society and the interaction between the three.

And so we come to "Jerusalem", or as Blake titled it "And did those feet in ancient times". Beloved of the WI, sung by political parties across the spectrum, sung as a hymn in some churches and possibly England's best choice for a National Anthem. What did it mean if it appeals to such a range of people? For me you just need to look at the breadth of Blake's work to understand it - I'll probably write my own analysis of this separately as it's such a fascinating piece of work.

I think this poem, short and to the point, sums up Blake's view of the society in which he lived. And, astonishingly, could still be valid 200 years later.

Holy Thursday (from Songs of Experience)

Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill’d with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.

Personal favourite - A Poison Tree


3 - W.H.Auden (1907-1973)

For me, Auden's power was in his variety - subject matter and poetic form are a landscape that he roamed without fear and with equal success. Intellectually the poems are sometimes elitist, splattered with references that most people would not understand and yet somehow he makes them readable and allows at least one layer to be understood. They are also occasionally political, although his politics changed as he grew older and he also lost much of his support during his career after he left the UK for America just before the outbreak of World War II. One thing's for sure, when you read an Auden poem you know you'll want to read it again, and again and probably more times after that. You will have to work hard to get all the nuances, but it will be worth it.

"Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that." (from "Refugee Blues")


Personal favourite - Epitaph on a Tyrant

2 - Charles Causley (1917-2003)

I was introduced to Charles Causley 's work by his distant relative, folk singer Jim, who set some of his poems to music in 2013, although I had heard his most famous poem "Timothy Winters" before. I was instantly attracted by the accessibility of the work, by its gentle ballad rhythms and by the sensitivity of the feeling written into the work. This "accessibility" led to him being discounted as a Poet Laureate despite a campaign in the 1980s including support from Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes. Hughes called him "a man of the people, in the old, best sense" and was a friend of Causley's despite their poetry being so different. Much of his work and certainly his life was influenced by his time in the Navy during World War 2 and he also wrote a lot about his native Cornwall, although he was widely travelled and wrote about that too. His writing harks back to a time before modernism, with echoes of Houseman, Hardy and even Blake. 

It's so hard for me to a pick a favourite from his many great poems but I, and I think many others, believe his best work to be Eden Rock.

"They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet."

The ending of this poem is, in my opinion, as fine a piece of poetry as has been committed to paper.

Then there's Innocent's Song, a dark Christmas ballad:

Why does he ferry my fireside
As a spider on a thread,
His fingers made of fuses
And his tongue of gingerbread?

Of course you have to mention Timothy Winters, again a very simple and easily understood poem that contains beautiful and concise descriptive stanzas of one unfortunate pupil at the school in which Causley taught after the war.
 
However in the end I've gone for a more obscure poem, which you won't find online other than as an audio download of a reading by Charles himself - it costs 89p or you buy a whole album for £9.99. It's called A Wedding Portrait (of his mother and father) and contains this beautiful segment:

As I walk by them on the stair
A small surprise of sun, a ruse
Of light, gives each a speaking air,
A sudden thrust, though both refuse
- Silent as fish or water-plants -
To break the narrow stream of glass 
Dividing us. I was nowhere
That wedding day, and the pure glance
They shaft me with acknowledges
Nothing of me. I am not here. 

When you see the actual photograph it's exactly as you envisage it in his description - and the poem adds a deeper layer about existence and loss. It's brilliant and I really wish I could have met him to tell him so.

Get the audios here:

https://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/charles-causley

1 - Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) with honourable mention to Siegfried Sassoon

Wilfred Owen, before the First World War, was a competent but unremarkable poet in the Romantic style but his introduction to the cauldron of World War One changed his poetry, and the trajectory of his life and legacy, forever. When I first heard "Dulce et Decorum Est" at school it altered my view of poetry, and ultimately, of war itself. I had been brought up with a very conventional view of Britain as a great military power and of war being something we did and that you had to support. Since our prior war had been World War Two against the Nazis, this may have coloured the public mindset. However this poem triggered me to find out more about World War I and then put war into a historical context - prior conflicts that you learn via history as dates, battles and winners or losers mask the horror of death, disease and destruction that people experience in the midst of battle.

I had also been exposed to poetry largely as the kind of soft, romantic style - especially as much of it was learnt at chapel. T.S. Elliot had bypassed me, or I him, so when I saw familiar structures like sonnets being used to convey a far darker message than Shakespeare had it changed everything.

Owen's experiences, including spending a couple of days in a hole with fellow soldiers who were literally in pieces after a shell hit them, resulted in him suffering PTSD (then known as shell shock) and he was sent to Craiglockhart War hospital in Edinburgh where he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon. The men formed an instant friendship, with Sassoon becoming Owen's mentor. Owen would never admit that he had become better than Sassoon, but in my opinion he had.

Owen returned to the front in 1918 and was killed in action a week before the war ended. Before his death only 5 of his poems were formally published.

Owen sums up the ethos of his war poetry in this introduction:

“This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

Technically, Owen draws on his love of classical style - particularly strong in half-rhymes and yet unafraid to write what he saw as the truth about War.

Go to this page to read some classic Owen poems and snippets - Wilfred Owen quotes

I can't really pick a favourite so as my Owen poem I simply have to pick what may not be the best but the one that changed my life - Dulce Et Decorum Est.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”

June Fellows part 2

Today, May 2nd, was my mum's funeral. It was an amazing turnout with the chapel absolutely packed, a lovely service and a chance, albeit for a sad reason, to catch up with family.

I also discovered my family had managed to create poetry where, so far, I haven't to celebrate her life. My daughter Naomi wrote this - her first poem other than the ones she may have been forced to create at school. She then, with great courage, read it out at the funeral service.

The Captain and the Ship

The spray hits the mast,
damp chill hanging in the air.
Drifting in gloomy dark waters,
With wind whipping through your hair.

The ship takes hit after hit
As the waves start crashing in.
A feeling of being lost
Or something like dread can creep in.

Yet what’s good to remember
In such a dire situation.
Is the resilience of the captain
Out there leading her nation.

For if the ship was to crash,
End up wounded and so broken.
She will feel the pain right with it,
Whispering words so softly spoken.

For if the ship was to sink,
Seems like it’s close to drowning.
She stays right on board with it,
For sense of familiar surrounding.

But there’s lighthouses for storms,
beaming through the swells that mock.
The captain embraces the shine,
To guide away from the rock.

She calls upon the anchor
At a timing so precise.
Not so soon to limit freedom,
But when staying still seems nice.

Then cruising through the calm
Is something not to miss.
The captain takes it in her stride,
Absorbing her tranquil bliss.

She’s the leader, the protector.
Without her things stand still
Yet the ship must learn to drive itself
With some strength and a bit of self will.

Naomi Fellows 2018

My sister Jill wrote this one, which I read out at the committal. She also wrote and delivered a fabulous eulogy. I love these poems - they have set a high bar for me to achieve when, I hope, my poem comes to me.

Looking For You

I'll look for you in all my milestones 

Through the decades still to come.

I'll look for you throughout life's changes

All the races still to run.

And yet, I know that looking isn't needed,

For in so many moments, you'll be there.

You're there in every pink-tinged sunrise

Every golden sunset, every quiet prayer.

You're there in happy children's laughter

There in music, there in song;

You're in the gentle springtime breezes

There as summer days grow long

You're there in every bright dawn chorus

There as starlight fills the evening sky

You're there in winter's first crisp frosts, and

There in white clouds rolling by. 

You're in the misty autumn mornings

There as waves break on the shore

You're there when friends all meet together

There beside me, evermore.

And when, in years to come

A younger hand with tender care

Takes my own, and holds it fast in theirs

I'll look for you, and You'll be there. 

Jill Vavasour 2018

June Fellows 1938-2018

My mum passed away last Sunday, 13 years to the day after my dad.

I can't think of a more fitting tribute on this blog than to post two poems by my dad written for, and to, her.

I Wish I'd Been The One To Say

I Wish I'd Been The One To Say
"Could I but compare thee to a summer's day"
Or, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"
Or "Blazing fire and Christmas treat"
Or, "The curlew tolls the knell of parting day"
But I'm not a Shakespeare or a Shelley or Gray
I cannot write in phrases fine
Or put in words these thoughts of mine
That tell from deep within my heart a feeling true
That says "My dear I do love you"
So I, with these few faltering sentences will say
May every blessing God can give be yours my dear today.

J.E.Fellows 1979

To June - The Year of 1976

Winter

             Out in the cold
             Helping the old
             Keeping the home in order
             Up late at night
             Making things right
             For your husband, your son and your daughter

Spring

             Still you went out
             Going about
             Spreading your love all around
             We, in your care
             Found love so rare
             A better friend could not be found

Summer

             Someone in need?
             You went with speed
             Serving and caring for others
             Forgoing rest
             Giving your best
             To mums, dads, sisters and brothers

Autumn

             Living your life
             Mother and wife
             When illness your family struck
             Still you did smile
             Throughout your trial
             Showing your courage and pluck

Christmas

             The year has passed
             All's well at last
             Christmas has come round again
             May it bring peace
             Joys that won't cease
             And health to banish all pain

             What can we do
             To show to you
             Our love for all you have done
             Not to exclude
             The gratitude
             Of daughter, husband and son

             We give of our gifts
             Hoping they lift
             The clouds of midwinter gloom
             May they be too
             Special to you
             In your life may they find room

The future

             Things may look black
             As you look back
             The future? It's not ours to know
             But it will be bright
             It'll work out alright
             Trusting in God as you go

             And in his Son
             God's Gift to man
             At Christmas a long time ago
             Gifts from our heart
             Are but a part
             Of His love, to us, here below

This poem was enclosed in June's Christmas presents from Jill, Tim and myself with our love.

J.E.Fellows December 25th 1976

Poetry as Art?

This month an article appeared in PN Review 239, Volume 44 Number 3 by Rebecca Watts and is entitled "The Cult of the Noble Amateur"

Read it here if you don't want my precis.

The thrust of the article is that literary poetry, as an art form, is being subverted and potentially destroyed by the rise of the "amateur poet". This poet is typically young, not educated in literature and representative of a group normally not represented in the established poetry scene. This could be white working class, BME, immigrants for example - she singles out young female poets - the poetry tends to be raw and perhaps more suited to the growing live spoken word scene. It's so easy to self publish these days - blogs are free, YouTube is free and it's fairly cheap to create and print a pamphlet or book if you want to.

Her point is that, while she clearly thinks that some, if not all, of this is not of literary merit, she also believes that the establishment is losing sight of whether work has intrinsic value and longevity and their critical faculties are being compromised either because they have a genuine desire to expand the appeal of poetry or because they are scared of appearing elitist. That good poetry is not just about connecting with an audience and playing to it using your own experiences - it can and should also challenge; ideologically and intellectually.

There. I've just saved you reading what is a long winded, at times rather petulant, piece that is trying to defend poetry as something you have to work at, not just splurge out as a stream of consciousness to your fan base. (As an aside, the conclusion that pure poetry is the last bastion that will save us from Trump and Brexit is just the sort of assertion that makes Joe Public even less interested in the form.)

But does she have a point? It would be easy to attack her as another snob who wants to keep poetry as a cosy, elite club that allows the occasional working class person provided they've got a degree and know how all the correct terminology.

I will now declare an interest before I proceed - as the rest of my blog shows, I am an "amateur poet" whose higher education is in sciences and who last studied English at O-level. My interest in poetry and writing it is after a 40 year gap and some of my poems are a bit ranty and aren't intended to have literary merit. They're just a way of me expressing a view, hopefully challenging perceptions or bringing stories to light that I feel need to be told. I am also trying to create more intellectually satisfying work - studying structure, classic poetry and reading work by as many people as possible.

I have been to a lot of open mic events in the last 6 months and I have heard some very interesting and challenging work from people who you would think are the least likely to have produced poetry, at least by traditional thinking - sometimes it's been brilliant. I've also heard a lot of poor work - one in particular springs to mind where the poet's total lack of preparation, care and respect for his audience was outweighed by the mindless, immature drivel that spewed forth for the next 3 hours - it seemed like 3 hours but was probably 3 minutes. I genuinely wanted to punch him - for his own good. Still, that's open mic and I'm sure some people have been waiting impatiently for me to finish when I've been on. 

I think there is a difference between "Performance Poetry" and poetry that works best on the page, where it can be savoured, re-read and you can take from it what you will. Sometimes, what you take from it is not what the poet had in mind, but he or she cannot control that once it's out there. You can either write very one-dimensionally to make a clear point or you put layers of meaning into your work. Once you do that those meanings are open to interpretation. Anyway, that's a separate issue. If you can pull off both, you're really on a winner. If you can read or perform a multi-layered poem that people enjoy listening to and then want to read, that also stands alone on the page without its author's vocal interpretation, then you've hit the Holy Grail. John Cooper-Clarke's Beasley Street has been around for 40 years and absolutely stands up in print today - and it stills packs an even bigger punch live.

I think that an understanding of form and structure, and looking at poetry that has stood the test of time, is an ideal way to improve what you are writing. If you can blend the words and emotions that speak to the modern generation in a way that also makes it timeless then that's got to be worthwhile, hasn't it? I am very lucky to have found Read To Write in Mexborough - to read great poetry, analyse it, discover what we like and don't like; look at how poetry is "of its time" yet timeless. This definitely helps adapt your work - there's no point slavishly copying Byron or Dylan Thomas but you can improve your poems, both by learning and by allowing people to constructively criticise your work.

I don't care whether the poetry establishment accepts loud, unstructured, spoken word practitioners or not - that's up to them. I know they are powerless to stop it, just as the establishment was unable to stop Rock'n'Roll. Elvis was the brash, scary, threat that was part of the movement that changed music forever back in the 1950s - by the 1970s he was churning out standards in Vegas. I'd rather see the two meet halfway, where people attracted to poetry via the Spoken Word scene feel encouraged to explore other, perhaps more intellectual, forms. And where people with Ph. Ds who work in libraries or for literary publications and spend a year crafting a 16 line poem about a beetle can appreciate other types of poetry.

Tim Fellows
January 2018

Hotel Chelsea Project - The Four Seasons Room

The short story below is the back story for a tiny piece of art I contributed as part of a community art project in Mexborough. Each person would contribute one window. Here is mine:

This is the full hotel

The Four Seasons Room

The old man had been in the hotel room longer than most of the staff could remember. He always told them it helped him make new friends among the staff and guests. People wondered how he paid for it all but no bill was ever missed; some said he had been famous at one time but few seemed to know what for.

Recently he had been increasingly confined and had a series of nurses and carers permanently installed in an adjoining room. Rather than wandering the corridors and lounges he mainly stayed in the room, in bed or in his wheelchair reading or observing the world through his window.

One day in early spring he requested soft pastels of all colours and a pad of artists paper. He would spend time at the window, mainly thinking, but occasionally working. As the year went on his health deteriorated but he continued with his drawing. As New Year followed Christmas he called his nurse over and said “I've finished – get my lawyer”.

The meeting was set up and completed. A week later the old man was gone. A few weeks later the lawyer came to the hotel and asked to speak to the owner – the owner was called and, after the conclusion of the meeting, emerged looking pale and shocked, unable to speak. Eventually the Maitre D, who had known the owner longest, got the story.

The artist was indeed famous and had produced no new work since an abrupt retirement in 1985. The four expensive, much sought after, pastels he had produced had been bequeathed to the hotel on condition that the window in his room was altered to be a stained glass representation of his works – one for each season of the final year of his life. Thus was born The Four Seasons Room, named for the now celebrated Four Seasons pastels that spent most of their life on loan to collections around the world - but whose sisters could always be seen by everyone who walked past the hotel - second to top floor, second window from the right.

Woody Guthrie

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie.

Guthrie was a songwriter, singer, political activist and a massive influence on modern folk music in the USA and over here. When musicians aren't covering his songs, you can hear (possibly second or third hand in the case of younger ones) echoes of Guthrie musically and lyrically.

Growing up he and his family were the victim of a boom and bust in the local oil industry and later he became a "dust bowl refugee", escaping the failed crops of Kansas to head west to California. He served in the Second World War, seeing it as a "just war" against fascism.

After the war he began to grow in popularity and collaberated with some of the biggest names in folk music, moving to New York. He began to show symptoms of erratic behaviour and mood swings - the first signs of what was eventually diagnosed as Huntingdon's Disease. He spent nearly 15 years slowly deteriorating mentally and physically and eventually passed away on October 3rd, 1967.

For a full biography and loads more information and songs, go to http://woodyguthrie.org/

He was an absolutely prodigious writer - leaving hundreds of songs in his catalogue as a magnificent legacy. His most famous song is probably "This Land Is Our Land" but my favourite is probably "Los Gatos Plane Wreck" also known as "Deportee" which was written in 1948 after a plane crashed in California killing many migrant workers who were either illegal or whose work permits had been terminated. When the radio reported the accident, it didn't name the dead, except for the 3 crew - calling the rest "deportees".

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

Click here for a lovely version by KT Tunstall

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

Markham 1973

Markham 1973

Photo courtesy of dun.can on Flickr, taken in 1993

My poem is dedicated to the men who died and were seriously injured in the disaster at Markham Colliery in Derbyshire on July 30th 1973. They included Joseph (Joe) Birkin, who lived in our village and whose twin daughters Lynn and Sadie were regulars at our chapel and were only 21 when their dad died.

All was quiet in the village
It was an English summer's day
Not hot, not cold, might rain, might not
Children at their play

The six week holidays had come
No teachers to obey
Free to roam the streets and fields
On that English summer's day

The rain had freshened all the scents
Flowers, grass and soil
But underneath the land so green
Men were at their toil

As the birds sang in the dawn
A braking rod gave way
Twenty nine colliers dropped down the shaft
On that English summer's day

No larks were singing in that mine
No nightingale nor jay
Just screams and blood and death and fear
On that English summer's day

The breeze was wafting wheat and grass
Last chance to cut the hay
Eighteen brave men went in that pit
And never came away

Forty years and more have passed
It seems like yesterday
When families' lives were torn apart
On that English summer's day


The inquiry, at which my dad was a witness as part of the investigating team, produced its report that lays out the details of the incident and its cause in cold, legal and exact language. Of course, this is to be expected but nonetheless it makes interesting reading for an engineer. As always in disasters, it seems, there were mistakes that could have prevented or mitigated against the terrible injuries and deaths that resulted from the fatigue failure of a metal braking rod. As it turns out, almost my entire working life had been spent with a company whose core products and skills are based on software that helps to predict and prevent fatigue of components used in a range of engineering applications. It was never intentional on my part to relate my work to this incident and I only discovered the full extent of the problem that led to the failure when I recently found the report online and read it in detail. However, my dad did find the advert for the job and pointed me to it - was he aware of what the company did? I'll never know now as he has gone and I never kept a copy of the advert.

Some of the things he told me about the accident were truly terrible and are quite distressing. I don't know how the families coped with it.

Finally in 2013 a memorial was installed on the Markham Vale industrial estate that now sits on the site of the former colliery. It commemorates those who died in this disaster and in two prior disasters, particularly an explosion in 1938 that killed 79 and will stretch across the fields up to the village of Duckmanton, which was particularly devastated by the 1938 disaster, with a figure for each miner killed.



The Dead


Birkin, Joseph , aged 60, Face Worker
Briggs, Clarence , aged 52, Deputy
Brocklehurst, Joseph William , aged 58, Deputy
Brooks, Clifford , aged 58, Deputy
Chapman, Henry , aged 48, Deputy
Cooper, Gordon Richard , aged 30, Development Worker
Eyre, George, aged 60, Gearhead Attendant
Kilroy, Michael , aged 53, Development Worker
Kiminsky, Jan , aged 58, Development Worker
Plewinsky, Lucjam , aged 59, General Worker
Reddish, Frederick , aged 53, Development Worker
Rodgers, Wilfred , aged 59, Face Worker
Sissons, Charles Leonard, aged 43, Road Repairer
Stone, Frank , aged 53, Road Repairer
Turner, Charles Richard , aged 60, Deputy
Tyler, Albert , aged 64, Back Repairer
White, Alfred , aged 57, Deputy
Yates, William, aged 62, Development Worker

The Injured
Brothwell, Dennis; aged 44, Development Worker
Cowley,Frank; aged 43, Development Worker
Cowley, Malcolm Joseph; aged 29, Development Worker
Maxwell, John; aged 35, Reserve Face Worker (injured in the rescue attempt)
Reddish, James; aged 25, Development Worker
Richardson, Graham; aged 34, Heavy Supplies Worker
Stone, George Denis; aged 41, Overman
Taylor, Harry; aged 47, Development Worker
Thornley, Terence; aged 18, Face Trainee
Vaughan, Terence Graham; aged 38 Development Worker
Watson, William Henry; aged 47, Face Worker
Wrobels, Richard; aged 44, Face Worker

We were just one of many families who were deeply affected by that awful tragedy and the memories of that day and the weeks that followed are still painful. “My sister and I were 21 years old in 1973 so were of an age to clearly recall everything that happened

Read more at: http://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/markham-pit-the-day-a-community-fell-silent-1-5891510

Men were lying tangled together with shattered legs. I remember one young lad screaming in pain. He was given morphine but was still screaming

Read more at: http://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/markham-pit-memorial-for-miners-who-lost-their-lives-with-slideshow-1-5914370

“Men were lying tangled together with shattered legs. I remember one young lad screaming in pain. He was given morphine but was still screaming.”

Read more at: http://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/markham-pit-memorial-for-miners-who-lost-their-lives-with-slideshow-1-5914370

The National Coal Mining Museum - Lives Lived, Lives Lost

This story starts a couple of years ago now when I met John Connell, a former miner from West Yorkshire, when we both took part in a Masters Rugby League game in Barlborough.

We became friends on facebook and earlier last year it was John who alerted me to an initiative at the National Coal Mining Museum, which is located at the former Caphouse Colliery near Wakefield. In the grounds of the museum there is a memorial garden, a place for quiet reflection to remember family members and friends who were part of the industries and the communities they were built around.

It was also John who helped me locate more information about my grandad's brother Jim; another hobby of mine is family history and I'd started to look into Jim a bit more after my mum told me that he died in a mining accident when he was young. It was before she was born and she had limited information about him; John had found a reference to him by searching the National Newspaper Archives but thought you needed to register and pay to get the full details. I was quite happy to do this and followed it up to discover that after registration your first three page views would be free.

So, I did the search and up came two references; one from the Belper News from 1st March 1935 and another from the Derbyshire Times on the same day. Both had clearly come from the same source text but had been edited slightly differently.

There he was, looking just like my grandad, in his Sunday best as a late teenager - hat at a jaunty angle. The obvious family connection through his face already disarmed me a little and then as I read the text the whole story unfolded. Mentions of family members I knew and those I never knew, the shocking report of the accident itself and the subsequent inquest result and the funeral arrangements.

The two events - the finding of the article and the opening of the garden - dovetailed together and it was obvious that Jim deserved to be commemorated in the garden and I began the process of ordering the commemorative disc.

I had mentioned this to my family, of course, and my Auntie Margaret (the daughter of my grandad's brother George) was very keen to add a disc for him too and she ordered hers from her home in the Netherlands. George died from tuberculosis in 1943.

Once the two brothers were going to be there we decided that my granddad, the third mining brother, should be there too. It's very easy to configure and order the disc from the website

Both Auntie Margaret and I had been in touch with Liz Orme, who organises the ordering of the discs and the memorial days too. Liz was extremely helpful and, having met her, clearly takes a personal interest in the history and families behind each of the discs. She is from Derbyshire too, just a few miles from me in Bolsover, where my dad worked at the NCB offices for most of his working life. Liz told us she would make sure the three discs would be together.

Once the discs were ordered we had to wait until November 2016 for the commemoration in the memorial garden. My wife Fiona and I were joined by my mum, my sister Jill and her husband Dunstan.

It was a cold day, with low lying mist as we were welcomed with mulled wine before entering one of the former mine buildings that is used to host museum exhibits related, obviously, to mining. There were quite a lot of people present and the space was pretty full. We weren't in there for long though - introductions were followed by poetry readings and then we went outside to the garden nearby for the dedication. Although the wall is nowhere near full yet, it is quite hard to find yours, even when you have three of them. You get your first chance to see all the others and you get a sense of the wide range of lives that were involved in and affected by the mining industry in the UK.

Once everyone had assembled the next part of the event began -the dedications and names on each of the discs were read out in groups and in-between the Outwood Community Choir performed. It was cold but the length of this segment was perfect to enable us to take in the information and appreciate the music. It was very moving indeed and was made more so by the fact that Auntie Margaret had passed away just two weeks earlier and her sister Kath also back in the summer.

We then had time to look at the wall again before wandering back to the museum for coffee and cake. We met Liz on the way out and had a lovely chat; as we left the mist lifted to reveal the old colliery.

The memorial garden and the wall are a brilliant idea beautifully executed - congratulations to Liz and the team for their ideas and hard work. Following the formal end of coal mining in the UK those of us who come from that background should try our best to ensure that permanent memorials are in place and that education on local history and the national context of how coal drove the industrial revolution are not forgotten. It was, at times, a brutal way of life and you can argue that the industry's passing has benefits. However there is loss too - the loss of the communities, the comradeship and the jobs that it provided have never truly been replaced.

Find out more information and order your disc here

A week of coal mining songs - Nov 21-26 2016

On Saturday 26th November my family went to the National Coal Mining museum to see the unveiling of the discs in memory of the three Hooper brothers Jim, Bill and George. Bill was my grandad and I will write about our day at the NCMM separately.

To celebrate this I posted a daily coal mining song (or songs) on facebook and this is a blog post that brings them all together. 

There are many songs and poems about mining, many written by the men themselves. These were men denied a full education, at least in the traditional sense, but used their natural talents to the full to tell us about their lives. My grandparents' generation were the last to truly live the traditional mining life. By the time the family line reached my generation we have a raft of degrees including Masters level and a range of successful careers in business, science, teaching and the arts that were never open to our forefathers.

This intelligence has not suddenly manifested itself since 1950; it was always there. My grandad had tears in his eyes when he spoke to mum about his grandchildren going to University. "Who would have thought it", he said, "When we were living in the Long Rows and scrapping for bits of coal to keep warm." This from a man who had to doff his cap when a mine owner drove past him in his car to help keep his job that was making that man, rich by accident of birth, even richer. 

To the Hoopers, to my other grandad Ted, the Whitaker family and all the other miners and their families: I salute you and I will be forever in your debt.

Monday

Today's song is by Billy Mitchell and it encapsulates the history of the industry from the creation of the raw material itself to the end of this period of exploitation (of the coal and the men).

Enjoy "The Devil's Ground" - you can buy the album on Billy's site and it's got some other great mining related songs on there.

Update - Nov 2017 - it's now sold out but still available "pre-owned" on Amazon, eBay etc.

The Devil's Ground Live

www.billymitchell.co.uk

Tuesday

Today I've selected  two songs by women. Women have played a key role in mining communities, supporting the husbands, fathers and sons by working long, hard hours maintaining the home and looking after children whilst all the time knowing that one of those men may go to work and never come back. This is beautifully described in Billy Mitchell's "Collier Laddie's Wife" from the Devil's Ground album and the impact of the loss of a loved one is heart-breakingly laid out in Jez Lowe's "Last of the Widows". Here I have selected two songs, the first of which (written by Hazel Dickens)
is beautifully sung a capella by the country singer Kathy Mattea whose roots are in West Virginia in the American coalfields.  The second leaves me a blubbering wreck every time - Kate Rusby's ability to mix folk songs with the brass bands of the mining communities in Yorkshire is unique and chimes very much with my own roots in Derbyshire. Both deal not with the sudden loss of a colliery accident but the lingering after effects of breathing in dust. 

Black Lung - Kathy Mattea

Kathy Mattea's website

My Young Man - Kate Rusby

Kate Rusby's website 

Wednesday

Today's song is more of a celebration of the coal mining life - even though it's always been hard, grinding, dangerous work it bred communities with a sense of belonging, comradeship and shared experience. 

The song is "I Can Hew" and it alludes to the life the miners had outside of work and also the theme of family succession into the industry.

"Well my boy's fourteen, he's a strappin' lad
And he'll go to the pit soon, just like his dad.
And when Friday comes, we'll pick up our pay.
And we'll drink together, to round out the day."

Thankfully this view was not one that my family held and nothing pleased them (and me) more when we were able to break out of the cycle. Thanks for this go to the opening of health and education for all and my family's ability to see beyond the pit heaps.

This version is by Mawkin, who are a great live band and I urge you to see them if you haven't already. 

Mawkin "I Can Hew" live

Mawkin website

Thursday

Today gets political. The industry has had a long history of disputes between owners/management and the workers. For many years there was a callous disregard for safety and constant attempts to reduce or limit pay and in a lot of cases the mine owners owned the houses the miners and families lived in, making eviction a likely outcome of resistance.

My grandad took part in the 1926 general strike and at some point joined the communist party. The final straw was having to take his cap off when the local mine owner drove past in his car.

As the coal began to run out, closures and consolidation were inevitable and this culminated in what became the final significant dispute between the NUM and the government in 1984-1985. 

What has left me very bitter and what I consider unforgivable was not the closures per se but the destruction of the communities and jobs with no attempt to replace the work and rebuild the towns and villages left in the lurch. The use of the police for political purposes, the unnecessary force applied and the associated corruption and cover ups still need to be investigated to reveal the full truth.

The first song is by the late Scottish singer and poet Jock Purdon - the title is self-explanatory and the version is by the Pitmen Poets (Jez Lowe, Billy Mitchell, Bob Fox and Benny Graham). 

 Blackleg Mining Man

The second song on the same theme is by one of the Pitmen Poets, Jez Lowe from County Durham. Jez is a great writer and performer and this song mixes the story of the 1984-5 strike along with a hark back to the way the same subject was sung about in the 19th century. Again, the Pitmen Poets provide the version. 

Judas Bus

Finally, one that not many people will know from Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits from the album On Every Street. It's about the Battle of Orgreave. The contrast between the stillness of the song and the violence we saw on TV makes it more powerful.  

"The iron will and the iron hand in England's green and pleasant land"

Iron Hand

Friday

Today's song is another political song but related to an earlier period in the 1960s and another struggle followed by betrayal. The song refers to the betrayer Lord Robens; the link to this current year is the recent 50th anniversary of the disaster at Aberfan. Robens was a former miner and union leader who was head of the Coal Board at the time; the board were identified at the inquest as being culpable for the deaths of so many, including children, on that terrible day. This was compounded by their refusal to accept responsibility and their raiding of the disaster fund to pay for the pit heap's removal.

Nobody was fired or resigned and Robens went on to be an adviser on Health and Safety legislation; you couldn't make it up.

"And it's down you go, down below, Jack
Where you never see the skies
And you're working in a dungeon
For a pound a week rise"

It was written by Sunderland's Ed Pickford but I've picked a well known version by the Scottish folk giant Dick Gaughan. Dick's not so well at the moment and it's great to see the folk community rallying round to help him out. 

Pound a Week Rise - Dick Gaughan

Ed Pickford's web site

Dick Gaughan's web site

Saturday

Today was an emotional day at the National Coal Mining Museum and there's only one way to finish this week of mining songs and that's with two about the end of mining in the UK. As Bob Fox says in the Pitmen Poets gigs there's no happy ending to this story but we can at least commemorate the lives of those who were part of the two centuries of industrial coal mining.

Pleasley Pit 2015

The first is another from Jez Lowe.  "These Coal Town Days" was a response to the initial brutal announcement of massive pit closures in the early 1990s. This is a live version without the optional chant "Howay man they're liars and cheats". I don't think I need to explain who the liars and cheats are.

About "These Coal Town Days"

These Coal Town Days - Live Version

And finally Ed Pickford's Farewell Johnny Miner - nothing really to say about this, just listen and join in. This is a live version by Benny Graham.

Benny's website

Farewell Johnny Miner - Live version