Ode to a Salt Marsh

The view goes on for miles
The currents change
The channels move
The grass went
Has it gone forever
Washed away
But then one day
A sign of life
A tuft here a tuft there
Quietly tides ebb and flow
The rains fall
The winds blow
And yes a miracle starts to occur
The tufts they grow
And start to spread
The grass returns
The clumps reach out
Their leaves to join
And make a land
That had gone away
It's coming back
Another day

The secret of

The salt marsh

A reflection on how the extensive salt marsh of Morecambe Bay in the area of Silverdale progressively disappeared as the currents changed only to fight the tides to return. The early signs show a rapid regrowth of this vulnerable ecosystem. 

1.9.23

Golden Browns

Golden browns flutter

Like leaves on a tree

Waving good bye 

They strain to fly free

Like butterflies tethered 

Then to float free

To places unknown 

Like leaves from a tree 

Autumn leaves fall 

From the trees all around

Warm mellow colours

To swaddle the ground 

Wrinkled and crumbled

Food for the worms

Who nestle up warmly

In golden brown earth

Inspired by a walk through the local car park with the rows of Maple trees between the cars brandishing those beautiful golden brown hues that we associate with Autumn. The tune of the song Golden Brown by the Stranglers, one of my all-time favourites, came into my head. 

Having just checked the lyrics of the song to make sure I wasn't plagiarising I realised that I had been harbouring in my mind a mondegreen  - I didn't know there was such a word until I saw a thread on Twitter on the subject a couple of days ago. 

Mondegreen means -  A mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning, most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. 

The second line of Golden Brown reads...

Lays me down, with my mind she runs

I have always heard this as ...

Lays me down, with my mancheros

"Mancheros" isn't even a word, I imagined it to be something like a Mexican ranchero...

There is a fascinating article in Wikipedia on the subject of Mondegreens which is worth a look.

PS

As a friend has reminded me there is more to the words Golden Brown than a poem about Autumn colours. For those interested in the interpretation of the Strangler lyrics check out this link... Coincidently the link includes a great video of the track with some beautiful images as background. Having listened to the words I still believe he is singing "Mancheroes"!

National Poetry Day

Today 5^th October 2023 is National Poetry Day and October has been dubbed National Poetry Month. To celebrate, the Creative Writing Groups at Poulton Library have mounted a display of Poetry and Poetry related projects. National Poetry Day encourages everyone to make, experience and share poetry with family and friends.

This year the theme is “Refuge” and invites poets to explore the concept of safety and security, both physical and emotional. It encourages us to reflect on what it means to find a place of safety in a world that can be unpredictable and chaotic. The theme also invites us to consider the ways in which we can offer refuge to others, whether it be through acts of kindness or by creating safe spaces where people can feel heard and understood, in times of strife and disarray,

Refuge

When life seems like a game we can't play,
Poetry is a refuge for the soul,
A place where we can be whole.
 
It's a medium that knows no bounds,
A way to express our thoughts profoundly,
So let's celebrate this art today,
On National Poetry Day.

The display of work at the library is eclectic and contains many personal examples of individual approaches to Poetry. There is even advice on how you may tackle writing your first poem.

Is Poetry Rubbish?

 

This essay is part of a display at Poulton le Fylde Library to celebrate National Poetry Month.

Do you like Poetry? The answer, Poetry is Rubbish may be a bit of an overstatement but for most people, Poetry is something of a Black Art. Rather like Marmite you love it or hate it. For most of us, our first experience of poetry will be nursery rhymes although we will not realise this at the time. Our next experience will probably be at school when in English we have to learn a poem and recite it from memory. That will be a turn-off because we don’t like learning things in parrot fashion. And we certainly don’t like standing up in front of our mates to make a fool of ourselves.

These early experiences colour our view of poetry as something a bit like art, it’s for posh people really. You don’t like poetry because you don’t understand it, right? If there is nothing in it for you, why should I try to understand it? If you are going to enjoy something you don’t expect to have to try and understand it. After all you can listen to a song and enjoy it without having to understand how it was made! And that is a poem put to music. But most of us will come across a poem at some time in our lives that catches our imagination or means something to us.  for me, it was In Flanders Field by John McCrea which is one of the first poems that really made me stop and think.

  In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
 John McCrea 2^nd May 1915
Copyright – Public Domain

The inspiration for “In Flanders Fields” came during the early days of the First World War at the Second Battle of Ypres when a young Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2nd May 1915, in the gun positions near Ypres by an exploding German artillery shell. The Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service. It is believed that later that evening, after the burial, John began the draft for his now-famous poem “In Flanders Fields”.

I defy anyone to read the words of that poem and not be moved. But just like other art forms painting or drawing there are different styles many of which are very personal, and many do not appeal to a wide audience. But that is no reason to dismiss poetry as something you don’t or can’t understand or something that is too complicated, something many of us are all guilty of, I suspect.

I do not really understand poetry, just like I don’t really get modern jazz! For that reason, I ignored it as an art form for most of my life, until I discovered a book of poetry called, Verse and Worse by Arnold Silcock, sadly rather late in life. It is a collection of light-hearted poetry amongst which are the few poems that really stuck in my mind, and a few that I have committed to memory, mainly, I suspect because the words in them are rather rude!
 
My girlfriend, now my wife, sent me poems when I was laid up in bed for 10 weeks with Jaundice, just before we married. They were really sweet and meant so much to me but for the life of me, I could not write one back, no matter how hard I tried. But eventually many years later, when I was 60 to be precise, poetry writing came to me from nowhere. I was driving along in the car thinking about the place I used to go on holiday as a kid, the sort of thing you do as you get older, it is called nostalgia. A poem started to form in my head. I could hear the words; they were describing the walk we used to take to the shore, from my grandfather's Farm on the side of the hill. I could not wait to get out of the car to write the words down. I went for a coffee and scribbled in my notebook; before I knew it, I had written my first poem.
 
There are a number of lessons to learn from this experience, firstly, you never know when the poetry bug will bite, If I can write a poem anyone can and there are no rules, well there are but you shouldn’t let not knowing them put you off. I have purposely avoided learning the rules of poetry, much like I have avoided the rules of painting because I don’t want them to get in the way at the moment or to put me off.

My First Poem - A Walk to the Shore

by Alistair J Parker

Crunch on the pebbles Step over the stones Cross the neat grass Lift the latch Hear the squeak Rattle the chain Back on the hook Make sure it’s closed Mind the cow pat Steaming and brown Follow the dyke The dry stone wall A wiggly path Winds down the hill This way and that It heads for the sea Spot the odd rabbit There used to be more Little brown berries In piles everywhere Left by the bunnies Look there’s a burrow Home for a rabbit Home in the ground Hear the sweet singing What did it say Bread with no cheese, it repeats all the day Yellow and noisy, it hammers a song One step more, keep going along Taste the blackberries All warm lush and round Sun always shining It shines every day Over the stile now Best time of the day The smell of the hay

We’re nearly there There is the sea See the sand, close now The smell of the sea Through the rough grass Mind the gorse spikes Sloes in abundance Lovely with gin Clack through the pebbles All tumbling down Look for the white ones Look that’s one there Feel the sand crunchy On feet that are bare Look its Man Friday A footprint is there Hear the waves crashing Up onto the rocks Skim the stones seaward Bounce off the waves Hear the shrill call The birds of the sea A Sea Pie is calling Plaintive and haunting Memories flow This magical place I once loved to go I feel a tear forming It rolls down the cheek The memory is dear Seems such a long time Since I have walked there

If I can write a poem anyone can. Get your pen out and have a go. What you need to get going is permission; you need to give yourself permission and maybe a few hints on where to start if you really have no idea how to get started. My first tip would be to do as I did and visualise something you are very familiar with as a progression, such as a walk or an activity, e.g. getting up in the morning, or going to work. Then write down a list of keywords that arise from the journey, and you have the makings of a poem…

Wake up,
open eyes,
yawn,
cough,
yawn again,
pull back the duvet,
sit up,
swing your legs out,
take a first step,
open the curtain
and yawn.

 Now add a few words and slightly rearrange. 

I wake up,
Open my eyes,
Yawn, cough,
And yawn again,
Pull back the duvet,
Sit up and stretch,
Swing out my legs,
Take a first step,
Open the curtain
And yawn.

You see what I mean; now you have a poem, “Waking Up” you’re a poet in no time…
Remember, there are rules, but there are no rules, the rules are there to be broken and remember mistakes are the source of inspiration and exciting discoveries. Get writing…
 
Since the fateful day when I  was compelled to write my first poem, I have continued to write and have two self-published books of poems. I also have this Blog which I update regularly.
 
If you really want to learn more about the rules of Poetry, you could do worse than read Stephen Fry’s book –  The Ode Less Travelled – Unlocking The Poetry Within -  as a starter.

Dog Walk

Sun shines, cool breeze

Gas work excavations 
Yellow pipes
Snake through the ground 
Peeping through
Muddy holes
With muddled pipes 

A cacophony of cables
Fight for space 
Barriers bar the way
To normal routes 
Cross across the road
Avoiding cars and
Big fat SUV’s
Bossing their way
Through diverted traffic
Gymnastic leg cocks
Defying gravity
Mark the way
To more sniffs
Than can be sniffed at
Such is the canine pleasure 
Familiar roue marred by
Litter, E-fags and cans
From late-night revellers

No doubt at all
Patchwork pavements 
Scarred by men
With picks and shovels
Making holes to bury things
For others to find
And bury again 
Painty sprays make
Mystery marks
Of hidden stuff
That we don’t know 
A lexicon of mystery 
Marks and glyphs
To fade away in time
Just like this walk
Will fade away
In time for a 
Frothy cappuccino 
At my favourite 
Coffee place

Inspired by Ian McMillans daily ditties on TwitX @IMcMillan

25.9.23

Memoir Poems - A Project

I am currently involved in researching a memoir and I am exploring different approaches to the genre. Poetry being just one possible approach. The following are two poems based on memories of visiting my grandma's house on the notorious Liverpool Dock Road.

Bath Street

No baths just cobbles
Long and straight
A slight bend hides the end
It’s Friday night
It’s quiet na silent
Save the cooing of the pigeons
The flap and whoosh of their wings

Deserted except for me
Treading on the cracks
Leaping the paving stones
Lonely walking on my own 
To grandmas house
Number 35 Bath St
The house by the pub 

Warehouses loom high

Leaning in to stare

At the little lonely boy
Walking on his own 
Where yesterday 
Lorry’s chugged 
Piled high with sacks

Of this and that
Horses pulling carts
Striking sparks 
With steel shod hooves
Chomping chaff
In huge nose bags
Waiting stomping feet

There’s the house
Tall and sooty
Stained by smoke and time
The door peeling 
Save the shinny number
35 On the door
I'm here I’m home 

No 35

Cluttered love

The smell of people 

Grandma and Co

Two aunties

Two uncles

A dog and six cats

 

Brown linoleum 

A big black range

A Telly and a radio

That talk all day

Dusty corners 

Sooty cream walls 

Fry up breakfasts

Dripping toast

Tripe and trotters

Bubble and stew

Sunday dinner

Taters and meat

Chopping wood in the cellar 

Me and my mate

By the glow of the light

In the dark of the black

Bogy men hiding 

Well that’s what we think

Play on the olla 

Where once houses stood

Bombsites and bricks

The place where we played 

Footy and tick

And fighting an stuff

Out in the morning 

And back for our tea

Exploring old places

Where once people lived

Finding old photos 

And old broken cups

Home for a scrubbing

With Tide in the bath

Spuds and mince

To fill up my tum 

Off to my bed

With sweet dreams to come

Sleep like a log

With cuddles and love

Rise in the morning 

To corn flakes and milk

Wait for my buddy 

To yodel I’m here

The Pain

I sit quietly
It twinges
Not once but twice
And then a third time
A sharp piercing pain
In the joint of my left thumb

How strange

A twinge
From nowhere
A piercing pain 
That sears and spreads
And now it is gone

I wrote this because that is what happened and I thought how odd that a pain should come and go so quickly. Just felt I had to record the event as a poem. 12.6.23