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

Feeling Sad

Tears well up nowhere to go

They trickle down your cheek

Feel the warm damp tears fall

A symbol of the fear you feel

The thoughts of what may have been

Tears well up and make you sad

You’re just so glad it wasn’t you

Or anyone you love

But it was someone who you don’t know

Someone who is wracked with fear

Fear of what they saw that night

Will haunt them evermore

What they saw, what may have been

Will haunt them on and on

You feel ok and then you’re not

The mind is playing tricks

Kind words and thoughts from ones you love

Help only for a time

Before the thoughts come back again

And tears begin to well

Imagining what might have been

Your mind is in a whirl

Dab your eyes and wipe the tears away

Remember those less blessed than you

Count your blessings hold and hug

The ones you love so dear

And hope that love will wipe away

The teardrops and the fear

This poem was inspired by the effect of being caught up in the bombing of the Manchester Arena on 22^nd May 2017. Waiting for two granddaughters and their two friends to emerge from the carnage and confusion was a life-changing experience. I could not have anticipated the emotional impact the experience has had. Pleased to say everyone was safe but, I suspect, the children will carry the emotional scar for life. 

I republish this poem today in remembrance of those less fortunate. 

24 May 2017

Updated 25 May 2023

Through Death

Through death we find a family long lost

A distant cousin fades away
A name we know but had forgotten 
Receded to the vault that is the mind
The place where memories sleep 
Until roused by a call from the living 

Memory of faint faces are stirred

Vagueness jostle to reform a form
Long forgotten if ever really known
Two families divided by maternalism 
Two families joined but not together 
Yet bonded by a paternal gene

Inspired by meeting members of my maternal grandfather’s family from his first marriage at a funeral. 

10.5.23

Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb

Rhubarb stalks long and pink

Product of forced Labour in the dark

Rooting in the mucky Earth 

In sheds long and dark and dank

Forcing pushing up and up

Sprouting little pokes of green

Searching for the signs of light

A candle splutters flickering flame

Peering eyes pierce the gloom

To pluck pink fleshy stems that waft about

Straight into a pan unctuous sweet

A treat to savour and delight 

Stewed rhubarb pink and plump

Waiting for the gods to eat

Prompted by my sight of new season rhubarb in the shops, always makes my mouth water. 3.3.23

Book Pile Poem - A Snapshot of Eternity

Book Spine Poetry is an internet meme that goes back to the work of artist Nina Katchadourian. In the early 1990s, she took photographs of stacked book titles that, when read together, created short sentences and stories.

More than a decade later, the internet was in full swing and Katchadourian’s work inspired a viral revolution with its own hashtag, #bookspinepoetry. The meme is still going strong after more than five years. That’s an internet legacy.

I interpreted the meme in such a way the titles of the pile of books I used, provided the inspiration for a completely separate poem. Although it would be possible to consider the titles of the pile of books as a poem in its own right.

The original blog post that triggered this outburst of creativity has unfortunately disappeared but there are plenty more if you Google Book Spine Poetry 

For example https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/03/15/sorted-books-nina-katchadourian-book/

This is my effort - A Snapshot of Eternity

The pile of books that inspired this poem

Creative minds evolve and seek solutions in the mind
To trap the things that we can see
To share, remember, to see again
Simple things and prepared minds
Find ways to trap the everyday
To turn today into tomorrow

With tools and technology we create
Each wild idea we tame and twist
In dark, rooms and sheds we toil
We merge the most unlikely thoughts
Of art and things, machines and minds
To help us visualise the world

In different ways to other souls
To trap the things the eye can see
Memories of things, we want to share
With those we love, for whom we care
Before the ravages of time destroy
Frail memories crumble and decay

We try to remember what we thought
Think a thought and it is gone
Pass the threshold, disappeared
Deleted, lost forever more
Or so we thought, we turn the page
The thoughts of yesterday return

The taste, the smell, snapshots of the past
Return like vivid pictures, in the mind
Deleted now but never gone
Our memories live there on and on
In things, we like to store away
Things we’ll miss when they are gone

We thank creative minds that toil
To help us to recall the things that we forget
A photograph is all we need
To save, for ourselves and others too
Like insects trapped in golden amber
Our memories preserved for all to see

A snapshot of eternity…

Alistair J Parker
7th April 2016

Updated 10the April 2023

Hello Mr Robin

Hello Mr Robin where have you been

We have missed you and your cherry breast

Your cheeky chirps and perky cheeps

You flit about up and down here and there

Pecking twerking flying round

We like t when you venture close 

Brave and fearless such a friend

Welcome back we’ve missed you so

Please stay a while before you go. 

My second Mr Robin poem. Inspired by the return of our Robin to the garden after what seems like a long absence. Such friendly forthright characters. 

7th April 2023