Heroic Couplets

I’ve heard of Heroic Couplets but don’t know what they are. Presumably some sort of poetic style from a few hundred years ago. I’ll have a look in a minute or so. But just before I do that, a thought has just popped into my head of a couple of heroes of my own.

What had struck me was Lennon and McCartney. Not only one of the greatest song writing partnerships with approximately 180 jointly credited songs but they are widely credited with establishing the modern singer‑songwriter model. Before the 1960s most bands did not write their own material, and most of their hits were written for them by session musicians hired by record companies.

Lennon and McCartney, song writing partnership

Then another couple sprang to mind as I’d just watched the ‘America’ dance scene from Leonard Bernstein’s ‘West Side Story’. Which is how the show is usually advertised, even for the Proms. It is, of course, Bernstein AND STEPHEN SONDHEIM’s West Side Story. It does annoy me that lyricists are usually the forgotten heroes. Here’s a link. Perfect matching of words and music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e2igZexpMs

I let my mind drift for other couples and unexpectedly thought of Torvill and Dean. At the Sarajevo 1984 Winter Olympics the pair won gold receiving twelve perfect 6.0s and six 5.9s which included artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge, after skating to Ravel's Boléro. One of the most-watched television events ever in the United Kingdom, their 1984 Olympics performance was watched by a British television audience of more than 24 million people. I just had another look and their routine is still astonishing:
https://www.olympics.com/en/video/torvill-and-dean-s-legendary-bolero-performance-music-mondays

I can’t not include football partnerships and not from the Premier League, thank you very much. After much thought I decided to stick with what I’ve seen or else it should include Stan Matthews and Stan Mortensen in the famous Matthews Cup Final of 1953.

Mortensen and Matthews (sitting on the shoulders of giants)

So I’m going for the Tony Adams and Steve Bould from Arsenal’s great seasons in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I know that it should include Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn but it’s my article and I’ll have those two as the second couplet.

Of course, the very best couple was Trevor Francis and Bob Latchford for Birmingham City in the mid 70s but that is too obvious.

I first came across Detective Chief Inspector Morse back in about 1986 when I spotted The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn and was immediately hooked. His partnership with Sergeant Lewis is wonderfully portrayed in Colin Dexter’s books. The tv series is fine but the books are properly gritty, not the lush version on screen.

I think one of the most heroic couples are Jane and Stephen Hawking. The couple met at Cambridge University. They went on to marry in 1965, Jane aged just 21, and had three children together. They were married for 30 years from 1965 until they divorced in 1995. Stephen’s story is well known but I hadn’t known that Jane had earned her PhD degree in medieval Spanish poetry in April 1981.

I should end on a more up to date couple who are my heroes and they must be Wallace and Gromit. Created by Nick Park, from Preston, and described by the BBC News as ‘some of the best-known and best-loved stars to come out of the UK’.

Nick Park with Wallace and Gromit

Unfortunately, I’ve just realised that I’ve run out of time and space but have had time to find a few Heroic Couplets by Alexander Pope.

The Rape of the Lock

Here Thou, great Anna! whom three Realms obey,
Dost sometimes Counsel take—and sometimes Tea.

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.


True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.


Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.


Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.

            

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Heroic Couplets

                     

I hadn’t opened my study copy of Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ since it was required reading for English A Level. I’ve forgotten everything, after all this time, except Chaucer’s constant use of ‘heroic couplets’. I cast my eyes over the first page, trying to read and make sense of Old English, glad that the work is translated into modern English for the likes of me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what I wanted to share here, so I looked elsewhere, and spent hours chuckling at Pam Ayres – she makes it look and sound easy.

Mrs May’s Hair

One thing I do admire in Mrs May:
She’s not afraid to let her hair go grey.
No dye from pricey crimpers does she seek,
To keep the fabled barnet looking chic.

Unlike us timid ones, who monthly go,
To cover up the roots as white as snow,
And, in our fight to look less like an Alp,
Endure the fiery tint upon the scalp.

We, who pay a fortune as we leave,
Remember Mrs May, and softly grieve,
Though some may choose to take the cheaper path,
And do the job themselves, over the bath.

                                                                Pam Ayres

Iambic pentameter. I’ve been there, counting syllables, finding the right rhythm, da dum da dum. I still search for words to fit and count on my fingers like a child doing maths. I try very hard. Sometimes it hits the mark, sometimes it doesn’t. Here’s one,

The Ballad of a Lady Rock Singer

Jazz tempo piano and bluesy guitar,
It’s gone 2 a.m. in the Cyclops Bar.
She sips pink gin through a long, curly straw
And sits and waits, with one eye on the door.
He said he’d be along to see her set,
But he’d promised before – not made it, yet.
Perched on a bar stool, cigarette in hand,
Minutes away from her spot with the band,
She leans a bit further back on her seat
And her red stiletto taps out the beat.
She’s laughing, swaying, about to begin,
Adrenaline rush, or too much pink gin.
She’s out of her mind, not really crazy,
Her vision’s soft focus, smoky and hazy.
Snug black and red dress, short, strapless and low,
Especially chosen for this kind of show.
She clutches the mic stand, a hint of a smile
Then bangs out a song in Joplin-esque style.
The heat and the smoke hit hard on her throat,
But she stays on key, not losing a note.
Whistling and cheering, the Jazz Club’s alive.
Lorna kept singing ‘til quarter to five,
Then went out happy to greet the next day,
Her bass playing new love leading the way.

                                                                   PMW

This one isn’t strictly heroic couplets, but I hope you enjoy my quirky humour,

Mary, the sister of Anne Boleyn

Determined that she would have her way,
She walked ahead of him to court one day
And stood near the doors as he went in,
Mary, the sister of Anne Boleyn.

He saw a vision of sweet delight,
Young and blonde, beautiful and bright.
His lecherous thoughts were full of sin.
Mary, the sister of Anne Boleyn.

She was pure and youthful, fresh and new,
He was eagerly lustful and untrue,
Wanting an easy conquest to win,
Mary, the sister of Anne Boleyn.

Henry fulfilled his urgent desire
As her body set his soul on fire,
Until he trembled with joy, within
Mary, the sister of Anne Boleyn.

                                               PMW
Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Cracked

An alarmingly topical take tonight as Storm Boelo blasts across the jewel of the north, furious on the heels of slightly more dainty Storm Austen.

It blustered all through an afternoon of torrential rain at the football stadium, where not so mighty Blackpool slumped to a dispiriting 1-4 defeat (and it could have been more) after a bright opening. Tactics and fortunes changed at half time, and as thousands of soaked supporters streamed out early in the downpour leaving the home stands virtually empty well before the final whistle, it feels as though something has cracked in the collective spirit of the club and its fanbase.

cracked

And Boelo hasn't let up this evening. A screaming wind is whining across as I write this, tugging at rooftops and chimney pots, bending trees, mashing fences to the accompaniment of battering squalls of rain. This evening's events - the annual Lightpool festival and a firework display - have been cancelled and anyone with any sense is hunkered down and hoping for the best as 80mph gusts tear in from the Irish Sea. If I still drank whisky, I would be doing so now, with headphones clamped on and a bit of Wagner blasting out. 

wild and windy way

An amber alert has been advised for the north-west and this storm is going to rage all night...for an extra hour as well, because the clocks go back. It's a wild one, Boelo (meaning brave or strong apparently) and here's a strange new poem to suit the mood. It comes with the caveat that it may get modified down the road.

Boelo

How was it for you? he asked, basking in the aftermath 

like some spent, self-satisfied lover seeking affirmation.

Rewind a few hours...

He came in sweeping off the western sea, blindly lusting

in his passion, ripped and roaring, set on forcing himself

on whatever lay in his whoring way. It was her bad luck, 

poor, gap-toothed Funtown, to fall prey to his attentions,

who was minding her business, trying to enjoy a Saturday

night with mates. She'd been warned about his sort before

but you've got to live, don't you. He ripped apart defences

and battered and pounded, on and on. No more, she cried,

no more, make it stop, but he was deaf to entreaty. Where

he got the strength from she didn't know,  and he came on

this senseless Boelo, mad for it, a force of nature, passion

without pause,  his agonising onslaught lasting until dawn.

It was then, assuaged, that he asked so how was it for you? 

Terrifying, she whimpered, shivering still. A violation.

                         

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Cracked

With time a little short this week I was rushing through various websites trying to find an aspect of Cracked that would do the job. I was thinking of eggs, Agatha Christie, old china sets etc. I came across ‘kintsugi’ which is an embracing of the flawed or imperfect as in cracked vases.

kintsugi bowl

Japanese aesthetics values marks of wear from the use of an object. This can be seen as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken. It can also be understood as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting cracks and repairs as events in the life of an object, rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage.

Unfortunately, I haven’t got the time to go into this in a way to do it justice so I will have to leave it for another time, which has left me with Humpty Dumpty. 

The earliest known version was published in Samuel Arnold's Juvenile Amusements in 1797 with the lyrics:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,
Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

The tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings. The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.

The common text from 1882 is:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty makes an appearance in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871). There Alice remarks that Humpty is ‘exactly like an egg’, which Humpty finds to be ‘very provoking’. Which is why I’m using Humpty as if he did have a great fall then he would crack. Alice clarifies that she said he looks like an egg, not that he is one. They then go on to discuss semantics and pragmatics when Humpty Dumpty says, ‘my name means the shape I am’.

Alice and Humpty Dumpty

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the seventeenth century, the term ‘humpty dumpty’ referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale. By 1785, the term became slang for a short, squat, clumsy person (or someone who had too much to drink and tumbled over).

There are also various theories of an original Humpty Dumpty. For instance, King Richard III depicted as hunchbacked in Tudor histories and particularly in Shakespeare's play, and who was defeated, despite his armies, at Bosworth Field in 1485.

Another is that Humpty Dumpty was a ‘tortoise’ siege engine, an armoured frame, used unsuccessfully to approach the walls of the Parliamentary-held city of Gloucester in 1643 during the Siege of Gloucester in the English Civil War.

Colchester tourist board stated that a cannon was used from the church of St Mary-at-the-Walls by the Royalist defenders in the siege of 1648. It was termed Humpty Dumpty. A shot from a Parliamentary cannon caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty but ‘All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again’.

In science Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics. The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of ‘disorder’. The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder. After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as it would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.

Humpty Dumpty's Song by Lewis Carroll

In winter, when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight.

In Spring, when woods are getting green,

I’ll try and tell you what I mean.

In Summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you’ll understand the song.

In Autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink, and write it down.

I sent a message to the fish:
I told them “This is what I wish.”

The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.

The little fishes’ answer was
“We cannot do it, Sir, because-“

I sent to them again to say
“It will be better to obey.”

The fishes answered, with a grin,
“Why, what a temper you are in!”

I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.

I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.

My heart went hop, my heart went thump:
I filled the kettle at the pump.

Then someone came to me and said
“The little fishes are in bed.”

I said to him, I said it plain,
“Then you must wake them up again.”

I said it very loud and clear:
I went and shouted in his ear.

But he was very stiff and proud:
He said “You needn’t shout so loud!”

And he was very proud and stiff:
He said “I’d go and wake them, if-“

I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but-

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Lancashire Dead Good Poets' November Open Mic Night

 Fire up your poetry at our bonfire night open mic event on zoom...

There is no set theme, and no headliner. Everybody can shine. Email: deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk to get yourself a 5-minute slot, or just to listen in. It promises to be a sparkling occasion.

Hope to see and hear you there, Steve ;-)

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Running Numbers

A staple of US crime novels and gangster movies, running  numbers  is part of the mechanism of illegal betting rackets, a favourite enterprise of the American mafia back in the day. Although legal state lotteries had been in place in some states ever since the Louisiana State Lottery Company obtained a 25-year charter for its state lottery system in 1868, the Mob couldn't resist the hugely lucrative financial rewards of the numbers racket, and they did a pretty good job of organising their unlicensed lottery in the major cities. 

The interesting thing about it is that, since bettors were suspicious of criminal gambling syndicates, instead of having the racketeer organise the draw himself (since then, he could cheat, and choose numbers no-one had bet on), the winning numbers would be something out in the public domain,  printed in a reputable newspaper, numbers clearly not under the bookie's control.

picking a winner

For many years, the 'number' was the last three digits of the 'handle', the amount race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack, published in racing journals and major newspapers (much like attendance figures at a football games). Other numbers, like the last digits of a stock price, or the exact balance of the US Treasury, were sometimes used. Punters would place bets with a bookie at a tavern, bar, barber shop, social club, or any other semi-private place acting as an illegal betting parlour. Runners would carry the money and betting slips between the betting parlours and the local syndicate headquarters, called a 'numbers bank'.

I planned and co-hosted a poetry writing workshop recently based on numbers and objects. One of the numbers I chose was pi. Others included the fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio.

There is a growing body of poems whose form references the mathematical constant known as π (or pi), the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. As a number, it is written as 3.1415926535897932384626433 (etc to as many decimal places as you care). As a poem - or rather a piem - regardless of content, its form is based in some fashion on the sequence of digits in the constant.

This could be for instance letters or syllables per word (or line), words per line, lines per stanza or some other cleverly devious representation of 3.1415926535897932384626433 (etc), or a rounding of it to so many decimal places - you choose. Let me give you some examples that I shared at the workshop.

Here’s a straightforward piem from Sir James Hopward Jeans based on the number of letters in each word:

How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.

Here’s a piem by Dmitri Borgman that uses the number of letters per word approach, only he’s taken it to the thirtieth digit of pi and he’s choses an ABAB rhyming structure:

Now, a moon, a lover refulgent in flight,
Sails the black silence's loneliest ellipse.
Computers use pi, the constant, when polite,
Or gentle data for sad tracking aid at eclipse.

Here’s a piem variation based on lines in a stanza. Jacques Bens has structured it on the first five digits of pi, and because they happen to add up to fourteen, he’s called the form an irrational sonnet:

Melancholy

So I’ll once more find my old horizons,
cherished scent of winds and habitations.
Fear not if it seems I’m quitting the place.

I leave Paris just to love it better.

One tends to hurry a banal embrace.
But what’s this pride worth that’s past all seasons?
Try to unite the heart with its reasons.
The city, while smiling, leaves a rough trace.

I leave Paris just to love you better.

To love you better, I couldn’t picture—
Now I see the present whisks us away.
To see you, I have to step back a bit.
I lock up my regrets, as will be fit,
Slipping my key under your entryway.

At the workshop in Kate Eggleston-Wirtz's art studio, I worked (among other pieces) on a piem of my own, based on an object in her studio, this quaint rocking-horse. I suppose I chose it because I had in mind to write this blog about betting, horses and running numbers. That, and it was stood right in front of me.

the rocking-horse winner

I've used  π (or pi) to determine the form of the poem, in this case the number of lines in each stanza. I didn't stop at fourteen lines, but raced on to nine decimal places (3.141592653) before running out of puff.

Horse Pi(e)

Triangle on a quadrilateral

with parallel legs and a rocking base,

some child's delight, a nursery toy.

Stop!

D.H. Lawrence wrote a ghost story

about a boy, The Rocking Horse Winner,

who rode a frantic dash to death

proclaiming "I've got it - Malabar."

Or some such.

I've not read it in, oh, fifty years

but I'm pretty sure he guessed

the winners in advance of big races

by going into a rocking trance

until the name came to him.

He told the family's gardener,

good working man, who placed his bets

and managed the money that came in,

sometimes used a tip on his own behalf

but nothing compared to the thousands

the boy was building up in secret,

planning to give the funds to his mother

who always complained of not having

enough for the family to get by.

When she told him he was getting too old

for rocking horses, he planned one last run.

That's what killed him, number one son,

eighty thousand to the good. I wonder

what happened to the little horse

after the tragedy. His story wasn't told.

Did he become horse pie?

Put down to firewood perhaps?

Did grief, that constant

reminder of the ratio between

the circumference of their loss

and the diameter of their gain 

prove endlessly recurring

on haunted nights? 

The soft rhythmic thrumming of a

riderless runner across the nursery floor?

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Numbers

Where do you start with a topic on Numbers? There are an infinite number of possible ways of approaching it. Including Infinity. Then I happened to look out of my front window and saw the milestone at the end of my road and on the top is an Ordnance Survey mark. Well, that’s as good a place to start as any other.

Why it was called Ordnance Survey (OS)? It seems it has its origins in 1747 when King George II commissioned a military survey of the Scottish highlands following the Jacobite revolt of 1745. William Roy was the engineer responsible for this pioneering work; one of the staff involved was noted artist Paul Sandby. The survey was produced at a scale of 1 inch to 1000 yards.

Roy’s surveying parties of about eight relied on simple surveying compasses to measure the angles, and chains up to 50 feet long to measure distance between important features. Much of the rest was sketched in by eye. Nevertheless, the map was a powerful tool as part of a broader strategy to open up access to the Highlands.

The fact that Roy was just 21 years old with no military commission when he started the survey makes his achievements even more extraordinary. His work paved the way for modern surveying and he understood the strategic importance of accurate maps. At the time of his death in 1790 his vision of a national survey for Britain was almost within reach.

It was not until 1790 that the Board of Ordnance (a predecessor of part of the modern Ministry of Defence) began a national military survey starting with the south coast of England in anticipation of a French invasion. So that’s where Ordnance came from.

By 1791, the Board had purchased the new Ramsden theodolite, and work began on mapping southern Great Britain using a baseline that Roy himself had previously measured and that crosses the present Heathrow Airport.

In 1801 the first one-inch-to-the-mile (1:63,360) map was published, detailing the county of Kent, with Essex following shortly after. The Kent map was published privately and stopped at the county border while the Essex maps were published by Ordnance Survey and ignore the county border setting the trend for future Ordnance Survey maps.

During the next twenty years roughly a third of England and Wales was mapped at the same scale. It was gruelling work: Major Thomas Colby, later the longest serving Director General of Ordnance Survey, walked 586 miles in 22 days on a reconnaissance in 1819. In 1824, Colby and most of his staff moved to Ireland to work on a six-inches-to-the-mile (1:10,560) valuation survey. The survey of Ireland was completed in 1846.

Colby designed specialist measuring equipment, established systematic collection of place names, and reorganised the map-making process to produce clear, accurate plans. But Colby the perfectionist also travelled with his men, helped to build camps, and arranged mountain-top feasts with huge plum puddings at the end of each surveying season.

One interesting fact is that the mean sea level at Newlyn in Cornwall ( calculated between 1915 and 1921 ) is the reference point for the height data on OS maps.

Here are a couple of numbers from OS today:

‘While the public still knows us for our comprehensive range of printed leisure maps, the digital side of the business accounts for more than 90% of turnover.

All 243,241 square kilometres of Great Britain are surveyed and up to 20,000 changes are put into the database daily.’

Reading the Map

with more creases than contours
from when I didn’t need glasses
for the red dot
of a branch line station

where the edge of my compass
would be a straight path
92 degrees true north

but as arrows aligned
latitude and longitude dissolved
and I was lost

in sounds of train doors slamming
sometimes just mine

the weight of a rucksack

blasts of wind and sun
and rain and green
my sort of heights

the smell of black coffee
from a flask

sweat

shadows on a track

back to the pub
too small to be marked
where they once knew my name
and those of friends
I haven’t seen in years.

First published in Reach, July 2025

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Numbers

 “59” is a love poem about prime numbers, written and performed by British poet and mathematician, Harry Baker. It is available on YouTube, better on stage than on page, but here it is:

59

59 wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.
Realises all his hair is on one side of his head.
Takes just under a minute to work out that it’s because of the way that he slept.

He finds some clothes and gets dressed.
He can’t help but look in the mirror and be subtly impressed
How he looks rough around the edges and yet casually messed.
And as he glances out the window,
He sees the sight that he gets blessed with,
Of 60 from across the street.

Now 60 was beautiful,
With perfectly trimmed cuticles, dressed in something suitable,
And never rude or crude at all.

Unimprovable,
Right on time as usual,
More on cue than a snooker ball but liked to play it super cool.

59 wanted to tell her that he knew her favorite flower.
He thought of her every second, every minute, every hour.
But he knew it wouldn’t work, he’d never get the girl.

Because although she lived across the street they came from different worlds.
While 59 admired 60’s perfectly round figure,
60 thought 59 was odd.

You see, one of his favorite films was "101 Dalmatians."
She preferred the sequel.
He romanticized the idea they were star-crossed lovers.
They could overcome the odds and evens because they had each other,
While she maintained the strict views imposed on her by her mother,
That separate could not be equal.

And though at the time he felt stupid and dumb
For trying to love a girl controlled by her stupid mum,
He should have been comforted by the simple sum.
Take 59 away from 60, and you’re left with the one.

Sure enough after two months of moping around,
61 days later, 61 was who he found,
He had lost his keys and his parents were out.

So one day after school he went into a house.
And as he noticed the slightly wonky numbers on the door,
He wondered why he’d never introduced himself before.

As she let him in, his jaw dropped in awe.
61 was like 60, but a little bit more.
See she had prettier eyes, and an approachable smile,
And like him, rough around the edges, casual style,
And like him, everything was in disorganized piles,
And like him, her mum didn’t mind if friends stayed a while.

Because she was like him, and he liked her.
He reckoned she would like him if she knew he was like her,
And it was different this time. I mean, this girl was wicked,
So he plucked up the courage and asked for her digits.

She said, "I'm 61."
He grinned, said, "I'm 59. Today I’ve had a really nice time,
So tomorrow if you wanted you could come over to mine?"
She said, "Sure."

She loved talking to someone just as quirky,
So she agreed to this unofficial first date.
In the end, he was only ready one minute early,
But that didn’t matter because she arrived one minute late.

And from that moment on there was non-stop chatter,
How they loved "X-Factor," how they had two factors,
How that did not matter.
Distinctiveness made them better,
By the end of the night, they knew they were meant together.

And one day she was talking about stuck-up 60,
She noticed that 59 looked a bit shifty.
He blushed and told her of his crush:
“The best thing that never happened because it led to us.” 61 was clever, see, not prone to jealousy,
She looked him in the eyes and told him quite tenderly,
"You’re 59, I’m 61, together we combine to become twice what 60 could ever be."
And at this point 59 had tears in his eyes,
Was so glad to have this one-of-a-kind girl in his life.

He told her the very definition of being prime
Was that with only one and himself could his heart divide,
And she was the one he wanted to give his heart to,
She said she felt the same and now she knew the films were half true,
Because that wasn't real love, that love was just a sample,
When it came to real love, they were a prime example.

                                                                                        Harry Baker

And, while I’m mentioning performance poets, I was pea-green with envy last week to discover that one of my absolute favourites, Mike Garry, (so much more than a performance poet) visited my elder grandson’s high school doing what I think was a poetry workshop. Had I known, I could have hung around outside the school gates, a poet groupie. Anyway, he was well received and my grandson was impressed.

Back to the subject of numbers. There is no escape, they are everywhere. We couldn’t manage without them. Clocks, calendars, reference numbers, codes for everything and I’m thankful that we moved on from Roman numerals. I think I’ve mentioned before that as a child, I could not grasp money sums. Pounds, shillings and pence. I could not get the hang of it and no amount of frustrated shouting from my teacher was going to make the penny drop. I was seven, or eight. Decimalisation was introduced some years later, for my benefit. I wasn’t alone, I’m sure.

My younger grandson brought his maths homework, needing my help. He doesn’t. He just likes to chill at our house and being without his siblings, he gets all the treats to himself, and undivided attention. He’s aged nine, Year 4, and he was doing six columns of multiplication tables. I’m okay with that, though eight times and nine times gets my brain fumbling a little bit. He believes me when I say swapping the numbers round still gives the same answer and I show him what I mean with five times four and four times five. He already knows, but we’re both enjoying the one to one. A multiplication tables chart fills the flip side of his A4 work sheet and he reminds me how to use it.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Numbers - My First Poetry Workshop

How many poems have I written? Loads! Have I ever attended a poetry workshop? Nope....not until last Saturday. 

It was run by Kate Eggleston Wirtz and Steve Rowland, both known and admired by me for quite some time for their great talents. (I like to mix in such circles, hoping some of it might rub off ha ha!) So off I went to my first poetry workshop, delighted to see poetry pals Tom Mackereth and Adele Robinson also in attendance.

At 1.00pm promptly at Eggwirtz Studio in St Annes On Sea, things got off to a great start…an offer of a brew and a plate of biscuits which included CUSTARD CREAMS…what can I say? My boxes were ticked immediately, and not just because of the biscuits. 

Being artistically inclined myself, the studio was an immensely interesting place to be in. A wonderful eclectic mix of colours, styles, and multi-media creations and designs filled the place. My eyes were everywhere, picking out interesting pieces, curious items, clever designs, masterful pencil drawings, and millions of tiny little miscellanea filling all the nooks and crannies. But I digress….

Eggwirtz studio

Everyone introduced themselves and Steve explained the theme and introduced the 'mathematical' element. 'What?' No-one actually said that, but I could almost feel the thought filling the air. For me, however, this was just another box ticked. I love numbers, patterns, formulas etc. That doesn't make me an expert, it's just that I find numbers fascinating and when we were all handed a very informative sheet by Steve, who must have really done his homework, this new world of mathematical poetic forms was pumping up my inspiration levels very nicely.

This felt great, because I have been troubled with writers' block for lengthy sections of this year, struggling to find sparks of inspiration, and at times, even the will to write anything at all. And now here I was in a poetry workshop with folk I knew and admired, pumped with inspiration, eyes on a blank page and pen in hand. I felt like a greyhound in the traps, waiting for the off…..well, just polishing off another custard cream first. 

I zoomed in on a Pi variant, a PIEM, ha ha! And looked at the sample by Sir James Hopward Jeans, based on the number of letters in each word, mimicking the decimal Pi, 3.14152926535897932384….. and so on. I remembered Pi from my old school days, emphasis on the 'old' as being 22/7, so I planned to write a piem with 2 stanzas, one of 22 lines and the other with 7.

There ensued a comfortable silence as everyone put pen to paper. My poem…oh, forgot to mention, as usual, is written in Lanky Twang!

Twenty Two Over Seven

T' mathematical decimal number of Pi
Guz on fer ages an' ages,
But wen I wer a lass in skoo days past
It wer different on ower pages.
Twenty-two over seven, she said,
An' I believed that teacher o mine,
Decimals wer just comin' in
But we didn't give 'em much mind.
Today I learned about John Hopwood Jeans,
An' ee's long-lined piem an' wot it means.
Each word 'as letters matchin' decimal Pi
So I giz it a look o're, wi mi gud eye!
Then, cuz I'm a bit OCD,
I noticed summat didn't feel right to me,
So I counted t' letters in every word
An checked 'em against decimal Pi.
Letter counts wer all correct,
So I checked again and wonder'd why
I wer still convinced ther wer summat wrong,
But wot wert problem catchin' mi eye?
Compelled to re-check wi sum surprise,
I determined to finish this exercise.

So now I've written twenty-two lines
An' even managed to mek 'em rhyme,
But did I find wot caused mi grief?
I bet yer wond'rin wot it is.
Ok, I'll reveal wot put me outta joint,
Ee's letters matched all t' numbers
But ee sadly missed THE POINT !

We all read or talked about our efforts, had another tea break. Kate's reputation as a host rose even higher when the whole packet of Custard Creams headed my way (he he!) I proudly refrained from being a total pig and just had a couple more.

we talked about our efforts

Then we got back to writing again.

This time I chose the theme of 'an object'……tough call in a place like this with soooooo much to look at. It culminated in a kind of thank you poem to Kate, in the form of a sonnet.

KEW Studio Sonnet

I'm in her studio,
Eyes roaming walls and spaces,
Pausing here and there,
Stopping to stare.

Colours fill the air,
Soft shades and bright hues,
But a black and white creation
Ignites imagination.

Is anything really as black and white
As the canvass on display?
In Sun's shadow, or Moon's light,
Is day, day? Or night, night?

In her studio with much to amaze,
The black and white canvas holds my gaze.

And then, time up, my lift arrived, it was time to say good bye and head off, clutching my notebook, with two new pieces, achieved in one very enjoyable afternoon with tea and biscuits, chatter and laughter, good company, catch up with friends, and a wonderful experience…..my first poetry workshop. (Big smile and cheesy grin!)

My thanks to Steve Rowland and Kate Eggleston Wirtz.

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Before And After Street Lamps

I've spent a couple of weeks reading and researching about streetlamps. It's a huge and illuminating topic: from flaming tar torches on Greek and Roman buildings, through the invention of glass-enclosed candlelight lamps in 16th century cities like Amsterdam and London, to the invention of the 'lamppost' and street lamps on every corner in 17th century Paris, which led the way in urban lighting, and whose thousands of réverbère oil-fuelled street lamps earned that city its abiding nickname La Ville-Lumière (The City of Light). As an aside, during the French Revolution (1789–1799), the revolutionaries found that the city's lampposts were a convenient place to hang aristocrats and other opponents.

The history of street lamps can be roughly divided into two eras, BC (before coal) and AI (after industrialisation). 

What I've outlined above is all BC. With the arrival of coal (and hence gas) during the industrial revolution, civic investment in gasworks and underground pipe networks from the mid 19th century onwards enabled many towns and cities to have their main thoroughfares lit by gas streetlamps. It was confusing for birds and annoying for burglars and stargazers, but great for the convenience and safety of ordinary citizens, particularly women. It also created jobs for a legion of lamplighters who would go round armed with ladders and matches to prime and light the streetlamps each evening and then go round and turn them off again every morning. The only other 20th century refinements of note have been a conversion from gas to electricity and the fitting of automated time switches which rendered lamplighters redundant.

We've taken it for granted for so long that our evening and night time streets are bathed in pools of soft orange sodium vapour light or the brighter white mercury vapour variety shining down from 10m lampposts spaced every 30m to 40m apart. Nowadays everyone is happy and safe at night - apart from the councillors who have to worry about the cost of keeping everything running as utility prices climb and government funding shrinks.

But for a themed poem this week, I want to retrace steps to a time in any post-industrial metropolis before streetlamps had achieved ubiquity. These cities from London to Glasgow to New York and Chicago were bustling and polluted hives of humanity. Air quality was poor in the earliest AI urban centres, as smoke and fumes poured perpetually from thousands of chimneys. 

As one diarist on a night out in the capital recalled: 'We went to the Opera on a foggy night, only to discover that the haze had crept indoors, rendering the stage virtually impossible to see. Although there was nothing in the opera to move one, we in the audience seemed to be perpetually in tears in reaction to of the fog’s chemical sting.'

London's 'pea-soupers' were infamous for nearly three centuries, peaking in the 'killer smog' of 1952, where 4,000 respiratory-related deaths were reported in just a couple of days. leading to the Clean Air Act of 1956. And while London was in the grip of foggy nights through which early and sporadically placed versions of candle-powered or even gas streetlamp shone ineffectually, there grew up an army of mobile streetlamps known as link-boys. 

These enterprising youths carried torches made from burning pitch and tow and their name derives from 'link', a term for the cotton tow that formed the wick of the torch. Link-boys would light the way of pedestrians to the nearest sedan-chair or carriage rank, or even to their doorsteps through near impenetrable fog for the fee of a farthing. Many central London houses still have a link extinguisher on the exterior, shaped like outsized candle snuffers. Of course, employing a linkboy could be dangerous, as some would lead their clients to dark alleyways, where they could be beset by footpads, but their useful services generally outweighed the risk.

Samuel Pepys regularly mentioned them in his Diary, as on 4 February, 1660: 'So with a linkboy to Scott’s'; and on 22 June that same year: 'and so by link home about 11 o’clock'.

Another, more expansive anecdotal record (purporting to be by James Vila Blake, an American evangelist on a visit to England) referenced link-boys abroad on a 'typical' London night: 'The fog lay thick and dense around us; the link-boys were out in all their glory, dashing wildly about among the bewildered crowds, with their “Have a torch, sir?” “Light you home, sir?” “Better take me, sir!” Then darting frantically into the blackness they were lost, only to reappear again, thrusting their blazing fire-brands so near your clothing that it really seemed frightful. Drivers were offered enormous sums by terrified people to take them home—offers refused with frightful oaths; helpless women clung to railings for safety; now and then a solitary omnibus came along, each horse led, by a link-boy with his flaming torch; men knocked against each other, and we clung tightly to each other’s arms and strove to keep each other in sight.'

Of necessity, this new poem is a work in progress because I've been busy co-hosting a poetry-writing event today. I feel it's got to go somewhere else still but don't know where - so revisit the blog in a week or three and it might read completely differently. By the way, the title references the St. Giles Illuminati, a nickname given to the link-boys who plied their trade in London's theatreland in the mid 18th century, and the main characters in the poem (Betty and Larry) are real historical figures.

St. Giles Illuminati

Betty Careless has little to fear

from the stinging yellow of a chemical night

or the dangers that lurk in the swirling fog

as long as her personal link-boy appears

from out the fireflies in the smoke, to light

her progress to each evening's moondog.

Of all the glym-jacks in theatreland,

little Larry Casey always sees her right.

This Cheapside scamp of an artful dodge

carries a torch for the comely courtesan,

his fierce, proud devotion a touching sight

as he snuffs his tow outside another lodge.

As a musical bonus, and I haven't included on of these in a while, here is Van Morrison performing 'Bulbs' from his 1974 LP 'Veedon Fleece ', live at that year's Montreux Jazz Festival. It's an absolute blast. To  fire up the song, just click on the hyperlink here: Bulbs

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S;-)

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