This Writing Game

What with Birmingham City looking like we’re going to be relegated and be playing Blackpool next season I was a bit reluctant to be thinking about football for This Writing Game but as the old saying goes ‘It’s the hope that kills you’. So I hoped that by looking at poetry and football would cheer me up a bit. I thought that finding any sort of poem related to the beautiful game would be difficult but as it turned out there are thousands.

a Victorian birthday card

Robert Frost once said, ‘Poetry is play. I’d even rather have you think of it as a sport. For instance, like football.’ And not just recently. How about this from the sixteenth century:

The Bewties Of The Fute-ball (anon)
Brissit brawnis and brokin banis,
Stride, discord and waistie wanis.
Crukit in eild syne halt withal,
Thir are the bewties of the fute-ball 

I don’t immediately think of A. E. Housman as a fan but there is this from A Shropshire Lad in 1896.

XVII. Twice a week the winter thorough
Here stood I to keep the goal:
Football then was fighting sorrow
For the young man’s soul.

Actually I don’t think he was a fan.

I’m probably wrong in saying that there was a bit of a break in poems about football in the UK during the middle of the twentieth century as I can only find a few.

So I’m going to go straight to the year 2000 and the launch of Footballpoets. A group of poets were sitting in a cafe in Stroud, they had called themselves Stroud Football Poets and had performed football-based sets at Cheltenham literature festival and then at the Royal Festival Hall for Euro 96. With the Euro 2000 tournament approaching they decided to set up a website. They were amazed how popular it became so quickly thinking that it would just be the odd poem once a month maybe. As of today they have 17,816 poems on the site.

Subbuteo Shakespeare

They quote Wordsworth “Poetry is writing with passion about something you feel passionate about” and go on to say ‘Our slogan was and still is ‘Swapping Shirts with Shakespeare'. Love it or loathe it, just like Wordsworth says, the essence of why and how those who write football poetry do is the passion and experience we share, I guess. We/they just love it, warts and all. First and foremost, though, our ethos is simply to provide a free platform and canvas that inspires and encourage young and old to express themselves, by writing and sharing ( out loud!) about something they love.’

Since then many contemporary poets have written about football. There are Poets in Residence at grounds. The last two Poet Laureates have written poems about the game.

This is an excerpt from Simon Armitage’s ‘Goalkeeper with a Cigarette’:

...Not my man, though, that’s not what my man does;
a man who stubs his reefers on the post
and kicks his heels in the stud-marks and butts,
lighting the next from the last, in one breath
making the save of the year with his legs,
taking back a deep drag on the goal-line
in the next; on the one hand throwing out
or snaffling the ball from a high corner,
flicking off loose ash with the other...

And here is an excerpt from one by Carol Ann Duffy:

We See You
That rain-heavy, leather ball your left foot smashed a century ago
has reached us here, and so we see you, Lily Parr,
in hindsight’s extra time...
We’re all onside...
Team-sheets are the dreams
of managers – shout out the golden days of Emma Hayes...
Women’s voices – Eni Aluko, Karen Carney – tell the poetry of play
We’ll find you – 10 years old, girl with ball, incredible to be you.
So here’s our Team Talk: We’re right behind you. And we see you.

Incidentally, one of my top ten poems ever is ‘Hop in, Dennis’ by Simon Armitage from his book ‘Seeing Stars’ but it seems that it’s carefully copyrighted or I would print it here in place of this one by me.

National Football Museum, Manchester

National Football Museum
Going back
to that point in time
drifting past Calcio
ball games in China
flat caps on village greens
the birth of the Blues
the Reds and teams
in black and white prints
playing for love
and then for money
playing for crowds that just appeared

they never looked back
I kept going back to
1860 and twenty years
leaving the kits
the tickets and Annuals
shirts signed by players of the PFA

I kept going back
to those first few years
to Public Schools and Houses
to factory gates that opened
on Saturday afternoons

trying to find a reason
for all those winter evenings
being in the ground
twelve years old and singing
lost to smoke night and words
swept up by more than senses
not understanding what it could mean.

First published in The Journal, April ’23.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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The Second-Best Bed

So you’ve invited a new friend or the boss or perhaps a new girl or boyfriend round to your place for the first time. There’s a knock on the front door, you open the door and invite the person in and stand to the side attempting a look of humble modesty as they come in and stare at the huge and expensive bed right in the middle of your front room. Nowadays, of course, the person would probably edge back out of the front door and run for it.

But in the 1500s and early 1600s, the position of that bed would be considered completely normal according to Alexandra Hewitt of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. I’ve no idea but perhaps Anne Hathaway was (not literally) swept off her feet by this sight as in those days the best bed was placed in the most conspicuous of places. 

Why was this? Hewitt explains that costly beds were displayed on the ground floor that was usually used for business, dining, hosting, and leisure. Beds in this space were rarely slept in. In many urban middling and gentry homes, the parlour was the primary exhibition space. It was the main room in which to receive visitors. Much like displaying your new 55 inch tv, these beds were conspicuously positioned in places where friends, family, neighbours and visitors were most likely to see them. Only the most distinguished guests were permitted to sleep in such beds, and it is unlikely that they were used by the master and mistress of the household. They would have been more inclined to sleep in the second most expensive bed in the house - the second-best bed - usually positioned on an upper floor.

Shakespeare's second-best bed

Which brings me to the point of this article as it was well known that Shakespeare left his wife, Anne, the second best bed in his last Will and Testament. Lena Cowen Orlin, author of The Private Life of William Shakespeare (OUP) is one of the scholars who has questioned this viewpoint thus:

‘One of the Shakespeare myths is that we have proof he despised his wife: when he died, he left her nothing more than “my second-best bed.” Perhaps written at Shakespeare’s deathbed, the document was full of revisions and additions. It was thought that the original revealed two guilty secrets. First, the bequest to Anne Shakespeare was inserted like a grudging afterthought. Second, she received not a brown best bed but a second-best one.

It was suspected that with the bed Shakespeare disinherited Anne, as if he had cut her off with a shilling. This Shakespeare could not do. Dower law ensured that for the length of her life Anne received one-third of all income from the substantial properties the couple had purchased during their marriage. As other wills show, dower had to be invoked in order to be revoked and, by declining to mention it, Shakespeare let it stand.

Shakespeare's will

In the wills of his time, beds and their accoutrements appeared frequently and were often pictured in loving detail. Since Shakespeare does not describe the bedframe, mattress, sheets, pillows, or coverlet, his family undoubtedly already knew which bed he meant. A best bed might have a full headboard and a mattress stuffed with feathers, while the second bed would have a half-headboard and a mattress stuffed with flocks. Since best beds were reserved for guests, it could be that Shakespeare’s second-best bed was the marital bed.’

Adam Johnson from Heritage Will Writing reports that new scientific evidence produced on the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death including X-ray and infra-red analysis by a team from The National Archives has revealed that the clause was inserted a month before he died in April, 1616, aged 52. Experts believe this was a touching act of love by a man knowing he was dying. Specifically mentioning the second best bed where the couple slept together, made love and where his children were born is now seen by many scholars as a gift from the heart.

Anne Hathaway

'Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…’
(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas
where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

                                                                     Carol Ann Duffy

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Soaps

In December 1960 something completely different emerged in the North of England for a short run and remarkably is still running today. The Soap I sat in front of in the living room on a cold winter’s day was Coronation Street, a gloomy looking drama set on the grimy, cobbled streets steeped in Northern life.

Well, it didn’t look too promising but my mother and I were hooked in to the dialogue and characters as types we recognised and I can remember their names now. It started with Florrie Lyndley’s first day in the corner shop being told the local gossip and which people to avoid, whilst arranging cans. Elsie and Dennis Tanner are next, arguing about his lack of employment after prison and in one scene Elsie looks in her Compact’s mirror and says:- 

       Just about ready for the Knackers yard. 

and we laughed and from then on we saw it was entertaining and not too serious and Elsie became a key character with her fights and rows with Ena Sharples and men always coming and going in her life.

It is quite amazing that Ken Barlow started in the first episode and is still there although probably reading his lines stuck to lamps and chairs out of sight, how else does he manage? 

There is a memorable bit of conversation between him, down from university and transformed into a “snob”, asks his dad why he is drinking tea at meal times. 

       I like my food swilled down properly, his dad replies. 

We, up North, didn’t all talk or behave like this although Southerners like to believe we are still stuck in a time warp, but the popularity of this soap couldn’t have been thought possible then. Joe public craved more and Granada commissioned more episodes from its original bi-weekly offering.

early Coronation Street cast ensemble

To go back to the first emergence of Ena buying Fondant Fancies must have stuck in my memory as a mysterious thing to eat and the wonderful Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst drinking stout at a circular wrought iron table in the Rovers pub wearing the drabbest macs the props department could find. How sad I was when she dies whilst swigging the stout she loved.

They say the success of it was down to the strong female characters and the males do seem a weaker set. The drama has continued down the years with many memorable parts for women, Sarah Lancashire who played Raquel being one. What a clever concept of Tony Warren’s to give us everyday characters we would recognise and ongoing drama mixed in so we are hooked in following their story - lines seemingly forever.

drinking in the Rovers Return

Coronation Street

If someone could direct me to a street where I could stand
Cobbles beneath my feet tearful with rain;
The shadows of my hopes behind the stained - glass windows of a pub, ghosts -
I would turn up the collar of my coat, walk, number each small, terraced house by heart:
Birthplace; neighbours - hard man, hussy, harridan, hustler, hero, heroine -
Threshold, bride and groom as clueless of next year as Christmas Eve;
Or exit-place, a hearse, a raw and local grief…
Then I’d retrace my steps, perhaps a baby’s cry sharp as a sudden star nailed to the sky,
To stand now in this backstreet bar, nursing a beer
All my griefs, my gifts, and glad I live here.

                                                                   by Carol Ann Duffy, 2010

Thank you for reading,

Cynthia.

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Boxing Day Laziness

Christmas wouldn't be the same without a new poem from our poet laureate. This year saw Carol Ann Duffy write Bethlehem; a beautiful little book published by Picador, illustrated by Alice Stevenson and tucked beneath my tree until I carefully unwrapped it yesterday. This prompted me to remember another Carol Ann poem that I read a couple of years ago on The Guardian's website, and which I thought I'd share with you all today.

THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE

Christmas Eve in the trenches of France,
the guns were quiet.
The dead lay still in No Man's Land –
Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank . . .
The moon, like a medal, hung in the clear, cold sky.

Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel,
sparkled and winked.
A boy from Stroud stared at a star
to meet his mother's eyesight there.
An owl swooped on a rat on the glove of a corpse.

In a copse of trees behind the lines,
a lone bird sang.
A soldier-poet noted it down – a robin
holding his winter ground –
then silence spread and touched each man like a hand.

Somebody kissed the gold of his ring;
a few lit pipes;
most, in their greatcoats, huddled,
waiting for sleep.
The liquid mud had hardened at last in the freeze.

But it was Christmas Eve; believe; belief
thrilled the night air,
where glittering rime on unburied sons
treasured their stiff hair.
The sharp, clean, midwinter smell held memory.

On watch, a rifleman scoured the terrain –
no sign of life,
no shadows, shots from snipers,
nowt to note or report.
The frozen, foreign fields were acres of pain.

Then flickering flames from the other side
danced in his eyes,
as Christmas Trees in their dozens shone,
candlelit on the parapets,
and they started to sing, all down the German lines.

Men who would drown in mud, be gassed, or shot,
or vaporised
by falling shells, or live to tell,
heard for the first time then –
Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles schläft, einsam wacht …

Cariad, the song was a sudden bridge
from man to man;
a gift to the heart from home,
or childhood, some place shared …
When it was done, the British soldiers cheered.

A Scotsman started to bawl The First Noel
and all joined in,
till the Germans stood, seeing
across the divide,
the sprawled, mute shapes of those who had died.

All night, along the Western Front, they sang,
the enemies –
carols, hymns, folk songs, anthems,
in German, English, French;
each battalion choired in its grim trench.

So Christmas dawned, wrapped in mist,
to open itself
and offer the day like a gift
for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry, Heinz …
with whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs.

Frohe Weinachten, Tommy! Merry Christmas, Fritz!
A young Berliner,
brandishing schnapps,
was the first from his ditch to climb.
A Shropshire lad ran at him like a rhyme.

Then it was up and over, every man,
to shake the hand
of a foe as a friend,
or slap his back like a brother would;
exchanging gifts of biscuits, tea, Maconochie's stew,

Tickler's jam … for cognac, sausages, cigars,
beer, sauerkraut;
or chase six hares, who jumped
from a cabbage-patch, or find a ball
and make of a battleground a football pitch.

I showed him a picture of my wife.
Ich zeigte ihm
ein Foto meiner Frau.
Sie sei schön, sagte er.
He thought her beautiful, he said.

They buried the dead then, hacked spades
into hard earth
again and again, till a score of men
were at rest, identified, blessed.
Der Herr ist mein Hirt … my shepherd, I shall not want.

And all that marvellous, festive day and night,
they came and went,
the officers, the rank and file,
their fallen comrades side by side
beneath the makeshift crosses of midwinter graves …

… beneath the shivering, shy stars
and the pinned moon
and the yawn of History;
the high, bright bullets
which each man later only aimed at the sky.

(from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/11/christmas-truce-poem-carol-ann-duffy)

Hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas,

Lara

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Ut pictura poesis. What? Precisely.

Never one to miss an opportunity to exploit an online contact, I sent a message to Bloodaxe's Neil Astley back in April to ask him to recommend a book on poetics for me.  I've read Stephen Fry's Ode Less Travelled and Glyn Maxwell's On Poetry (thanks Jamie!) but beside the more academic books which were recommended at Blackpool & Fylde College, haven't read an awful lot around the subject.  I wanted something to get my teeth into.  His response certainly gave me that:

For reading or writing? For writing, Peter Sansom's Writing Poems. For reading and writing, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics which covers everything you could possibly want to know.
Neil

The former is a brilliant resource for its writing games (think workshop planning) and quick guide to some of the best contemporary poets with reasons why they rock.  This book therefore doubles as a bluffer's guide to the British poetry scene in the 21st century.  It has loads of practical tips, some of which are suitable for new writers wishing to learn the craft and others which give an 'Ohhh, yeah -that's what they're doing' moment for those who have been lingering on the scene for a while and wondering how the best poets do what they do.

The latter is an incredible tome which I dearly wish I'd bought in hard copy rather than for my Kindle.  You know the joy you get from flicking through an encyclopedia and picking out something fascinating at random?  This purchase led to the conclusion that e-books are definitely not superior to print.  There is so much information in this book and flicking through it in order is really unsatisfactory.  I'll try to give you an idea of what it covers:

Yes, that is half of the index page covering Al - An.  It's bloody amazing isn't it?  It gets me all hot and bothered that index.  Blackpool and Fylde doesn't have it in their library catalogue.  Nor does Blackpool Central Library.  I wonder if the wonderful folks at the Library Service could be convinced to order it for their burgeoning population of keen poets? 

As for my own recommendation, I'm going to plump for something a little closer to home.  Sculpted is an anthology edited and devised by the minds behind the North West Poets' group; Lindsey Holland and Angela Topping.  The contents page reads like a who's who of poetry from the north of England and every time I dip into it I end up lost in its pages for an unfeasibly long time.  This list includes Rachel McGladdery, Cath Nichols, David Riley, John Siddique; all poets who have written for the Dead Good Blog at some point.  The many other contributers are on my hit list for the near future.

Honorable mentions must go to the powerhouse of poetry that is Kim Moore (follow her blog for weekly in-depth poetry analysis and why not buy a copy of her book If We Could Speak Like Wolves - it's insightful, funny and full of carefully observed portraits) and V A Sola Smith who I am yet to meet but would love to shake by the hand, if only for the phrase 'the not-yet ghouls, tripping unseen about their fate' from her poem about kids in a seaside town, Poor Fish.  The book has an introduction from David Morley and the front cover bears the following quote from our poet laureate: "The North West is a hotbed of poetry.  If you want to know why, read this book."

Copies of the book can be bought via the Wordpress page.

Now, I don't expect to hear another peep from you until you've read all of the above.  Then we'll talk poetry.

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Bring on the fighting kids

Nicola Adams

By Sheilagh Dyson

Desperately casting round for something to write in this week’s post, I gratefully received this gift from Carol Ann Duffy via Saturday’s Guardian. I was at the time feeling exhausted, elated, proud, angry, heartened, depressed, exhilarated, overjoyed, resentful, comforted from three magical days remorselessly tramping round London and the Olympic stadium and park. I had seen the mighty Mo run in the 5000 metre heats. I had heard the stadium crowd cheer to the rafters every British competitor – and reserve the warmest applause of all for Sarah Attar and Waroud Sawalha, Muslim women running for Saudi Arabia and Palestine respectively, both finishing last in their 800 metre heats – but both there, competing, representing their countries with pride. I had enjoyed the thoughtful, exuberant planting of wild flowers all around the Olympic Park and the serene canalside walk in the shadow of the Stadium. I had revelled in the comradeship of a shared experience, the smiles, the tumult of humankind, united in a maelstrom of celebration.

I needed someone to sum it all up for me – the joy of the sporting competition; the anger at the fur coat no knickers juxtaposition of the money lavished on the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ with the shrinking number of playing fields and sporting facilities for ordinary kids in our country; the euphoria at another medal hard-won with years of sheer grind and dedication; the contemptible ease with which the money men have made ordinary people pay the full price, take all the blame for the spivs and crooks who litter the financial markets and play roulette with our lives; the renewed pride in being a member of one race, the human race; the unexpected feeling of being proud to be British (but not xenophobic), able to wave a Union Flag without feeling queasy about its hijacked connotations.

Lacking the energy and wit myself and with all these contradictions churning around in my punch drunk brain, I was relieved to find, of course, a poet to put it all into good humoured, rational perspective, to make some sense of the wonder and frustration of the last two glorious weeks. (This is why Carol Ann Duffy is the Poet Laureate and I am a student on the first rung of the ladder!)

I think her poem admirably captures a moment, a mood, a spirit, a defiance and I love it. It also exhorts us to reject the craven, weasel words of the government and to take back the power from those who have ruthlessly grabbed it from us to shore up their own undiminished wealth and privilege. The fighting kids will show us the way – hooray.

Translating the British, 2012, by Carol Ann Duffy



A summer of rain, then a gap in the clouds

and The Queen jumped from the sky

to the cheering crowds.

We speak Shakespeare here,

a hundred tongues, one-voiced; the moon bronze or silver,

sun gold, from Cardiff to Edinburgh

by way of London Town,

on the Giant's Causeway;

we say we want to be who we truly are,

now, we roar it. Welcome to us.

We've had our pockets picked,

the soft, white hands of bankers,

bold as brass, filching our gold, our silver;

we want it back.

We are Mo Farah lifting the 10,000 metres gold.

We want new running-tracks in his name.

For Jessica Ennis, the same; for the Brownlee brothers,

Rutherford, Ohuruogu, Whitlock, Tweddle,

for every medal earned,

we want school playing fields returned.

Enough of the soundbite abstract nouns,

austerity, policy, legacy, of tightening metaphorical belts;

we got on our real bikes,

for we are Bradley Wiggins,

side-burned, Mod, god;

we are Sir Chris Hoy,

Laura Trott, Victoria Pendleton, Kenny, Hindes,

Clancy, Burke, Kennaugh and Geraint Thomas,

Olympian names.

We want more cycle lanes.

Or we saddled our steed,

or we paddled our own canoe,

or we rowed in an eight or a four or a two;

our names, Glover and Stanning; Baillie and Stott;

Adlington, Ainslie, Wilson, Murray,

Valegro (Dujardin's horse).

We saw what we did. We are Nicola Adams and Jade Jones,

bring on the fighting kids.

We sense new weather.

We are on our marks. We are all in this together.

           

So, is that an example of free verse? Blank verse? Who cares - I’m on my hols from college and not in the business of stylistic analysis just at the minute! The poetic form doesn’t really matter, if I enjoy the language and emotion of a poem. Increasingly, poets tend to agree. Ezra Pound, writing in 1916, said ‘To create a new rhythm – as the expression of new moods – and not to copy the old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon ‘free-verse’ as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as a principle of liberty.  We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional form. In poetry a new cadence means a new idea.’  In other words, it is down to the poet how they wish to express what they want to say, in the form they want to say it. And that is the strength and beauty of poetry precisely.



Woroud Sawalha

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A Collection of Poets in Glasshouses

On Friday, Shaun and I travelled to Manchester to attend a Poetry Book Society Benefit where 15 northern poets gathered in support of the threatened PBS. They, like other societies and literary festivals, have lost all of their funding from Arts Council England. After 58 years of funding, they discovered in March that it would end; they’ve been in a state of crisis every since. The PBS director Chris Holifield explained:

The Arts Council seemed to acknowledge almost immediately that it had not understood our place in the ecology of poetry and agreed to support us and to help us write a Grants for the Arts application so that we would at least have some funding to use as the basis for a survival plan. But on 12 August we received the unwelcome news that that application had been turned down, which has meant that the crisis surrounding the PBS has deepened.

A second application, for support for staff to run the TS Eliot Prize, is currently with GftA. The situation now is that unless we can find sufficient funding for next year, the board is going to find itself in a very difficult situation. We have only until the beginning of December to establish that we will be a going concern next year.

So this is where I was on a rainy Friday night: supporting poetry, making a small contribution, being inspired, and remembering why it is that a want to be a poet – despite the barrage of cuts that continue to be inflicted upon poetry. And on Saturday, I wondered how I could tie this into a Science Fiction themed blog post... And this is what my mind imagined:

I was sitting on the second row. On the front row the poets sipped wine and waited for their names to be called; I was close enough to Simon Armitage that I could have tapped him on the shoulder, or even stroked his head. But neither of these things are subtle, they would draw attention, and for a collector – such as myself – that is never a good thing.

I removed a small plastic bag and a pair of tweezers from my pocket, and just as Armitage stood – ready to make his way to the lectern – I plucked a hair from his poetic head. As is usually the case, he turned in response to the sudden twinge of pain on his scalp, but there wasn’t time for him to question: his audience was waiting, eager to hear him read from Seeing Stars and Kid. I had succeeded; Simon Armitage was going to be the next poet in my collection.

Later when I got home, I went straight to the laboratory with Armitage’s hair sample and extracted an almost-exact copy of his genetic coding. The next stages are a little tedious and technical, so I won’t elaborate – but I’ve developed a method that allows for human cloning to be achieved within 72 hours. It produces a replica: not one that you need to wait for, not one that has to grow from infancy to adulthood, but an identical copy, well, almost identical.

The process alters height, quite drastically in fact, so what results is a miniature Armitage; a borrower-like poet that you can hold in the palm of your hand. But poetic ability, intelligence, persona, and even accent is unaffected, therefore, on the whole the results are fairly pleasing.

On a shelf there is a small glasshouse containing a few items of doll’s house furniture: a desk, a chair, a Victorian style bed and mahogany grandfather clock. I carefully wrap my fingers around Simon Armitage, lift him from the worktop, and place him inside his new home.

“There, isn’t this nice,” I say as I close the glasshouse’s lid. “Perhaps you could write about it...”

I check on the other poets in my collection, each living in a separate glasshouse, and suggest that they might like to do an evening reading to welcome our new arrival.

Carol Ann Duffy taps on the wall of her glasshouse and eagerly says, “I’ve got a new bee poem, I could read that.”

Thank you for reading,
Lar

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