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

Read More

Writing the Olympics, throw the superlatives.

London, a badly surfaced road, sometime in August. Bradley Wiggins, rides a bicycle steadily, taking care not to be crushed by a taxi, blown apart by a rogue backpacker or happy slapped by a local teenager. Overhead, the sound of planes can be heard, accompanied by more planes, beeping car horns and the flash of digital cameras.
This is just any other day, it is any other month, it is any other place, give or take a couple of acoustic details. This is the day we will all live every time we leave our houses in a morning- except just for this month, this somewhat special occasion when we can actually choose not to talk about the weather, gripe about the price of milk or moan about the length of time spent queuing up for things. This month, we can unite over common ground and choose, amidst bleakest of long term prospects, to actually celebrate some achievements.

The London 2012 Games has led a furore of opinion and dominated the news with politicians and dignitaries fighting amongst themselves for photo opportunities and retweets- everyone from Boris Johnson to Morrissey has had a go, and with mixed success. To think that London has been magically transformed in a year is a triumph. This time last August we were streaming live pictures, from many of the same places, but in that short space of time the flames have somehow accumulated- as if gathered in copper petals- and become a symbol of strength, unity and achievement.

The Mayor of London led the way with the soundbites, 'call me jingoistic' he said,

Read More

Then the day came...

by Colin Davies

It's about 5 days before when I actually start to think about it. I’ve been mulling it over in the back of my head since the date and theme were announced, but to actually think, deliberately, and with purpose, 5 days. That’s 120 hours from the speed of the idea to standing up with my smart phone throwing caution to the wind.

It works like this. I suddenly realise I haven’t got a clue what I want to write. I know I want to stay on topic, I’m very anal about that. No matter what the subject I must deliver at least one poem that hit’s the theme, however tenuous. So hour one, realisation, rabbit in the headlights, an idea is needed.

I stare out of the window at the passing world and create two lines. These are going to be the basis around which the whole work is created. I smile and know I now have 119 hours to make it work. Hour two, slight panic.

Everything in the next few days is simple and carefree, I have four, three, two days to come up with something else, not an issue, I’m throwing words away in this time, like they mean nothing.

Then comes the next momentous event in the process, I’m an hour from going to bed on the Thursday night. Less than twenty four hours from now I will be sat in the Number 5 Cafe listen to the works of other truly talented poets and it hits me, “I want these people to like what I do.”

The carefree attitude that has caused me to be so disposable with my scribblings changes. Ego has come for a visit and told me to pull my socks up.

“How can you be taken seriously by these people” he says stretching his hand towards an imaginary photo of the Dead Good Poets dressed for graduation as if they had just stepped out of a John Hughes movie “They know what they’re talking about, you must try harder, for my sake.”

“Ok, Ego,” I reply somewhat in shock, “I’ll make a sandwich and get on with it.”

Ego smiles at me, but not in a happy way, more a kind of “You’d better” sort of sneer.

I go to the refrigerator to gather everything required for the assembly of a cheese sandwich. I pick up the butter, bottle of salad cream and pull the draw open where the cheddar lives. I notice a couple of bottle of Beck’s Veir hiding at the back of the middle shelf.

“You alright there fellas?” I ask greeting them.

“We are too there sir.” replies to one on the right in a West Country accent, “writing poems again?”

I smile, “Am I that obvious?”

The Veir on the right just smiles while the more Welsh sounding bottle on the left pipes up, “The theme for this month, what is it?”

“The Olympics?” I shrug.

“And what have you got already?”

I have an overwhelming feeling of embarrassment which I try and hide from my hopie friends by looking down at my feet and mumbling.

“What was that?” said Left.

“Speak clearly?” demanded right.

“And that is how I won gold...” I pause, breathe, “at the sexual Olympics.”

Some people say that the cruelest sound in the world is the echoing howls for an animal in pain that you have no chance of helping. I argue that your beers laughing at your humble attempts at verse from the inner sanctum of your own fridge can make you feel worse.

I slam the door shut. It’s doesn’t stop the sound of the chuckles, just reduces the volume. I continue with my bread and dairy composite and return to my laptop. I want a glass of milk to help, but the bullying I know that would come from the beer is too much to handle.

Now, I have to make this work, Ego is relying on me. I finish my sandwich, put on my headphones, select something I think will help, at the moment that always seems to be David Bowie. For this task, it has to be Diamond Dogs.

Stretching my arms out, interlocking my fingers and cracking my knuckles I breathe deep. The keyboard looks slightly blurry. I begin to type, pushing the flashing black cursor over to the right giving this new work a title “The Sexual Olympics.”

The blank page looks bigger than the room, I blink, take another breath. It’s this next moment that I can never get used to, as part of my preparations, my routines, I always take this opportunity to fall into a very deep sleep of which I am unaware until my partner Heather, taps me on the shoulder at 4am to ask me if I’m coming to bed.

I look up at her with surprise and notice the look on her face. She has just read the title and is wearing disapproval very well.

“And what did the beer have to say about this?” she asks.

“I think they’ve stopped laughing now?”

She shakes her head, “You’ll be fine, do what you always do and write it at work tomorrow.”

 

Her trusting tone makes everything calm, Ego smiles and nods in agreement.

The preparation is what you have to do for you. Everything you read is just an opinion, you have to try them on and see how they look, and what works, works. For me it’s being remanded by my ego and ridiculed by my beer. Everything else is just my own fault.

***

Colin Davies is a local author, regular contributor to the Dead Good Blog and a highly respected poet.

His incredible book, Mathamagical, is available from a variety of sources, including Amazon.

To find out more about Colin and his writing visit the Mathamagical page on FaceBook.

Read More