The first place is Gringley on the Hill, where I grew up. The poem was written in 2004, for a competition organised, my card index says, by Pedal Power. Several relevant bodies bear that name, and I can't be sure which of them it was.
THE BIKE RHIMES
Imagination? Oh, for me,
with one bound Jack was always free.
When I was ten, I planned a fleet
of home-made go-karts down the street,
no, down the hill, down the A1,
sail-driven, with tin-telephone,
each kart wood-covered, a land-ark.
A good idea that might not work.
Truth is, I was late learning to ride a bike.
For my eighteenth, the choice I had
was typewriter or bike from Mum and Dad:
that's typewriter to exercise
my play-writing fantasies,
or bike, the more since biking skill
for me was six months brand-new still,
with view to riding out thus wheeled
to earn typewriter's cost in field.
I chose the bike, and hoed the weeds,
and typed the plays with the proceeds.
The plays were rubbish, I admit,
but bike -- I've not regretted it.
Truth is, I was late earning.
So now we do our long bike rides,
planned with good-bed-and-breakfast guides,
self and wife (I was late marrying)
and mobile phones, not tins and string.
And is the bike the bound or free?
If not, what should the question be?
With one bound, Jack was out of bounds.
The bike best covers solid grounds.
Let's be smart-kitted, then: the bike
rhimes are round, sound, bound and the like;
the bike through turn by turn of wheel
strengthens the work of getting real.
For my eighteenth, the choice I had
was typewriter or bike from Mum and Dad:
that's typewriter to exercise
my play-writing fantasies,
or bike, the more since biking skill
for me was six months brand-new still,
with view to riding out thus wheeled
to earn typewriter's cost in field.
I chose the bike, and hoed the weeds,
and typed the plays with the proceeds.
The plays were rubbish, I admit,
but bike -- I've not regretted it.
Truth is, I was late earning.
So now we do our long bike rides,
planned with good-bed-and-breakfast guides,
self and wife (I was late marrying)
and mobile phones, not tins and string.
And is the bike the bound or free?
If not, what should the question be?
With one bound, Jack was out of bounds.
The bike best covers solid grounds.
Let's be smart-kitted, then: the bike
rhimes are round, sound, bound and the like;
the bike through turn by turn of wheel
strengthens the work of getting real.
The second place is Walkeringham, a few miles from Gringley. The poem is one of those I wrote while following Jo Bell's splendid book 52: write a poem a week. Start now. Keep going. It was my response to that book's prompt number 30, for a poem on the theme of friendship.
WALKING
A little out of synch. You'd graduated,
I'd had my year abroad, this was the Christmas
vac of my final year. You visited
us (me, parents and sibs) after some weeks
teaching at an experimental school.
You joked you were a retired schoolmaster. The day
would fade, but we set out that afternoon
walking the three miles I had often walked.
The next village had trains and a closed station.
Beyond the tracks, a lane and the big Trent.
There the lane stopped, matching the other bank.
An ex-ferry. Later, a shared joke had
a girl of nine write to a retired colonel:
lure trendy lefties here with bogus demo,
stand to one side, watch the procession drown.
Was this when you told me you'd introduced
people to your inseparable pet
Gozo, a wodge of folded newspaper?
Walkeringham, the village. The road home
passed a wood on a low hill. You took off
coat and jersey, walked in shirt sleeves. Less light.
WALKING
A little out of synch. You'd graduated,
I'd had my year abroad, this was the Christmas
vac of my final year. You visited
us (me, parents and sibs) after some weeks
teaching at an experimental school.
You joked you were a retired schoolmaster. The day
would fade, but we set out that afternoon
walking the three miles I had often walked.
The next village had trains and a closed station.
Beyond the tracks, a lane and the big Trent.
There the lane stopped, matching the other bank.
An ex-ferry. Later, a shared joke had
a girl of nine write to a retired colonel:
lure trendy lefties here with bogus demo,
stand to one side, watch the procession drown.
Was this when you told me you'd introduced
people to your inseparable pet
Gozo, a wodge of folded newspaper?
Walkeringham, the village. The road home
passed a wood on a low hill. You took off
coat and jersey, walked in shirt sleeves. Less light.
The third poem is another 52-driven piece. The book's prompt 33 is for writing about machinery. I responded by reporting a conversation Clare and I had had, riffing on a that shared joke referred to in the poem above. It was a spoof I had self-published in more than one place before. The place -- the scene of the hypothetical mass drowning achieved by the use of a bogus demonstration -- was Walkeringham's Marsh Road. The ex-ferry is Walkerith Ferry, dead under so much water that even Wikipedia's list of River Trent crossings offers no date for when it closed.
UNCLE MARK’S TYPEWRITER
“Dear Colonel Sixty-Biff,
“I refer to your recent letter to the Daily Telegraph.
“I have got a plan to help you to get rid of all the trendy left-wing sociologists in your letter. I have thought the plan up myself, but am doing it on Uncle Mark’s typewriter. About three miles from our house there is a bit where the road comes down to the river and it comes to a dead end. If you say you are having a protest march, all the trendy sociologists will want to come with you, and when you get to the river, you can stand to one side and they will all walk over the edge.
“Best wishes
“Sonia Bingham (age 9)”
That was my spoof, from around 1980.
Here in 2018 we speculated
on Sonia and her now nine-year-old daughter.
We found the variations generating
so fast the film stopped. Of course we started
with the typewriter. Would that be a laptop?
Borrowed now? Or the girl’s phone, or smarter?
Also, we did a spot of calculating:
nine-year-old daughter or grand-daughter?
And would Sonia today, in her forties,
cringe at her childhood project of mass slaughter?
And/or is she the sort of Brexiteer
that studs their talk with calling people traitors?
And reading that eighties Telegraph letter –
her parents’ choice, or seen while visiting
Uncle Mark? The only certainty
was 2018 has no typewriter.
Not even pushbike-versus-car metrics
(car gives six bikes’ worth, takes a cost far greater)
can plea-bargain away the typewriter’s
limiting against e-possibilities.
Past the ex-ferry’s dead end has been much water.
News at the time of blogging is that Places of Poetry -- currently a rich read-only source of poems, a thing to lighten long journeys -- will re-open for posting during a fortnight in the autumn of 2020. News from me is that my Google Maps list of places in the British Isles with hymn-tunes named after them has borne its first fruit, a poem by me to be sung to the tune and with passing reference to the town in question. No details at this stage, as I want to preserve the poem's anonymity in case I enter it in competitions. But Places of Poetry and my list of hymn tune places might well be brought together.
UNCLE MARK’S TYPEWRITER
“Dear Colonel Sixty-Biff,
“I refer to your recent letter to the Daily Telegraph.
“I have got a plan to help you to get rid of all the trendy left-wing sociologists in your letter. I have thought the plan up myself, but am doing it on Uncle Mark’s typewriter. About three miles from our house there is a bit where the road comes down to the river and it comes to a dead end. If you say you are having a protest march, all the trendy sociologists will want to come with you, and when you get to the river, you can stand to one side and they will all walk over the edge.
“Best wishes
“Sonia Bingham (age 9)”
That was my spoof, from around 1980.
Here in 2018 we speculated
on Sonia and her now nine-year-old daughter.
We found the variations generating
so fast the film stopped. Of course we started
with the typewriter. Would that be a laptop?
Borrowed now? Or the girl’s phone, or smarter?
Also, we did a spot of calculating:
nine-year-old daughter or grand-daughter?
And would Sonia today, in her forties,
cringe at her childhood project of mass slaughter?
And/or is she the sort of Brexiteer
that studs their talk with calling people traitors?
And reading that eighties Telegraph letter –
her parents’ choice, or seen while visiting
Uncle Mark? The only certainty
was 2018 has no typewriter.
Not even pushbike-versus-car metrics
(car gives six bikes’ worth, takes a cost far greater)
can plea-bargain away the typewriter’s
limiting against e-possibilities.
Past the ex-ferry’s dead end has been much water.
News at the time of blogging is that Places of Poetry -- currently a rich read-only source of poems, a thing to lighten long journeys -- will re-open for posting during a fortnight in the autumn of 2020. News from me is that my Google Maps list of places in the British Isles with hymn-tunes named after them has borne its first fruit, a poem by me to be sung to the tune and with passing reference to the town in question. No details at this stage, as I want to preserve the poem's anonymity in case I enter it in competitions. But Places of Poetry and my list of hymn tune places might well be brought together.
