The statue

 

THE STATUE

The panels round the plinth, to shield
the sponsor's vanity,
embed his moving in the herd,
confer impunity,

say Bristol citizens erected
Colston's memorial.
But Arrowsmith had to make up
fifteen percent shortfall.

A longer fall had it come down
to cheers and denting crash,
be rolled along the street logwise,
bigger than common trash,

to railings of the waterfront
and river-plunging shock.
It lies on wood with perspex shield
now, and some tried to block

the show with human shield no-show.
Deleted tweets distil
that phase.  Others, not blockers, wish
the fall were longer still.

The above was written in June 2021 for a competition on the theme of shielding, and then not entered, possibly from a misreading of the competition rules.

It has found publication in the online journal _Sledgehammer_.

It owes something to Thomas Ravenscroft's hymn tune 'Bristol', though I don't advise singing it to that tune.  It owes rather more to Roger Ball's post 'Myths within myths -- : Edward Colston and that statue' and Dan Hicks' 'Let's keep Colston falling'.

The forgettory

 

THE FORGETTORY

Prove they were in, twelve years ago, a craze

they claim they've always shunned? Or let the phase

lie back? “I never went there” was more sad

than “You won't let that go” after I had.

This is another poem whose only claim to publication is that I threw it into a Twitter conversation.  That was in 2019, and I have already forgotten what circumstances triggered the action. 

I wrote the poem in 2010, and I've forgotten the reasons for that now, too.  My half-memory is that it was for a competition, and written on a bus journey with the rules out of sight, so that the poem turned out to be in some way unsuitable when I looked at them again.

My memory is not what it was, but I don't see much value in a forgettory. I grew out of nostalgia a long time ago; I regard state-sponsored nostalgia as an abomination; and I consider memory to be a valuable corrective.