Clearness in England

Clearness in England

Humbler than lodestar claims:

citizens fossicking

for water standards,

where it’s made worse than brackish

at each profitable flush,

look downwards for truth

in such a sickly pickle.

Citizens writing,

not verklempt but using words

best true to the findings,

not parrot anger.

The glossy rag now carries

such stories. Let’s be

rational, rational. Let’s

be rational, rational.

The above was my entry in last year's CV2 competition. Some readers of this blog may remember that that competition requires entrants to make a new poem, in a single weekend, that must contain ten specific words emailed at 06:00 Saturday morning, UK time. In other words midnight Winnipeg time, as people living there slip from Friday to Saturday. Have fun guessing which the prescribed words are.

My entry got no success in the competition itself, but it has now found publication in Carole Baldock's poetry magazine Orbis. The work has had a measure of editorial improvement by Carole.

Here's some citizen journalism reporting on sewage, from East Anglia bylines. EAB is one of a network of similar outlets around the country; fun in the same way as the Places of Poetry online map that I've praised before.

This song of gladness

This Song Of Gladness

Beautiful Saviour by Stuart Townend

Verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, greater chorus –

yes, a structure to fit the song’s ideas:

verse worship, work, ordinary time,

and chorus echoing something more.

Less sung now than it used to be in our church,

unexpected that Sunday in the Spring.

New out of hospital, I sang it loud,

loud as recovery let me sing.

Biblical language, resonant names of God,

let’s say clear day, let’s say vista,

let’s say journey which has made.

We felt it raise us, we felt it let us see,

with our gathering, yes, our gathering

flying higher than before.

True, nothing inherent in this structure,

which I’ll call A A B A B B dash.

It will not beautify each pairing known

but may serve others, like this song.

Biblical language, resonant names of God,

let’s say clear day, let’s say vista,

let’s say journey which has made.

We felt it raise us, we felt it let us see,

with our gathering, yes, our gathering

flying higher than before.

Biblical language, resonant names of God,

let’s say clear day, let’s say vista,

let’s say journey which has made.

We felt it raise us, we felt it let us see,

with our gathering, yes, our gathering

flying high, high over all.


This poem was originally written in response to one of the prompts in Jo Bell's 52: write a poem a week.  It was for number 42, to write about a song.  I chose to write about Stuart Townend's worship song 'Beautiful Saviour'.  After the rediscovery described in the poem, Clare and I spent a Sunday lunchtime talking about the song's structure.

"It will not beautify each pairing known" -- we thought a bit about whether the structure in its most basic terms -- AABABB' -- would have much effect on every pair of things put into it. We tried a couple:

• Portugal, Portugal, Finland, Portugal, Finland, Finland in winter
• 60s nurse film, 60s nurse film, cement mixer, 60s nurse film, cement mixer, cement mixers

and concluded that the structure had no magical power to be inherently uplifting.

The poem has now found publication in Orbis 191, spring 2020.  It has benefited somewhat from suggestions by editor Carole Baldock.

Regarding church music more widely, I continue to add to my Google Maps list of places in the British Isles that have given their names to hymn tunes, with 273 at the last count.  During lockdown I have developed an addiction to Ralph Vaughan Williams' tune King's Lynn.

The remembered village

THE REMEMBERED VILLAGE

After Mum and Dad's Golden was our first return.

We drove through steady rain uphill but missed

the turn, entered the village further west

by the school, followed the S-bend past

hall, vicarage, cross. Walked up the steepest

north-sloping churchyard path. It was mid-August.

In church, the numbers since Dad's time reduced.

After I reached fifty was the second.

Late at night, we drove uphill, northward, turned

in by the school, the village western end;

again the hall-and-vicarage S-bend.

The missed B&B; the phone call, turn round.

Next morning, in dampness, we were shown around

the church, the steep north-facing slope of ground.

We left the village at the eastern end,

Beacon Hill, water tower; homeward bound.

Dad's memorial service was the third.

In a bright March morning, we drove westward,

took the right turn; the water tower, crossroad,

again right, swooping north and down, past wood

gates, left, and left again into the farmyard.

The party walked the unpavemented road

west, south, uphill, the cross, the village grid,

the steep north-facing path in the churchyard.

The plaque unveiled, and many kind words said.

Then path, cross, downhill, left at chapel, led

west to where the Borstal had once stood.

We saw the new-built road named after Dad.

So my lines. They'd make an incomplete

map, lacking streets and homes once known inside.

Returning took from memories no heat,

and the troubled return dreams have not died.

The poem was written in December 2013 for the Holland Park Press 'What's your place?' competition.  It has now found publication in Orbis 180 (p. 6).  It has benefited, as poems in Orbis tend to do, from suggestions by the editor Carole Baldock.

You might like to read my earlier poem 'Wikipedia on the village' and the village's own web site.

The finest-hour syndrome

The finest-hour syndrome

(A minister became convinced that God was telling him that his wife would die and he was then to marry Samantha)

Perhaps he spoke as other men had,
only the God-talk more;
I don't know if Samantha'd been
through the same pattern before.

I believe the minister had been
a captain of high finance.
Oh, utmost probity, no swindles;
no hint of dalliance...

I suppose, though, he'd told young Alison
Sylvia would soon retire,
and I suppose he took pride
in Alison as she flew higher.

And I suppose a still small voice
said ten years long he should quit
the firm, and voluntary church work
would not silence it,

but I suppose when he gave in
to study for the ministry,
surrender wrenched him like tooth loss,
hard-cold as January.

I believe the finest-hour syndrome
is what happens when
somebody foils a blaze then wants
the buzz all over again,

studding the rest of his career
with unexplained small fires.
Pray God the minister was no worse
than such artless self-liars.  

This poem was written in 2000 and published in Orbis 170, winter 2014, p.69.  The version in Orbis, reproduced here, has benefited from some editorial suggestions by Carole Baldock.

The term 'finest-hour syndrome' is my own invention.  The phenomenon of serial arson by a former fire hero is one I first heard of ca 1996 in the course of training as a Fire Safety Manager at work.  In all the refresher fire training I've had since then, I haven't heard of it again.  Googling in search of more detail, I've had the impression that former heroes are very much a subset of the would-be heroes' subset of serial arsonists.

The minister's error, as described in the title note, is close to events I read of as having happened at a church in London in the early 1990s.  But the poem's prequel to that story is entirely speculative.

Poems in Orbis

These poems are about to appear in Orbis 158. They have had the benefit, as Orbis poems tend to do, of editorial suggestions by Carole Baldock.

'By degrees' was my entry in the 2008 Keats-Shelley competition, whose theme that year, I seem to recall, was the word 'lost'. Keats-Shelley has a way of giving its entrants one-word themes that are very stimulating. 'A sentence' was written in 2011, probably for the Rhyme and Reason competition on the theme of 'time'.

The competition pattern re-asserts itself!


BY DEGREES

Soon it will be a twelvemonth since you lost,
whether by jump or push, your livelihood,
and ran to earth your heat in online post,
recycled Booker, climate science booed.
I lack much science, but, ad hominem,
am consoled, although saddened, when I see
your posts, the different ways of signing them:
two of them, a matter of geography.
For readers living in the USA,
you sign as ‘Dr’ at your new address;
for audiences here in the UK,
who know you, you still sign doctorateless.

Is this the old tradition of the prophet
honoured abroad, at home less well regarded?
Well-meaning, earnest? Other readings of it
spring up like Jack, and will not be discarded.
I cannot say what method’s best to measure
the profit of this title that you use,

not money, true, but cachet, psychic pleasure,
against what, as it’s false, you stand to lose.


A SENTENCE
The phrase ‘a prisoner doing time’,
tautologous, suggests the hand
of a sub-editor – ‘prisoner’
taking the place of ‘pervert’ (banned)?

I have no proof. Editing good,
censorship bad, I know. What time
changing ‘pervert’ to ‘prisoner’ took
was at worst a minute’s waste, no crime;

if hours, a background process, not
the trial months, the years of jail,
the decades from his bullying
strictness to this shock. And those measures pale

against the time he’s doing time for
against the lives he’s doing life for
against the time against the lives
against against against the lives
against against against against

against against against against