Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
The push for Aubers Ridge had been postponed
because of rain. But the Saturday
was dry and sunny. Going up the line
in the early evening, the Munsters
stood easy at the shrine to Our Lady.
‘…in remissionem peccatorum…’
By noon, next day, nearly half were dead,
caught on the German wire Haig’s ill equipped
artillery had, once more, failed to cut.
In Mazingarbe, an industrial town
ten miles south, the British commandeered
the abattoir.
Our house, the street’s first, was built epochs ago
on Cheshire pastureland. There has been nothing
for history to note here – only births, deaths,
the occasional fire and break-in,
and marriages at the Methodist Church
almost opposite us. Empires collapsed
from within – Austro-Hungarian,
British, French, German, Ottoman, Russian,
and Soviet. Here only the seasons came,
and bed-sits, then gentrification.
Now the St Petersburg Resurrection
A Cappella Choir – founded post-Gorbachev
to sing the liturgy in concert halls –
Ataturk dissolved seven centuries
of the Sultanate and the British
cloaked-and-daggered the aging Sultan
by sea to San Remo and exile.
Ataturk made the Sultan’s middle aged
cousin, Abdülmecid II, Caliph.
He seemed to carry his descent, as it were,
from the Prophet as lightly as a Pope
from the Saviour. He liked the pomp
and the public circumstance of the role
so much Ataturk sent him packing too.
Classical composer, husband of four wives,
painter, lepidopterist, gardener,
a Victor Hugo fan and of Montaigne’s
Essays –
‘…hardly any Jews!’, The Matabele Campaign 1896, Colonel R.S.S. Baden-Powell, Methuen, London, 1897.
The British in Africa seem always
to have verged on the comical. There was
BP chasing a Matabele girl
through bush. He was ahorse, she on foot.
In tranquillity, he sketched the scene – the girl
bare-footed and -breasted, himself at a
gallop – for publication. She escaped –
but Rhodesia was made safe for Cecil,
the continent for Aids and exploitation.
Jingoist,
Felicia Hemans
PROLOGUE
In 1962, the year the Pope excommunicated Fidel Castro
and the USA and USSR went toe-to-toe,
I won the Felicia Hemans’ prize for lyric poetry,
open to students and alumni of the University of Liverpool.
Mrs Hemans, born in Liverpool, but living
most of her life in North Wales, a best selling poet,
a child prodigy, a prolific adult, whose work
was admired by Wordsworth and Landor,
As he lay in a slit trench, in the dark,
next to the howitzer – smelling the gun oil
despite the cold, shivering despite
the army issue blanket and a tribesman’s
sheepskin tunic he’d bartered for – he thought
of tomorrow’s oven heat, turned, looked up.
Before he came to India, he’d never seen
so many stars. He’d eleven months to go
before his discharge – better counted that way
than in days or weeks. But maybe he’d sign on
for another tour.
‘…hardly any Jews!’, The Matabele Campaign 1896,
Colonel R.S.S. Baden-Powell, Methuen, London, 1897
The British in Africa seem always
to have verged on the comical. There was
BP chasing a Matabele girl
through bush. He was ahorse, she on foot.
In tranquillity, he sketched the scene – the girl
bare-footed and -breasted, himself at a
gallop – for publication. She escaped –
but Rhodesia was made safe for Cecil,
the continent for Aids and exploitation.
ON THE PONTE SAN ANGELO
Three roma children
on New Year’s Day kindle a
fire from last year’s leaves.
IN SEVILLE
After rain, a girl
struts her stuff flamenco style:
no one notices.
BY THE A3
Four chestnut horses
flick their tails in the shade of
a horse chestnut tree.
AT KOM OMBO
Crocodiles, Pharaohs,
Romans, French, Turks, British gone:
only tourists,
HINDSIGHT
A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
ON FIRST READING ‘THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO’
A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
BIRTHDAY GIRL UNDER HOUSE ARREST