BBC India reports
The Universe has summoned
Keeley and Kyle
From Nottingham
To The Great Temple of Om
In central India
Where they will truly
Discover themselves
(presumably
The Universe thinks
this is unlikely to happen
in Nottingham)
LOCKDOWN
‘Hell on Earth’
Snaps Keeley
To our reporter
Close to the ground
‘God knows
When the tailor
Will be able
To return my saris
And I can’t even tell you
When I last sipped a latte
And does our government care?’
In the background
Of the shot
Another elderly Indian
Kneels in the dust
Sips water from a puddle
Kyle
(the sleeve of his kaftan
frayed by anxious chewing)
Whimpers
‘How can
Consciousness expand
When a dude’s been abandoned?
And does our government care?’
(he’s always been
a bit of a lingam)
Then one or the other bleats
‘All we want
Is enlightenment
Then to drift down
For a few days
On the beach’
(nearest beach
837 miles)
Just out of shot
Oblivious
To the stranded throngs
A child kneels in the dust
Playing solitaire
Unaware
She can never win the game
Because there are
Cards missing
*
Marquee farewell party
In Mummy and Daddy’s pile
Buckinghamshire
Bucks Fizz
Outside caterers
And so on
‘Long Island in the Bahamas’
Mummy snorts
‘It sounds just like a cocktail’
Tosses back her mane
Did Daddy marry his horse?
Rose-petal speech
‘We’re off to Paradise
But how could we possibly forget you
And we’ll always be on Skype
Of course’
Cue polite applause
Twelve months later
CYCLONE
Rips the roof off Eden
Splinters
In the sea
‘Our boss has done nothing
Though he’s so big in pineapple
London doesn’t care
Although we used to pay our taxes
How could these peasants
Forget
To fix the signal
For the Internet?’
Maybe this poet
Has a chip of ice
On each shoulder
He’s never shaken
Or stirred
With the smart set
But I hope I’m not the type
To pleasure in asking
When you moved into
A cyclone zone
What the fuck
Did you expect?
Did you think
You’d been born
To sleep soundly
Swaddled in the eye
Of every storm?
Yes, there’s a plane overhead
No, it won’t be landing
Be thankful
You’re the chosen
With a bit of your house
Still standing
*
It would be wrong
To add insult
Stick the boot in
But what on earth
Possesses people
To splash thousands on a trip
Scrimp a hundred on insurance?
ACCIDENT
A drunken dive
A scooter ride
Family bereft
‘We might have
To sell the house
The government
Has left us
Hospital cares for nothing
But who’s going
To pay the bills’
I’m truly truly sorry
Nothing is so cheap
As human life itself
Why should they
Make sacrifices
For a complacent
Tourist
When every single day
Hundreds of
Breadwinners
Lie down in their shacks
Die
Of preventable illness?
*
I don’t wear a halo
But I’m touched
By midday sun
When the attitude
Rising to the surface
Is that for all
We should have learned
Countries and their natives
Exist purely for our service
Please do me a favour
Stick to Blackpool
Weymouth
Shanklin
Send me your passport
I’ll refund the postage
Take care of the recycling
Category: Blog
Dogfood
Like any faithful hound I scent dinnertime From a country mile Come bounding Sit up Devour my bowlful Slaveringly Slavishly Eternally grateful For a full five seconds So Why Broccoli Leaves me Dyspeptically full Green Begging to get down Is a mystery Of the cosmos I chew over Endlessly While Tim Glowers Over the rim Of his no dessert School ma’am Glasses Mimics ‘I’m full’ Like a whining Whelp Until I skulk off With the dishes Tail between my legs Sneak a Wistful sniff Of the cheese And crackers Leave seizing For a furtive night time Raid Because What garnishes Wistful and crackers If not Fistful And knackers
(belated) Happy Birthday Mr. F
A couple of weeks ago marked the 101st birthday of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, still active activist, resident of San Francisco and writer of my all-time favourite poem, ‘Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes’ (see link below). In the 1950s, Mr. F. was co-founder of City Lights, America’s first ever paperback bookstore and every bit as iconic as the man himself. A champion of those who need champions, Ferlinghetti’s poetry is heartwarmning, honest and, most importantly, accessible. Anyone with a tenner to spend could do a lot worse than invest in his ‘Collected Poems’.
Why is ‘Two Scavengers…’ my favourite poem? It’s an idea of ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ simplicity used to show very deep and complex issues in a way which engages, rather than preaches. Clever, or what?
Enjoy the poem.
Two Scavengers in a Truck
Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
At the stoplight waiting for the light
nine a.m. downtown San Francisco
a bright yellow garbage truck
with two garbagemen in red plastic blazers
standing on the back stoop
one on each side hanging on
and looking down into
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
In a hip three-piece linen suit
with shoulder-length blond hair & sunglasses
The young blond woman so casually coifed
with a short skirt and colored stockings
on the way to his architect’s office
And the two scavengers up since four a.m.
grungy from their route
on the way home
The older of the two with grey iron hair
and hunched back
looking down like some
Gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
also with sunglasses & long hair
about the same age as the Mercedes driver
And both scavengers gazing down
As from a great distance
At the cool couple
as if they were watching some odourless TV ad
in which everything is always possible
And the very red light for an instant
holding all four close together
as if anything at all were possible
Between them
Across that small gulf
in the high seas
of this democracy
(Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
Dachau, 1902
Dachau, 1902
At certain points
Of the day
There is no time
Only hues
Which confuse
The seasons
An artist
She drips
Paint, sex, society
Blues, greens
Six-pointed stars
A shepherd boy lamb
No puncture marks
No apple
Just seeds
The Midday owl
Shrieks
It knows
The canvas freshly painted
Is blank
Refugee Week
Crikey. This site’s supposed to be easy to use, but I always struggle. I suppose with computers, there comes a point where you’ve either got it or you haven’t. I’ve been dealt a pretty good hand in life, so I guess I can live with it.
And on the theme of the hand life deals you, I’ve actually sat down to write something about this week’s activities in schools for Refugee Week. Poetry workshops. Eight schools in Birmingham (8 primary, 2 secondary) and around 400 children, all of whom gave it their best shot at imagining being a refugee, or, in the case of quite a few, writing about really being a refugee or migrant.
I’ve long since suspected that pound for pound, children are far more open-minded and tolerant than adults. I’m now sure this is the case. 400 children aged 8-13 worked solidly for 2-3 hours and not once did I hear a word of the tired old racism propounded by the readers of our more ignorant newspapers. Discussions were measured, listening was attentive, and, crucially, those who disagreed with a point of view did so with respect, rather than dismissal. The work which was begun in our sessions (to be completed with the children’s class teachers) also showed a depth of perception which many outside the school system wouldn’t expect.
So, what did we do?
We looked at elephants! To be precise, David Attenborough’s ‘Spy in the Herd’, where a herd moves as they have no food. This necessity to move, making the elephants refugees, rather than migrants. (In all of the schools, the children understood this difference. I wonder what percentage of the adult population would get this right, or even think it important?)
Although it wasn’t the main focus of the project, as an English teacher, I wanted this work to enhance and reinforce literacy, so from the clip, we came up with some WOW words (one of my favourite phrases) to describe the feelings of the baby elephant as it was on the move. We then went on to looking at how the pachyderms’ (WOW word!) was a metaphor for human refugees.
This was followed by some clear and confident reading of a couple of my poems on the subject, and then the children planned their own and began to write them. This gave an opportunity to revise poetic terms learned, and they only needed a few thousand reminders that POEMS DON’T HAVE TO RHYME, AND ARE OFTEN BETTER WHEN THEY DON’T!!!!! And did this stop a few brave/silly souls from doing it anyway? Rhetorical question!
The aim of this work was to raise awareness of what it’s like to be a refugee. To be honest, the schools had done a pretty good job of this anyway (one school has used a classroom to make a mock-up of a refugee camp; another has written postcards of support to give to refugees). As I wanted expression and empathy to be the keynotes, pupils who have a second language were allowed to write in that language if was easier for them, or if it simply suited them better. Some work came out which sounded beautifully soulful, even to those of us who didn’t understand the words.
Once the teachers send me some of the finished work, it’ll be posted with due acknowledgement of authorship.
Hopefully, this will be repeated next year and rolled out to schools elsewhere in the country.
Meanwhile, I give heartfelt thanks to
About 400 children
Numerous teaching and teaching assistant colleagues
Carl Marshall and Razia Butt from Birmingham City Council
Schools of Sanctuary for supporting this project…
… and especially Barbara Forbes from Schools of Sanctuary who enthused about this from the moment I floated the idea, obtained the funding for it to take place, and put me in contact with her contact in the schools. Without Barbara, this really wouldn’t have happened.
Now for the hard part. Can I publish this without deleting it instead?
Andy Conner 