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LEICESTER POETRY SOCIETY
THE STANZA
No. 38 Autumn 2008
poems — news — reviews
www.poetryleicester.co.uk Cover photograph: Brian Fewster, 31st October 1998
Editorial For your information: The Committee Members for 2008/9 are: Chairman: Graham Norman ; Treasurer /Membership Sec: Colin Cook; Vice-Chair /Editor of The Stanza: Caroline Cook . Webmaster David Bircumshaw Committee Members: Lydia Finlay and Andie Wingham Dear Members, Welcome to a new year of LPS. It was heartening for the Committee to see a good number of you present at our AGM and Readaround on 26th September. This was An Historic Occasion ― the First Meeting of LPS in its new venue! Not so heartening was the poor attendance at the First Workshop at Friends on 3rd October. The Society does need to keep the Workshops going in order to survive as a living organ. Please come when you can. Remember you can come empty-handed, or bring along for discussion poems that interest you. We have a nice, cosy room to meet in. Do come! It’s interesting and convivial. The Competition entries are arriving steadily. Please enter if you have not already done so, and encourage others to enter. There are not many opportunities to win prizes for literary skill. This is one. Take it! Deadline for Competition entries is 17th October. Much of this edition of The Stanza is dedicated to Brian Fewster. If I believed in Conspiracy Theory, I might be persuaded that there had been a conspiracy recently to take away some of the Society’s best poets, all of whom are irreplaceable. I’m looking forward to our ambitious new year: New Venue, New Competition, Exciting Readers, Plenty of Ideas. All we need is you ― more of you, in both senses. Caroline Cook
Contributors Poems David Bircumshaw Caroline Cook Colin Cook Jimmy Crighton For the next copy of The Stanza (No. 39) is Friday, 6th February 2009. Please submit interesting material ― news, views and/or poems in any genre.
As days decline to autumn and wait quietly for what’s to come, you blaze to glory, ruby stems straight, leaves incandescent, sum of all the hopes of spring, when you hid, gathering defiance of a dying year.
Defiance only means delay. defoliation waits, your luminous career after all only brief. Your dying leaf, fading like firelight,
sheds not grief, but warmth, into the long night.
Jimmy Crighton (1924 – 2002) Former member of LPS
from A New Way with Time
Brian sometimes seemed surprised that people wanted him as a friend, yet he was such a good and loyal friend to so many of us.Often late for social engagements, Brian seemed unaware that he was a special guest because of his intelligence, breadth of knowledge, clarity of thought in conversation, his unconscious charm and wry and engaging smile. We who were his friends were privileged. We would jokingly mention time-keeping or date-fulfilling but at the same time want to protect him from his absentminded planning. Where his mind was focussed, any loose and woolly thinking would be challenged and rectified. To that extent he was a teacher and in the formal sense of teaching he found himself bewildered by his students’ lack of enthusiasm for both learning and the subject, in which he passionately believed. Brian engaged with issues, concepts, mind and intellect. He responded to feelings and psychological darkness with kindly concern as well as insight. Ethics and faith were issues for discussion and debate. His own search was evident in his poetry, where he often took the role of seeker of his own belief. Brian once described himself as “Champion of lost causes”. Some people turn this into fighting for the underdog. Brian’s politics were with the Green Party and if one is Quixotic enough never to be able to win, the energy expended and the information disseminated in the process can have far-reaching effects. Brian’s influence was as a devotee not as a self- interested winner. When Brian took on the role of Chair of LPS, it was not as a lost cause but at a difficult time and his contribution was vital and consistent. He was one of the custodians of standards and quality. We will all be the poorer without his incisive and assured comments in the cause of good poetry and a great deal poorer without his friendship.
James and Jean Harbour
Winds blow, rains fall, snow enters unseen crevices, and even mountains crumble
not all at once (their nature so immense and seemingly immoveable)
but little by little, over a thousand years ... Yet, when a petal falls
from this dying rose it is no consolation to think of mountains.
If someone looks over your shoulder when you are reading this, say it was scratched high up
on one of the pillars of the Pantheon or low down on one of the many ancient Roman drains.
Huw Watkins Pub.Poetry Nottingham (62/2)
It's its greenness. It's its leafing in the brunt of squalls, snippet of braille tapped on thin air that touches.
It's its shiver, and the feather of its purpose urging forward its one slipping life, as, taut, it pauses — pierces.
Better know little. Better to strike the void with singing, go about one's business, and be brief than make my heavy weather.
It's its out-there on the dicky ledge, the edge that blades me.
Caroline Cook Runner-up in the 2008 Virginia Warbey Poetry Prize
Brian Fewster
Brian Fewster, who died on the 17th June at the age of 65, was a stalwart of the Green Party for almost thirty years. He joined the party in 1979 continuing to be active from then up to a week before his death despite suffering from cancer. He worked in a whole host of positions and activities not only in Leicester for his local party but also regionally and nationally. He was active in the Green Party locally, regionally and nationally. Locally he stood in many local elections. In the 1983 General Elections he stood in the Harborough constituency and in Blaby in the 1992 General Elections. He stood for Leicester South in 1987. He also held various positions in the Leicester Green party including Press Officer, Website Manager and Newsletter Editor. At a regional level he was the lead candidate in the last European Elections where the party obtained over 5% of the vote. At a national level he was on the Regional Council for several years and attended most conferences. Brian had a very real concern for people in general but particularly for those in the “third world”. This led him to work in Calcutta as a volunteer through Voluntary Services Overseas. He was also involved in many other organisations fighting for social justice including the World Development Movement, CND and the Leicester Civil Rights Movement. Through these organisations’ campaigns he wrote many letters to people in power and attended many demonstrations, both in Leicester and in London. But perhaps his greatest love was language whether writing poetry, reading a novel or correcting text. On many occasions I was on the receiving end of his red pen. In fact I can feel him hovering over me as I write his obit. As National Elections Co-ordinator I was responsible for the production of two national manifestos which Brian kindly agreed to proof-read, a task for which he deserves a medal. Brian was a kind, sensitive and caring person and he will be sorely missed by many people in Leicester and further afield.
Geoff Forse, The Green Party Brian Fewster Brian joined the Leicester World Development Action Group (WDM) about 1978/80 (I think). Meetings were held in my home and Brian became our branch secretary. (I was treasurer). We had much in common — both teachers, both worked overseas, both had a deep concern about our fellow human beings, especially the poor of the world. He had experience from Bangladesh. Brian guided us through the problems of poverty, injustice and world development, together with possible solutions and useful actions — protests, lobbying, education. We became especially good at working together with groups with similar concerns — I was chairman of Leicester United Nations Association seen as the umbrella group — so from Poverty and development, to human rights, community relations, the armaments industry, war and peace issues and more. He was the brains behind a board game "The Year 2000" with a giant version played in Town Hall Square, Spinney Hill Park and more widely. It featured MPs, bishops and local dignitaries as pieces on the board. (Looking at it a few weeks ago it had remarkable foresight - thanks to Brian). We were all part of Leicester One World Week including the One World Festival, held annually at the De Montfort Hall, which brought in many of Leicester's community groups and, I believe, made a real contribution to good community relations in our city. Brian was an active partner in these. We disagreed but didn't fight over faith issues. He was a good man who cared deeply about his fellow human beings, inhabitants past, present and future of this our planet.
Glyn Haines, The World Development Movement
I gave up years ago on ‘blank for your message’ arty cards.
I gave in to big bouquets, often in pink, with pretend-handwriting in swirly silver, embossed or tasselled or colour tinted. Sitting on the mantelpiece between the framed photo-montage and miniature cottages, any neighbour in on Mother’s Day can see them.
She’s always been the letter writer with a ‘how are yous ― we are both fine’, a family round-up, a weather report rain or shine. One time, it was my birthday I think, she sent white woollen gloves and something about ‘the hand of friendship.’
We’re back since to pre-printed poems with perfect rhymes.
Siobhan Logan
Runner-up in the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition 2005
On Sancread Beacon it is all Rolling wet sky, burying Hill tops, hurrying Late gorse and heather Into black soil.
Three buzzards rise and coil Beyond the tumuli Stirring the weather.
He sits still with me, Damp nose to the wind, Anubis, my dog soul, Waiting for rain to fall.
Graham Norman
Review of Members’ Reading ― Friday 13th June 2008 Andie Wingham, Anne Kind and Norman Harrington First of all I’d like to give my thanks to the poets who provided me with printed copies, which made my task much easier. Andie Wingham chose to give us poems mostly on the themes of War and Love ― notoriously difficult to write. Nevertheless he offers us some telling pictures. “War keeps women awake” and “guns rage at hollow skeletons, at the desolate image of derelict life”. He would have us “unite against the shoddy call to arms” ― a sentiment with which few could disagree. He presents a happy portrait of his parents’ love for each other. For his own part, love is “an exciting chemistry” and “a relationship of continuous nurture”. A hand reaching out is “a fingertip of silk”. I liked his “repeated erotic rumble and soft pebbled rush of surging waves”. I found his poem Lost Generation endlessly bleak ― a sad comment on the young of the present day ― not totally justifiable surely. Life’s Irony was one poem I really enjoyed, terse, and to the point. In fact I feel he would strengthen his poems greatly by being less diffuse. Anne Kind’s poems are a delight to listen to and later read. They fall into roughly three categories, clever word play, ageing and life experience. With Hands and Time Never Misses a Beat she bounces us along with her neat rhythms and rhymes. Those of us who are well on in life can easily appreciate her poems on age ― especially the march through the years to Contentment and Cornpads. There is a nice irony in Demise Planner where she is asked to pay for her own funeral in advance. Though few of us can relate personally to circumstances in her early life she gains our sympathy because she does not moan. In Ward Ninety Nine we get a flavour of her nursing career. Grief and loss are part of most peoples' lives and once again she deals with it neatly without complaint. I must not fail to mention Little Poppy, in a charming category entirely her own. Anne was in fact the tasty filling in the sandwich flanked by the two males.
I find Norman Harrington’s poems carefully constructed and on the whole heart-warming. He produces many apt phrases. Seaside trees are stoical hunched heroes”. I did enjoy the personalisation of the Thames which is full of good lines describing its meandering pathway to the sea ― “fishermen preying for their supper”, its “learning curve through Oxford”, its “freedom at Runnymede”. The poem entitled Space in the Falklands puts their case with sympathy. “Miles between our houses bond us all in close fraternity” makes us envious of their way of life. Retrieved puts neatly the relief of being no longer faced with impending death. “Fears are tugged off like burs on clothing”. Ordinary events become a joy. There are two delightful similes in Palm Trees. “Fronds hang like old relations” and “trunks appear like worn out feather dusters”. Ravine is the only cold and heartless poem but is strikingly compelling just the same. His long poem Secular Psalm shows a real knowledge of the Ancient Wisdom and mocks our modem failing to live up to it. In direct contrast to the fun of this poem is Cathedral Evensong which nicely appreciates the calmness and inspiration to be found within the old stone walls. “The spire of the spirit” is a memorable metaphor.
Maimie Henderson
SECULAR PSALM (as read by Norman Harrington, 13th June 2008)
1. The dog shall lie down with the cat and there will be pumpkins. 2. But when the lusty young men lie down with the buxom young handmaidens they will multiply abundantly like Indian restaurants and E.U. directives and shall dwell in the 9 o’clock watershed. 3. O current minister of morality, remember not the sins of my youth, my middle age and my old age. 4. You gnashed your teeth when I evaded V.A.T. and claimed petrol expenses when I rode a bicycle. 5. Hear me, for I am repentant of my transgressions this night. O deliver me on the morrow, for I shall be first-class-stamped and correctly postcoded. 6. The second class shall languish in the bags of delay and shall not be delivered out of all their afflictions. 7. The earth trembles at the sound of your name. You are almost as high and mighty as a golf club committee. 8. Rebuke the cursed who nip into a parking space just as you are about to reverse into it. May they be cast into a 15 mile motorway tail-back. 9. O revered minister, you are everlasting, until the next vote of confidence in the Commons. I pray to you daily on the internet. Make your ways clear, especially the M6 and the M1 southbound at junction 13. 10. Sit in judgement on the firms who listen to one’s detailed complaint on the telephone and one thinks one is speaking to the right person only to be passed to somebody else and one has to begin all over again. 11. On their day off may they be visited by a double-glazing salesman. 12. He is an abomination in the nostrils of many who takes no account of wind direction and lights his bonfire on washing day. 13. The wicked shall burn in hell and the very wicked go to Beaumont Leys. 14. Strike down those who squander the earth’s resources and bury us under newspaper supplements. 15. O minister, bestow your beatitudes from the Mount of butter. 16. Blessed are they who wash out their baked-bean tins before recycling. 17. Blessed are they who are charitable to Neighbours and Eastenders for there are many who hang precariously on cliffs. 18. Blessed are the trusting, for they shall fly on the wings of the morning and the untrusting on a Boeing 737 400. 19. Blessed are they who do not sue for a smack they had at school thirty years ago. 20. In your mercy send your counsellors to those who have not won anything on the National Lottery after four weeks. 21. The selfrighteous commandments shall be declaimed on high from Brussels in triplicate. 22. Though shalt love the European Commissioner as thyself. 23. Thou shalt not call Stilton cheese Stilton, because it is not made in Stilton. 24. On the 7th day thou shalt worship stolen goods in car-boot sales. 25. On the 24th of December the consumers will sing:
Hark the herald store-manager sings
Now may the need for the warning on the obvious packet of peanuts which states: THIS PACKET CONTAINS PEANUTS which passes all understanding, keep your minds in the knowledge of Sainsbury’s special offers and of Tesco’s mega promotions until you finally recycle your mobile, the credits go up and you go to Disneyland in the sky.
In the name of Madonna and David Beckham. Amen.
written over with kettle flex, coffee stains, of what should be cupboarded ― yellowed Pyrex, it draws the parsley close to the glass, facing to the clock ― clocks ― hidden plumbing, 7.30 a.m., the 21st of June.
from “Nearly the Happy Hour”
Dad’s out of control and drinking too much Guinness.
Mum’s gone back to painting her rowing boat ― black with a cream band along the top ― which fills up half the kitchen. Smells chronic. Says she doesn’t care about him, or what he does; nothing about him interests her anymore.
I say something’s been eating him since the war.
That was sixty years ago, she yells, above the roar of her welding torch, out in the hall where she’s rebuilding a number 39 which used to go to the Crystal Palace; and will again if she’s anything to do with it.
Which is where they met. Crystal Palace ― flashy and glimmery, all those years ago, run down now, of course.
Dad’s out of control. Mum’s up to there.
Marilyn Ricci from “Rebuilding a Number 39” Poetry in the Park Pub! ― Saturday, 21st June
We Committee Members thought we’d chosen well to have “Poetry in the Park” at Belgrave Hall, particularly as it was scheduled for the First Day of Summer, but wet weather forced us to take refuge in the nearby pub. The sad news of Brian Fewster’s death a few days earlier had a profound effect on the event. There were only a few LPS members present (not surprising in view of the weather), but numbers were swelled by friends of Brian from the Green Party, the World Development Movement and others. David Bircumshaw read his own poem Nil Feed with the dedication “to my friend, Brian Fewster, who died in the small hours”, and Thomas Hardy's Afterwards. If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, Graham Norman read A. E. Housman’s Bredon Hill, Brian’s The Parcel from Sympathetic Magic, and Philip Larkin’s An Arundel Tomb. Time has transfigured them into Caroline Cook read June Thunder by Louis Macneice. Blackness at half-past eight, the night's precursor, There were some moving recollections and contributions from others, including members of the Green Party and the World Development Movement. Colin Cook At the Funeral Service at Gilroes Cemetery the following Wednesday, James Harbour read Brian’s poem (from Sympathetic Magic):
Be patient with the one that calls when brick by brick you’ve built your walls. His muscles may have gone to waste but he still has exquisite taste. Although not fit to clear hard ground, he’ll shift your furniture around and lisp while lounging in the shade of the strong structure you have made: “Those flowers and curtains clash, my dear, and you don’t need that lamp in here.”
Mistrust the military style encouraging his rank and file with manly clasp and shoulder clap ― “Jolly good show, well done old chap!” ― such tokens as the service pays in standard-issue words of praise. His firm adjustment of your tie may interrupt your air-supply, and fumblings with a ribbon-pin through khaki folds can find your skin.
Endure the analytic mind, the ferret face more keen than kind who’ll subject to a third degree the images in stanza three, putting their honesty in doubt until they’ve turned their pockets out, then deign at last to let you pass certificated second class and stamp his qualified consent ― obliterating what you meant.
Brian Fewster
I had a friend, now sadly dead, a psychotherapist, who proclaimed, “The sense of smell, you know, is hard-wired; it takes you straight back in time.”
I smell the sea, and I am again in Clacton, on a holiday cut short to return to hear the fateful words of Neville Chamberlain.
Or, six bloody years later, I am in Rhyl, on our next sea-side holiday, arriving by train, our luggage sent on ahead.
Rarer now, the smoke from a locomotive; and there I am train-spotting on Leicester station; where there is no “Welcome” sign in foreign languages.
A faint whiff of beer on someone’s breath. It’s my father coming back from his Christmas visit to the Working Men’s Club.
Imperial Leather Soap: on a Saturday night I’m getting ready to go out. First dance, first date, first kiss.
The Gauloise cigarette brings back the Customs shed in Calais, where I, a boy as good as gold, file past in silence on the first of many school trips.
Strong coffee takes me back to Austria, to the railway station, where I drink my first cup, which looks (and tastes) like brown paint.
I smell burning toast, and I see student rooms; where we, still rationed, eat our weekly pat of butter in one self-indulgent orgy.
Johnson’s Baby Powder reminds me of my first-born, now for many years a parent herself.
Hard-wired, indeed, the sense of smell
Colin Cook
This poem was an outcome of my suggestion to members that they might like to take “Smells and Scents” as the theme for the Readaround after the AGM on 26th September. I thought it would produce a bouquet of aromas, but, sadly, it didn’t. Here’s a whiff from Paul Farley’s Treacle:
“Breathe its scent, something lost from our streets
or from Fleur Adcock’s Creosote:
“that black smell ― black that’s really brown,
or from Gillian Clarke’s Breathing:
“Prowl the house sniffing out gas leaks, a cloth festering somewhere, spilt milk, cat-piss, drains.”
The British Arts and Street Sounds Festival Poetry Slam
The first ever East Midlands BASS Festival Poetry Slam was held at the Peepul Centre on 28th June 2008 ― probably you are thinking “What is a Performance Poetry Slam anyway?” I was first introduced to this entirely novel and engaging event, when I was asked to open and perform at an Intercontinental Slam held at Firebug, some years ago. Africa, North America, Europe and Australasia all fielded teams of two Poets each. Following my opening performance there was what is called the ‘sacrificial poet’, often a well established poet, to start the proceedings performing for three minutes but who is not judged by the panel. This then sets a good standard hopefully and warms up the audience. Then the Poetry Slam begins in earnest, with each poet being allocated 3 minutes, to perform a piece of spoken word/poetry. Points are then allocated by a team of esteemed Judges on various aspects, i.e. performance, delivery, lyrical content, creativity and audience reaction etc. The good-natured competitive spirit and the receptive warmth of the audience provides a wonderful evening of entertainment. The East Midlands BASS Slam was excellent due to the wide diversity of voices and styles on display and very enjoyable. This form of performance poetry is akin to one-day cricket, in relation to a test match. Not therefore to everyone’s taste i.e. some poetry purists maybe, but great fun as many of the poets that take part ‘free style’ i.e. improvise, adding an extra frisson. It is also a welcome introduction for those new to this form. Despite very able opponents the East Midlands BASS Festival Slam Champion, was Michael ‘Sure Shot’ Brome, a very original, powerful and expressive performance poet from Leicester. His career so far has included several commissions, one for my organisation last year and more recently he has performed at the South Bank, London. Currently he is working on a commission for Curve Theatre, Leicester. Michael has already informed me he is out to defend his title next year so I hope some of you will come to see if he will indeed retain the title. Carol Leeming © Sept 2008 Manager, Mainstream Partnership, LCB Depot HappenStance Launch ― Saturday, 6th September
It helped that both titles had already been reviewed, as part of a trio of HappenStance titles, in Parameter magazine (in the online version), and there are links from the HappenStance website to that. The best comment on the day came from one of the audience members. Looking round the noisy, babbling room, over drinks she said, “We always envy the lively poetry scene in Leicester.” The day had worked!
The poet and publisher, Helena Nelson, speaking at Friends Meeting House
Review of LINES NORTH ― selected poems by Pat Corina
LINES NORTH was originally the title of the only pamphlet Pat produced during her lifetime. It consisted of 17 poems with Yorkshire connections in a limited edition of three copies, two for women she’d known at school and stayed in touch with all her life, the other now in the possession of her partner Werner, whose help was invaluable in locating other poems of Pat’s. When I was asked to review this new extended version of LINES NORTH, a perfect bound paperback containing 68 poems, my first instinct was for a polite refusal. My name is listed as one of the three editors, so I can hardly be considered an objective critic. And, although I did less work than the other two, I take a godfatherly pride in several poems whose only source was my old workshop files. Pat’s poems usually arrived fully formed at the workshop, so well constructed as to offer little scope for nit-picking. She was laid-back about securing wider recognition, and most of those in LINES NORTH appear here for the first time – but they put most published verse to shame. Some of them deserve to be current into the next century. Time is a seething presence — in the haunting voices of memory and historic residue, and as the inevitable solvent of human hopes and plans. Like several of Pat’s poems, A perspective begins with an old photograph. This one was taken by the narrator and her partner, and shows his name scratched in huge letters on a beach. The two people have changed, physically and mentally. His name has long since been washed away by the waves and their personal perspective is superimposed on a more geological view. Not only have their old selves disappeared; so has the literal ground beneath their feet, although in memory they and it are still there: and that wide ledge we stood on has been washed away to show the mammoth bones buried beneath our feet.
Our other selves are standing still, invisible on insubstantial air above the sliding sea. I think our hands are touching. You are pointing out, below our feet, the huge striations of your name.
This fine poem survived by the skin of its teeth, being one of the group whose only known source is my workshop folders. Pat was a political person, and liked to remind us that she had once sat next to Arthur Scargill at a union conference. Much of her work has a sharp feminist edge, sometimes overtly satirical, as in Fairy tales, sometimes more subtle. The title of Settlement has a dual meaning: an isolated community and a business agreement such as a marriage dowry. The setting is pre-modern. The narrator is a teenage girl who, while carding wool outdoors on her family’s farm, observes a stranger ride in and begin to converse with her father. She dares not observe openly (she has already been slapped by her mother for excessive curiosity) so looks sideways through her hair. He looked at me once, took in the tilled fields, weighed up the wool.
Mother fetched ale and bread. There was silence and talk. Later they shook hands.
The poem makes no explicit judgement (indeed there is nothing abstract in it) but it carries the implication that she herself has been bartered away as part of a property transaction. Settlement won first prize in a Second Light competition. Several poems are about earlier generations of her family. How we remember her is about her grandmother, who compensated for a hard life with sartorial flamboyance and “a small medicinal flask”. Two pages later, Image of my aunt surprises by describing not an elderly lady but a fifteen-year-old girl in a photograph taken weeks before her untimely death in 1926 at the age of 15. The poet is …shocked to find her loose in my mother’s drawer, as though they had spoken recently… and shocked also to see how much she herself resembles this close relative who died before she was born. The poet has her surviving image and her genes:
and now I carry her into the future she was sure she had, sitting that day on those dusty steps, her head half turned, a kind
of modesty lidding her eyes as a finger pressed a metal catch to slice the light.
The final image, an accurate description of the mechanics of photographic capture, also suggests the slicing edge of a guillotine. The volume is full of such layered (but precisely judged and seldom obscure) meanings. If you haven’t yet bought a copy, get one. At a mere £5 it’s excellent value by any standards. It can be ordered from the Soundswrite address below or its website: www.soundswrite-poetry.co.uk.
Brian Fewster 6th March 2008 LINES NORTH: Selected Poems by Pat Corina (Soundswrite Press, 52 Holmfield Road, Leicester LE2 1SA, ISBN 978-0-9550786-1-3, £5.00)
Return to Sender
Facing such blankness, what is there to say? Nothing original under the moon. Not here. Return to sender. Gone away.
If pentimento’s what one seeks to play, Many a fiddle can turn out an apt tune. Facing such blankness, what is there to say?
Forty-five years ago, each Saturday, We watched Morecambe and Wise in the afternoon: Not here. Return to sender. Gone away.
All that remains now at this end of play Are anecdotes that dissipate too soon. Facing such blankness, what is there to say
But that you liked villanelle, triolet, Anything formal, rhymed, with a good tune. Not here. Return to sender. Gone away.
These brittle rhymes can’t cope with the dismay That you have shuffled off this middling June. Facing such blankness, nothing more to say, Not here. Return to sender. Gone away.
Stan Smith June 19 2008 A Note from Stan Smith Since Brian liked the villanelle and similar forms, this poem came to me as a way of paying him tribute. My friend and colleague John Lucas suggested I might send it to you for The Stanza, to share my feelings for Brian, quirky, prickly, grumpy, cantankerous, argumentative, supercilious, totally loveable, with his many friends. I don't make any great claims for it ― I've never been keen on these elaborate formal forms myself ― but it came from the heart.
Stan Smith’s first collection of poems, Family Fortunes, is published by Shoestring Press, price £ 8.95.
This poem is for my friend, Brian Fewster, who died in the small hours on 17th June 2008. I was with him on the evening, it was upsetting, there was this Nil Feed sign in red letters over his bed. Can't say much more than that.
I found myself watching you, my friend, as you drowned in yourself
and I stood on that precarious bank, the falling, where we all crumble, looking on
as you went down that breathless torrent that is us.
David Bircumshaw
COMING SOON! 17th October Michael Haslam (born in Bolton in 1947)
“In 1970 I came to live at Foster Clough, near Hebden Bridge, where I still live. By the late 1970s merely living here had become my sole poetic subject. Now I call my whole project ‘ContinualeSong’.” Here are some quotes from an article in the T.L.S. (08/02/2008) by Jeremy Noel-Tod: “Haslam’s subject is “his spiritual autobiography in the Upper Calder Valley. It is the modern community where he works as a casual labourer. He describes himself as ‘a spectre of the black economy, filling my bucket at the garden tap’.” “Haslam’s recurrent theme is the maiming of himself as a gushing poet of pure tone. The pathos of this is handled throughout with quick wit.” He says, ‘I attribute to my Lancashire background the ambition for the Poet to be, above all, a Comedian’.” Of the volume Continual Song (1986) Noel-Tod says, “What makes every page here worth reading is the musical force by which the poetry is drawn. Haslam’s springy free verse often lets slip perfect iambic pentameters with a flourish.”
NEWS
‘Lyrical Line’ (performance poetry) is set to meet on the first Wednesday of each month at the Bambu in Welford Road at 8 p.m.
These are both ticketed events - please contact Jenny Lees on jel13@le.ac.uk or 0116 252 2323 for a ticket.
I was aghast when I saw in the Leicester Mercury that it was a Leicestershire woman who had initiated the removal of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Education for Leisure” from the GCSE syllabus. What next? Book burning?
Future Events 2008 17th October Michael Haslam 7th November Marianne Boruch 28th November Prizewinners’ Reading 5th December Remembering Brian Fewster 12th December Siobhan Logan Northern Lights
Events begin at 7.30 pm
Workshops
Workshops, which begin at 7 p.m., are held most Fridays at Friends Meeting House, Queens Rd. Please bring several copies of poems to be workshopped. You can come to Workshops just to contribute; you don’t have to bring a poem. Or you can bring a poem by someone else.
Dates for the remainder of the year are: October 24th 31st November 14th 21st
Annual Membership (September – August) Full £26. Concessionary £20. Please send your cheque (made payable to Leicester Poetry Society) to: Colin Cook, L.P.S. Treasurer, 338 London Road, Stoneygate Leicester LE2 2PJ
¨ Only paid-up L.P.S. members are eligible to have poems etc. accepted for The Stanza. |
