Looking Back

Being Cheshire Poet Laureate 2006 – a brief reflection

One of the last events of my year as Cheshire Poet Laureate was to read a poem at the Youth Parliament Elections in County Hall. As well as about a hundred young people and various senior members of the Council, six Westminster MPs were there to answer questions on youth issues. Two minutes before the results were announced came my poem. A year ago, I could not have even envisaged this scene.

The Cheshire Poet Laureate scheme sets out to introduce poetry to new audiences, and also to give one poet a high degree of support in their development. I have experienced these two aspects in all kinds of surprising ways. Poetry on Holmes Chapel Library windows, on thousands of bookmarks, read to MPs and worm-charmers, shared on the radio, and above all to thousands of visitors to the ‘Lines on the Map’ web site, has certainly reached a new audience.

I took on the post with the inevitable apprehension. It’s not just about writing poems, but also involves a lot of high-risk engagements with groups of people who are unknown quantities. It is very definitely a venture into the open, away from the private page and into all kinds of social arenas. One immediate worry: would I be able to ‘write to order’? – something I had rarely done before. In the event, I was delighted to find that the commissions and deadlines brought out some of my best work – possibly because it forced me into an occasional discipline of writing which is often crowded out by the day job.

I have begun to understand a much wider role for poetry, in catalysing social interaction, and providing public words for important moments. This was clearest in the Manley ‘Commonplace’ project – where I got a sense that poetry could gather and make articulate the corporate memory of a community. I think my work – what I write and what I take on – will be subtly different as a result.

During the year I have also experienced an increase in ambition for my work – not just in acceptance or publication, but in a desire to try out larger forms, sequences, to do something different from my previous work. The Poetry Masterclass at Tŷ Newydd was excellent – not in offering new skills so much as providing a creative space and an inspiring peer group. Many of the poems in my book originated in that week.

Producing the book has been a real culmination. Not having published before, I hadn’t realised the confidence-boost and ‘solidity’ of reading from a published and substantial volume. The process – although I could have done with another six months – was very helpful in getting a sense of what my work is, what are its strengths and weaknesses, and what are the requirements of reaching a wider audience.

I want to thank all those involved in this scheme – previous incumbents, who are beginning to form an influential network as a group; Anne Sherman for continual support; and Cheshire County Council for maintaining such an innovative and enriching scheme, whose effects, though subtle, will be long-lasting and deep in the literary life of our County.

Showcase Event - October 10th

In many ways, this evening was the culmination of my year as Cheshire Poet Laureate (even though there were nearly three months to go. It was a chance to invite an extraordinary variety of friends – artists, poets, members of various groups, people who don’t read poetry at all – and present some poems in the context of the story of this year. In the event, about 80 people turned up to the Beswick building in the University of Chester.

Here’s a set list with comments. I used a data-projector to show pictures of the different events and some pictures to go with particular poems.

1. Give me your hand. David Hart wrote to me that the Laureateship would be really good if I could ‘find ways of meeting by means of it.’ This simple poem is about that – the way poetry can help to create community.

2. Retina. Quote ‘My / planet on which everything / touches down.’ Poetry as a way of looking at the world.

3. This is a Fair Trade Poem. (in this Blog) My first commission was for Macclesfield Fair Trade fortnight, and led to a series of workshops with children, writing on bananas!

4. Footnotes 4 (Foxhill). These ‘Footnotes’ poems are observational walks with close looks at natural objects.

5. This is how it will be was commissioned for a Cheshire Schools’ Celebration. I introduced it with the words written for Radio Merseyside’s ‘Thought for the Day.’

Poetry and children
Children seem to have a hotline to poetry. Sometimes they just come out with words and phrases that take your breath away, that an adult would have to sweat over for weeks.

I think this may be something to do with the newness of what they see, the way they look at the world for the first time and notice what we take for granted. To a child, ‘Morning has broken, like the first morning…’

Every spiritual tradition starts with awareness, opening your eyes to what is real. The famous words of Jesus - unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven – are a constant challenge to us world-weary adults.

I wrote this poem, which is a sort of blessing, for a Cheshire Schools Celebration. I think it’s possible for this to be true for every child, I hope and pray that it can be.

6. A million teachers was commissioned for the opening of the large new extension at Holmes Chapel Library. It appears in vinyls on the library windows, and on thousands of bookmarks issued with books.

7. It is written is a new poem from the Isle of Arran. The ‘writing’ on each part of the landscape that is a kind of prayer.

The first part finished with the Willaston Worm-Charming, two poems and a song:
8. A Long Thin Charm for the Worms
9. Sonnet of the Worm-charmers
10. A Worm’s Life

Part 2
11. The greenest frog and the smallest bird
12. Footnotes 1 (Fron Isaf) Another ‘Footnotes’ poem, this time from Wales.
13. Commonplace. I ran a village workshop in Manley where residents collected memories around Manley Common. Barbara Foxwell and Chris Mowap, residents of the village, joined me to read the memories that intersperse the poem. This poem was presented at the Local Government Association conference in Chester.

On the theme of stories:
14. Descent
15. Pablo Neruda, my father and me

And a poem about the artist, Samuel Palmer:
16. Palmer’s Moon

The final part of the evening focused on ‘Lines on the map.’ This poem probably started it all:
17. Twemlow Green
18. Footnotes 6 (Llanystumdwy)

And, lastly, my ‘signature tune’ poem:
19. Here

Lines on the Map - 20,000 Readers!

I have just received some statistics showing how ‘Lines on the Map’ has been used since it was launched in March. After a lot of initial publicity – in newspapers and on local radio – about 9000 people visited the site in the first month. This reduced steadily in April May and June – perhaps the novelty had worn off – but the number of visits almost doubled in July, then again in August. September reached a peak of over 13000! Poems have trickled in by email – about half a dozen each month. The Summer popularity of the site may be accounted for by:

1) the Holmes Chapel Library bookmarks. Every borrower got a poem bookmark with details of the web site on the back.
2) Listing on the Poetry Society ‘Poetry Landmarks’ web site.
3) ‘Word-of-mouth’ publicity after children’s workshops and school visits.
4) A second press release about ‘Lines on the Map’ on local papers.

On average, visitors to the site look at 3 pages – making a total so far of nearly 60,000 page views by nearly 20,000 visitors. This is a very large audience for poetry, where most poetry books and magazines only have runs of several hundred, and shows a successful outreach of poetry to new audiences. The table below shows the most visited towns and villages. Unsurprisingly, Chester – with a large population and a number of poems – attracted the most visitors, but every dot on the map has attracted a respectable number of readers.

Autumn Events

12 September - Local Government Association reception at Chester Town Hall - Village project
18 September - Favourite Books Group - Congleton Library
10 October - Showcase Event as part of the Chester Literature Festival (University of Chester)
23 November - Macclesfield Lit and Phil, 'Poetry and Science.'

Manley Common -17 July

Manley is a small Cheshire village, very scattered and rural. At one end of it there is an enclosed section of Manley Common with a few houses at one side - a triangle of field which is surrounded by a drystone wall. Talking with Mike Wellman, of the Cheshire Sandstone Ridge Econet Project, the idea came up of a writing workshop to capture some of the village stories and memories.

So, on a warm evening, we gathered by Manley Common. I had prepared some sheets with some background information on the 'stories' that converge at Manley Common - the stone walling, quarrying, animal farming, Roman remains, the use of marl, the wells... About thirty people came from the village and immediately began to talk and share experiences. This conversation continued in the Village Hall all evening with wine and cheese. Older people were telling their stories and younger ones writing them down. This material will provide the basis for my commissioned poem for a meeting in Chester in September. At this, representatives from Local Government around the country will be discussing the future of villages. So, watch this space for the poem and further village material!

Knutsford SciBAr - Poetry and Science

A fascinating session at SciBAr last night. On a sweltering July night, about fifty people crammed into a back room of a bar in Knutsford to hear an account of relativity – a talk followed by a question time which was challenging and wide-ranging. Professor Jeff Forshaw (from Manchester University and CERN) gave a jaw-dropping account of the implications of Einstein’s theories in plain English.

It’s really exciting that so many people care enough about ideas to form groups like this. More info about SciBAr: ( www.knutsford-scibar.co.uk ) In Macclesfield they have started a ‘Literary and Philosophical Society’ which will have meetings in the Library in the Autumn. This will have a similar agenda of encouraging discussion of ideas, although its brief will be much wider than SciBAr. I hope to present a talk for them on Science and Poetry.

I was at SciBAr to bring a poem I’d written after an earlier session on ‘All about Memory’ – so this was a fairly rare conjunction between poetry and science. Here are a few first thoughts on the issue – and the poem:

Poetry and Science are two ways of looking at the world. Like science, poetry investigates experience, presents the data.

A poem is not just the observation, the results of the experiment – a poem is itself a repeatable experiment in the field of language. When you read a poem – if it works – the experience of the writer happens all over again. There’s ‘a shock of recognition’ I get it!

Science strives for accuracy. A poem makes room for, even encourages, ambiguity. The poet is trying to hit a moving target, directing the flow of a river which is always bursting its banks. Poetry has a sense that experience is bigger than the words we try to shoehorn it into, but that, if we get the words right, then that experience can be communicated.

The poet may be closely observing a particular experience, but the poem takes the data out of context. In the poem it can ‘fit’ all kinds of other experiences. The experience may be local, particular – the poem can be universal.

Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’ is not, first of all, about daffodils: it’s about the recovery of sensory data.

All About Memory

A lost memory
is ringing, ringing, somewhere
behind the bar. Will someone answer it
please.

What were you doing?
What was the weather like?
What were you thinking about on that day?

A candle was burning, your wine
lay red in the glass. Pigeons were
bobbing into the gap, under the eaves
of the opposite windows. A pint
clunked on the table. I remember
how good you were at digits.

How does it all link together
the space, and the smell, and the word?
A herdsman’s skill, a kitten blind
in the blinding dark.

Do you know that you don’t know?
Can your brain be hard-wired to remember?
Can you be trained to forget? I knocked
on a door, a door that wouldn’t open.

How does it all link together
the space, and the smell, and the word?
A herdsman’s skill, a kitten blind
in the blinding dark.

Her research is in memory
for faces. She scans the crowd.
She takes a sip, nods, looks intently
at the questioner, hands crossed in her lap.
Actually knowing that you’ve seen
a face before. It’s stored
as a configuration, something resilient
that doesn’t change with age.

How does it all link together
the space, and the smell, and the word?
A herdsman’s skill, a kitten blind
in the blinding dark.

Worm-Charming at Willaston

A hot afternoon at the end of June. I am sitting in the shade of a tree in front of a school playing field marked out into 144 squares, ready for the annual Worm-charming championships at Willaston near Nantwich. This is a quintessentially English event – in equal measures silly and serious. The contest is hedged about with rules and etiquette – no digging, no drugs (including water!) to be poured into the ground. The object is to encourage as many worms as possible to leave the safety of their dark burrows and venture out into the light. Blackbirds do this by scurrying around, making a sound like rain. Up come the worms, down comes the beak.

Today’s competitors approach this problem in different ways. Some hammer the ground with plastic tubes, or, indeed, plastic hammers. Others push a garden fork into the turf and strike it. Others play deep notes on a double bass, or tempt the worms with the music of a mouth organ. One person, in an inflatable fat suit, circles around on stilts. I hope the worms can see him, but I doubt it. In half an hour, the friendly worm containers are heaving with the results of this non-banned form of hunting. The winner has gathered about a hundred and fifty – hugely impressive on such a dry day, but a long way from T. Shufflebotham’s ground-breaking (but not if he kept to the rules) five hundred and eleven, back in 1980!

I thought such an event needed a charm, so produced this long thin poem in the form of an Anglo-Saxon kenning, where the worm is named extensively – in the hope that if you hit the true name, the worm will come to you.

come
come to me
blind-lurker
burrower
mulch-eater
twist-curler
soft survivor
stone-wriggler
rot-cleaner
self-splitter
flexible friend
cranny-squeezer
shade-lover
moist-drinker
dew-sipper
leaf-hauler
root-loosener
tube-dweller
snakelet
siphon
death-sign
life-sign
fish bait
skin-breather
humbleworm
mortalworm
beak-tugger
bird-resister
ground-clinger
earth-stitch
living string
elastic stretch
compost-blender
world-chewer
tiny miner
soil-sapper
spaghetti loop
micro-gut
only an eater
consumer
devourer
squiggle-writer
lawn-scribbler
icing-tube
cast-piper
screw-threader
ground-gripper
slinky-striped
muscle-ringed
knot-twister
cold-sleeper
spring-waker
rain-unraveller
clammy
self-knitter
cord-winder
neglected
ignored
come to my
charm

Lines on the Map - Update

This project keeps steadily growing. New poems include John Williams' amazing account of what washes up on Runcorn Beach (did you know Runcorn had a beach?) as well as a few really interesting location-pieces by Joy Winkler, Cheshire's poet laureate in 2005, and some exciting song-texts from Graham Bellinger. Don't miss the fascinating collection from the children at Wimboldsley Primary school.

There are now about 30 places featured with more than 60 poems. Keep sending them in!

More about Fair Trade

Yesterday we had a writing workshop for children at Frodsham Arts Centre.
Vale Royal (a district of Cheshire) is setting up a Fair Trade garden at the Royal Horticultural Society show at Tatton Park. They invited me to come and do a reading in this location, and we came up with the idea of a banana writing workshop. The children from St Luke's RC Primary School wrote some amazing poems - vivid and alive - on the theme of Fair Trade. Then they wrote out a key line on a banana, and we took some pictures - a process which we will repeat at the RHS Show.

Recent Events
- SciBar, Knutsford. 3 April
- Judging Ottakar's Poetry Competition (Crewe) - Prize giving 20 April
- Vale Royal Children's competition for the Queen's 80th birthday. Tea party - 3 May
- Poem of the month. First Thursday, Heswall 4 May (I picked 'Poem' by Elizabeth Bishop)
- Thought for the Day on Radio Merseyside - 8-12 May
- Shavington High School Lunch Club. A 'Lines on the Map' workshop. 10 May
- Congleton Poems and Pints - 11 May
- Meeting with Manley Parish Council about forthcoming Manley Common writing event

Fair Trade in Macclesfield

This was an unofficial commission - to write something for Macclesfield Fair Trade fortnight. Local schools were asked to write and display poems to put up in Macclesfield Library, and an event was set up with the Mayor. As a bonus, Macclesfield acquired Fair Trade status as a town the week before, so there was plenty to celebrate.

I got to thinking about the processes involved in this. When a child is asked to write a poem about an issue - when I'm asked to write about an issue - there is a certain amount of extra engagement involved. I looked up some web sites, became concerned. And then when the poems are displayed or read out, there is a kind of celebration and valuing of these expressions.

The children were great - lively vigorous poems - sometimes carried away by rhyme, sometimes serious and factual. I tried to write something that I felt but which was true to the issues. Here's what I came up with - I'd value comments and responses!

This is a Fair Trade Poem.

This poem is made from
one hundred per cent recycled
words. It has not been tested
on animals. It has no additives
no artificial colouring.

Juanita’s poem is a sweet banana
fragrant, glowing. But the price
has fallen. ‘Dear teacher’ she says,
‘My children can no longer come
to school.’ This poem is made
from recycled words, but who
is listening?

Maria’s poem is a handful
of glinting coffee beans. She lets them
slide through her fingers. The price
has fallen. No clothes, no shoes
no medicine for the children.
This poem is made from recycled
words, but who is listening?

The supermarket poem is all noise
and colour. A price goes up
so we cross the aisle and choose
another brand, another packet.

Our lives are linked to their lives.
Their lives are linked to our lives.
This poem is made from recycled words.
Listen.