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10-28-2017, 05:46 PM | #1 | ||
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In a similar vein to the article on ‘Punk poetry’, the following is about what I personally term ‘Northern poetry’. I use this title simply to categorise what I feel are characteristics common to a number of poems from the north of England. I’m not suggesting these qualities only crop up in this part of the world but I feel enough do to warrant a category, if only for myself.
In the 1960’s, in the port of Liverpool there was, as many will know, I vibrant explosion of artistic expression through music, most famously by The Beatles but also bands such as The Scaffold, The Searchers and Gerry and the Pacemakers. There were also a number of poets, influenced by the 50’s beat poets, who have gone down in history as ‘the Liverpool Poets’. Three of the most famous were Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, who were published together in the 1967 anthology ‘the Mersey Sound’, which is still in print and has sold approx 500,000 copies. These and other northern poets tend to be from working class backgrounds, attending college rather than universities, though there are of course exceptions. Below are examples of the poetry I like from the north of England, in the ‘northern style’, there are the Liverpool lads of McGough and Patten, Manchester’s Tony Walsh and from Leeds Tony Harrison. So what for me characterizes the ‘Northern’ style such as I see it. It possesses the following loose traits in various degrees. It’s direct, uses simple expression and language, sometimes using vernacular, local idiom and slang. In terms of subject the usual subjects of course, love. Loss, etc but also real life, social commentary, experience in their local environment, often humour, irony and sarcasm but always with a high degree of emotion and integrity. I hope you enjoy and are inspired by the following: Roger McGough - Mrs Moon Mrs Moon sitting up in the sky little old lady rock-a-bye with a ball of fading light and silvery needles knitting the night The Sound Collector A stranger called this morning Dressed all in black and grey Put every sound into a bag And carried them away The whistling of the kettle The turning of the lock The purring of the kitten The ticking of the clock The popping of the toaster The crunching of the flakes When you spread the marmalade The scraping noise it makes The hissing of the frying pan The ticking of the grill The bubbling of the bathtub As it starts to fill The drumming of the raindrops On the windowpane When you do the washing-up The gurgle of the drain The crying of the baby The squeaking of the chair The swishing of the curtain The creaking of the stair A stranger called this morning He didn't leave his name Left us only silence Life will never be the same Brian Patten - When you wake tomorrow I will give you a poem when you wake tomorrow. It will be a peaceful poem. It won’t make you sad. It won’t make you miserable. It will simply be a poem to give you When you wake tomorrow. It was not written by myself alone. I cannot lay claim to it. I found it in your body. In your smile I found it. Will you recognise it? You will find it under your pillow. When you open the cupboard it will be there. You will blink in astonishment, Shout out, ‘How it trembles! Its nakedness is startling! How fresh it tastes!’ We will have it for breakfast; On a table lit by loving, At a place reserved for wonder. We will give the world a kissing open When we wake tomorrow. We will offer it to the sad landlord out on the balcony. To the dreamers at the window. To the hand waving for no particular reason We will offer it. An amazing and most remarkable thing, We will offer it to the whole human race Which walks in us When we wake tomorrow. Party Piece He said: 'Let's stay here Now this place has emptied And make gentle pornography with one another, While the partygoers go out And the dawn creeps in, Like a stranger. Let us not hesitate Over what we know Or over how cold this place has become, But let's unclip our minds And let tumble free The mad, mangled crocodile of love.' So they did, There among the woodbines and guinness stains, And later he caught a bus and she a train And all there was between them then was rain. Tony Walsh - Drunkle He was our drunken Uncle James but we all called him Drunkle Jimmy, when he wasn’t there, which was more often than not. We told our cousin, but she never laughed. Found All her life she was lost until one day she was found by a man walking his dog. Someone nowt = nothing, owt = anything, summat = something And she made do wi’ nowt And she never said owt. But she shouldda said summat to someone. If you haven’t got owt You can never say owt And she never got no help from no-one But I’ll tell you summat And I’ll tell you for nowt See, she never did no harm to no-one And she’d do owt for nowt And she’d never tek owt And that’s summat should make you a someone. Tony Harrison- Jumper When I want some sort of human metronome to beat calm celebration out of fear like that when German bombs fell round our home It’s my mother’s needles, knitting, that I hear, the click of needles, steady, though the walls shake. The stitches, plain or purl were never dropped. Bombs fell all that night until daybreak but, not for a moment, did the knitting stop. Though we shivered in the cellar-shelter’s cold and the whistling bombs sent shivers through the walls I know now why she made her scared child hold the skeins she wound so calmly into balls. We open presents wrapped before she died. With that same composure shown in that attack she’d known the time to lay her wools aside --- the jumper I open’s shop-bought and is black ! |
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"Thanks for this!" says: | ger715 (10-29-2017), PamelaJune (10-29-2017) |
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