It’s a case of a new venue for the Stoke Stanza at 7.30pm on Tuesday 18th September.
The meeting will be upstairs in the restaurant area of The Duke William pub – 2 St John’s Square, Stoke-on-Trent ST6 3AJ.
Emily Rose Galvin the Staffordshire Poet Laureate will be with us. All welcome.
The Leopard Hotel no longer opens on Tuesdays, so we’re moving to this friendly and historic pub a 100 yards or so away. New name? New masthead? Watch this space … will we or won’t we?
Whatever the case, we hope to see you at the next Stoke Stanza. All welcome. Please bring up to 15 copies of a poem or short story you would like to discuss or simply enjoy the craic (or The Potteries equivalent).
Meanwhile, here are some poems from the last session on 21st August, again at the Duke William.
We start with two Williamses – unrelated ones. Neither dukes nor relatives. John Williams and Phil Williams set each the task of writing a poem about an incident they observed the previous week: John’s wife Val selling her mother’s bike.
Here’s John’s take.
SELLING GRANDMA’S BIKE
Sold to strangers long ago for shopping trips,
our two-inch bike ad draws a teatime call.
Someone’s coming up. Our words have worked.
Among the ads for digi-clocks and phones,
‘Pink bike. Trad squeaks. Quick sale.’
Our buyer rings our doorbell hard,
and glad we’re in, straight checks the gears.
Aged twenty, he listens to the hub,
feels the chain and offers fifty quid.
The young consign us with a put-down
to the old folks’ home and think we’re out of it.
We want ten more and point to pumped-up tyres,
the flower logo grandma liked
he’ll scrap and exchange for skulls.
We push the bar to sixty and then shake.
He ridss a moment out into the jam,
imagining the Lonely Planet Guide to swift escapes
and swank hotels where helicopters land.
Phil’s version:
SELLING MOTHER’S BIKE
When she wheels it out front,
Val feels the back tyre sag.
She knows she has no time
to pump it proud before
the neighbour comes to check
its provenance against
the price. Cool Ninety Five.
Val pitches high, beyond
all offers, knowing she
will have to brake, apply
the pads and draw up near
the price kerb with a jolt.
Seventy five? Her mother
liked the shopping basket
a figure-head beyond
the bars, the tinkling bell
and the three gears handy
within reach. Handsome bike.
Seventy now perhaps
with the tyre slurping flat
as Val props it by the wall.
He offers fifty. Sixty?
Done.
We aren’t setting up a poll to see whose poem gets most votes but we always like to hear from you. Feel free to comment or get in touch with the ‘comment’ facility. Even better, you’d be more than welcome at the next Stanza on 18th September.
Mary King offers some social comment in traditional ballad form.
BALLAD OF THE BANKER
He stepped from his Mercedes and
His eye was strangely bright,
‘You seem to be a common man,
Please listen to my plight.’
I would have gone away then, but
He had my elbow tight.
‘Now treat me kindly, little man,
I was a city banker.
I thought I’d got away with it,
Till the papers pulled a flanker.
My granddad was a barrow boy
And never sold bad fruit,
My father dealt in fine used cars
Sold everyone to suit.
And they’re revolving in their graves
Since I’ve been such a brute.
Do not condemn me, little man,
I was a city banker,
I loved the institution and
I’m sorry that I sank her.’
Repentant sobs then shook his frame,
His chest began to heave,
He wiped a salty tear away
Upon a cashmere sleeve
And so my heart went out to him,
To see him sorely grieve.
‘Have pity on me, little man,
I was a city banker.
You can’t lay all the blame on me,
The system has a canker.’
But for the grace of God, I thought,
As I heard these soulful sounds.
He said he would resign tout de suite,
He felt there were good grounds,
And let me glimpse his severance cheque
For twenty million pounds.
His chauffeur brought the Merc around –
Sleek, long as an oil tanker –
I heard the sound of champagne corks.
What rhymes with city banker?
Malcolm McMinn was on rhyming form in his response to Ezra Pound.
A SATIRE ON THE CANTOS
My criticism might well be unsound
Of this distinguished man of letters.
Though we are told ‘Respect your betters’
I’m in for a penny, in for a Pound.
It should have been a truly wondrous day
When first I lit upon the Cantos;
The Goods, not like my silly centos,
Penned by the master of the modern way.
But sad to say there was no sense of wonder,
I just felt baffled, quite bemused,
Dispirited and unamused.
I think this work of Pound’s a massive blunder.
A mighty tome of vague philosophy;
Had he not died where would it end,
A work that few can comprehend
But great for fans of lexicography?
His flights of fancy are so swift and nimble;
Cantos march past in their battalions,
But why write two just for Italians?
And can the British read those Chinese symbols?
He uses obscure terms like ‘ell-square pitkin’,
Together with proscribed inversions,
Archaisms and like perversions.
Was his intention simply to outwit
The common man, not like our Hughes or Larkin?
A simple theme proved quite chimeric,
Was ever verse more esoteric?
A genius, yes, but rightly judged as barkin’.
Oliver Leech reminisced about his father’s Staffordshire way with words.
MY DAD
I’d got ten out of ten, scored a hat trick,
made a dovetail joint so smooth
you couldn’t feel the join.
Back home, shirt buttons bursting with pride,
I waited:
‘Not bad,’ he’d say, my dad.
or, just as terse, ‘seen worse.’
I’d mended my sister’s bike,
weeded the rose bed,
built a Spitfire from a kit,
found an orchid so rare,
so delicate, grown men wept.
Back home, chuffed as a champion,
I waited:
‘Not bad,’ he’d say, my dad
or just as terse, ‘seen worse.’
Later I’d bought a house,
brought home a wife
then a grandchild to dandle on his knee
and another and another.
‘Not bad,’ he’d say, my dad
or, just as terse, ‘seen worse.’
If I’d painted the Sistine Chapel,
outsainted Mandela,
outpunched Mohammed Ali,
I’d know just what he’d say.
‘Not bad,’ that’s all, my dad
or, just as terse, ‘seen worse.’
Charmers and smarmers, showbizzers,
even grandmas and teachers who try too hard
call you the tops, say you’re A-star rated.
I prefer my dad: more stark, more understated.
Geoff Sutton, or should it be geoff sutton? brought along an intriguing poem about a harbour in North East Scotland in extended haiku style.
tongue
oh its so nice to
go travellin but its so much
nicer to come home
tongue in sutherland
only a northerner could
call this place the south
a tongue and a tongue
where the long caol of sea licks
the short ard of land
tongue is where the heart
is the only place to be
home in a heat wave
arthur tongue is home
after three months on the rigs
home on the longest
day what time is the
next high tide slitherin in
he s tongue tied in tongue
jenny scrubs floors at
the tongue hotel says to her
english boss NO SWEAT
YOU RE NOT MY PEOPLE
YOU RE THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE WHERE
MY PEOPLE CAME FROM
doesn t talk like them
she s from nova scotia or
east kilbride you can
never tell whom you re
talking to with a ribbon
in her bonnie hair
she waits fro the black
freighter with a skull
at the masthead to enter
skullomie harbour
that’s where arthur s moored his craft
in bladder wrack with
empty fish boxes
oh we knew starvation here
forced passage to
canada from tongue
from slettel and from blandy
even coldbackie
why do you never
see jenny with arthur or
arthur with jenny
one morphs into the
other together they make
tiresias tongue
she foresees pentland
snakes hump power from the firth
comin yet for aw that
from the cosmodrome
at durness arthur predicts
probes spunk past the moon
shining down on six
aluminium pot lids nailed
on pine trunk fence posts
to keep out the rot
—
It’s nice to go trav’ling Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn.
Pirate Jenny (Seeräuber Jenny) Bertolt Brecht. English lyrics by Marc Blitzstein.
We hope you enjoyed these poems. There are many more where they came from. Poetry’s happening right across The Potteries.
Why not come along and find out more? You don’t have to be a member of The Poetry Society to attend a Stanza. You will get free entry though, to The Poetry Society’s latest Stanza poetry competition on the theme of ‘Tradition’. More details here.
