It looks as if I’m heading for another podium place – the third time in 48 years!
Way back in antiquity, my shipwreck in the Bahamas led to The Sinking of the “Almeta Queen”. First poem, and first in the 1971 Bahamas Drama Competition (yes, a poem winning a drama comp: the performance must have been persuasive).
Creak forward to 1985/86, and an MPhil at Cambridge University: I had to relieve the brain-ache somehow. As well as playing Subtle, the eponymous Alchemist of Ben Jonson’s comedy in the ADC’s May production, I won a limerick competition as part of Wolfson College’s Beaujolais Nouveau celebration (younger readers might find it difficult to understand the totally OTT frenzy of each new Beaujolais wine’s arrival). I was amazed to find that my 3 fairly sozzled creations had won – 6 bottles of the bloody wine – until the Bursar told me I was the only entrant.
The dinner
The College’s Beaujolais Nouveau,
With typical Franglais menu – so
Gastronomique,
Quite, quite magnifique!
Bottoms up! Vive la France! Comme il faut!
“Le matin après” (or “le lendemain matin”, whichever is vraiment français):
The effect of the Beaujolais wine
Was to make Wolfson members supine.
Bacchic revels and feasts
Make men wish to be beasts –
But the droop is the fruit of the vine.
An individual downfall:
A young Wolfson member named Alec
Was inspired by the atmosphere Gallic
To dance far too much.
He now needs a crutch …
But I don’t think his stiffness is phallic.
And now, something completely different.
I’ve been told that I’m in the first 3 of Ver Poets’ Summer Competition for rhyming poetry – and I can’t even be there when the results are announced! I’m in Sicily for a week, and can’t be at the prize-giving. I’ll try hard to down a few glasses of Nero d’Avola on Friday evening, 21st September, when my poetic soul will be at St Michael’s Church Hall in St Albans where the results (Gold? Silver? Bronze?) will be announced.
The poem originated on a slow train journey from London to Durham for my father’s funeral, and an even slower train back the same night. I’d scribbled down a few lines, fallen asleep, and woke up with my head resting on a lovely young woman’s shoulder. I mumbled an apology, but she said “It’s all right, pet, I’m very comfortable”, and we both went back to sleep. Brief encounters … part of the oddity of travelling, where being encapsulated shifts you out of time as well as place.
Funeral Train
Grey scurf-patched grass. Coal-coloured streams
seep through the tyres and tins and glinting glass.
Crippled walls of soot-red brick, bleak troubled dreams,
blind memories, old lantern-slides that pass
beyond perception, never quite revealing station names
that blur away on neatly-painted wooden boards.
Inside the rattling rhythm, dirty windows frame
and isolate the travellers. Communication cords
must not be used. We move on parallel lines
towards divergent destinations, never meet
in this encapsulated absolute where signs
like “Gentlemen please lift the seat”
discreetly segregate us. Simple trust
in progress tells us that the journey’s end
is where we want to go. We brush the dust
of leaving from our feet, anticipate some friend
to meet us. But then the flickering picture stops.
An unseen signal? Windows mirror fears.
Stillness. Dark, dingy fields. Silent raindrops
etch into certainty with tears.
