Ophelia
We wake to find her
Fingerprints, Saharan dust
On window sills, on
Rooftops,
Schoolyards,
Graves,
On driveways and motorways,
On pylons and leaves,
On our fingertips,
Faint as ash.
As if to say:
See, there is a land
Out there
Across the sea,
Beyond the screen of your TV,
And it’s real,
And it’s closer than you think,
How easy I can bring it
To your feet.
IOB 16/10/17
It was an illusion, walking
home afterwards, eyes wild wet.
The moon was large and Hollywood yellow
and beneath this,
in a bus shelter, two teens kiss,
lit by the shelter light
but from this angle, from Sorrow Hill,
I cannot see the fluorescent strip and so
it looks as though they are lit by the moon,
this paper moon that the clouds that rain on me
have yet to reach.
I want to laugh, to shout to them that
this isn’t real, that the parents have
left and the caretakers of this world will
stack the chairs and take down and fold
away this paper moon before this
kiss dries on your lips, grows old.
IOB 2017
I teach English in an inner-city Manchester school. It’s been a tough week. Monday night’s terrorist attack created a backdrop of sirens, questions and uncertainty. Our school is as diverse as the wider city, we have a palette of pupils from all corners of the globe, from the far-East, from Asia, from the Middle East, from Europe. All united in Manchester. As one of my Year 7 pupils said in a lesson this week ‘We are all different raindrops from the same cloud.’ Apt. ‘Some are born here, some drawn here, but they all call it home,’ as Tony Walsh read, in his now widely-shared poem from the vigil on the steps of Manchester town hall. But despite the uncertainty, the anxiety, the tension, our kids have been remarkably unfazed. As the police helicopters circled above and the news came streaming in of arrests and controlled-explosions in their neighbourhoods, they shrugged it off, steeled against it. There was sorrow for the victims, and concern for the future, but a complete unwillingness to be divided. And one of the things that has played an important part in this resolve and resilience, is poetry.
Poetry helps us to understand complex emotions, events and circumstances. As Manchester poet Lemn Sissay explained in a BBC interview in 2015:
“Poetry can serve a person just by being written and read out at a funeral or a wedding or at the birth of a child. […] Poetry has a bridge between the spiritual and the physical. That’s why it’s in the Bible, that’s why it’s in the Qur’an, that’s why the Buddhist faith uses it […] when you feel a desperate need for that bridge […] It’s because poetry is the bridge between now and then, the past and the future, it’s an incredibly powerful thing and it is around us all the time.”
It certainly helped me on the morning after the attack, when I was trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to find hope. Like many I suppose, one of the first places I looked to as the terrible news reeled in was Twitter. It was alive with alerts, news, opinion, a dizzying whir. And then I found this, from Manchester poet Mike Garry, and it was like stepping into a quiet room from the manic street, a chapel:
A simple haiku that says so much. And the form, the restrained syllables, both concentrates the image and yet calms, gives space. It’s a deep breath. And not a syllable is wasted, the power in the word ‘solid’, the tragedy in the word ‘beauty’. I felt a surge within, civic pride and the realisation of the power that words can have in the most difficult of times. I decided that would be the first thing my pupils would see when they came in to my classroom that day, Mike’s haiku on the board. My first class was Year 8.
I might have gone a bit overboard. Having the poem on the board was one thing, blasting out Joy Divisions ‘Atmosphere’ as the kids came in was another. But Curtis’s lyrics carried a new resonance. ‘Don’t walk away, don’t turn away in silence. See the danger, always danger, endless talking, life rebuilding, don’t walk away.’
‘Sir, can we listen to Ariana Grande instead?’
‘Ok.’
But it was the poem that opened the conversation, that broke the ice. They were interested in the image of the arms wide open. We talked about Manchester’s history, of immigration, of multiculturalism. They picked up on how that will not be shaken by the acts of the terrorist, how we can’t let it. They loved the idea of ‘beauty amongst ugliness’, and gave their opinions on what the ugliness could be. Is it the act of terror, specifically? Is it the mindset of the people responsible? One kid even suggested it could be modern life, global conflicts, poverty. The conversation flowed, triggered by poetry.
I played them the video of Mike’s poem ‘The Threads That Weave’. Commissioned by MUFC in 2012, it now holds new resonance, an uplifting hymn for the city.
They listened in silence and there was a spontaneous round of applause at the end. It’s a powerful piece of work and accessible and going through it helped unlock further discussion and understanding. The metaphors in the poem made it easier to comprehend ideas about the city. ‘We are the sign of the cross,’ Mike reads, ‘temples, synagogues and mosques.’ We picked apart the imagery. ‘We are the warp and weft.’ I showed them images of how warp and weft works in textiles, they instantly understood the point Mike makes. ‘It’s like we’re different but all part of the same thing, isn’t it? And stronger together, like threads in a material.’ I played the poem every lesson that day and each class brought new interpretations, new understanding. My Year 9 group talked about the line ‘We are cotton sewn through history,’ and we were discussing how the Mancunian spirit prevails, runs through each generation. ‘Unbreakable,’ a boy said. I asked him to explain. He told the class how the thread is strong and even stronger when it sewn through fabric, stitching together different pieces, like different communities, stronger together. Perceptive stuff, and again it was the poetry that unlocked it.
By the end of the first lesson that day, my Year 8 pupils had constructed their own poem, using Mike Garry’s approach. They each wrote a metaphor that expressed their feelings about the city. We wrote them on strips of coloured paper and collated them. When we read it out, each pupil reading their own line, it was an emotional experience. There were a few giggles and a bit of awkwardness at first, but a couple of lines in and there was a confidence in the room, a charged atmosphere. We finished it and again there was applause, a relief. We had created something out of the confusion and tension of the morning, untangled the thoughts and brought something positive to light. And again it was poetry that enabled it, as the sirens flared again outside.
Extracts from their collective poem, ‘This Is Manchester’:
The next day we continued, picking apart the poetry, using it as a starting point. The horror of what happened was starting to sink in, some pupils wanted to talk about it, others didn’t. Poetry offered a proxy, a way of starting to discuss and process further what had happened without the heavy or uncomfortable challenge of talking directly about it, unless they wanted to. Fears of division in the community were set aside by watching footage from the vigil, the inspiring show of solidarity of the Manchester community, with thousands gathered in the sunlight, showing the world that the city would not be plunged into division. And again, poetry gave voice to it the most powerfully, with Tony Walsh’s poem summing up the grit, the determination, the character of the city.
Again the kids listened and again they burst into applause, the poem and the performance putting into words the resolve we all so desperately need. Some pupils recognised Tony, we invited him into school a couple of years ago to help a group of pupils write poetry about the city. It was hugely successful and the pupils wrote some fantastic poems with him, some of which can be found here.
I’m not sure what will happen in the weeks to come, as the net draws in on the terrorist network and the community is put under even more pressure but I do know that as teachers we need to be ready to talk about it. Poetry isn’t everything, obviously. There is a lot of work to be done in schools and in the community to reassure, to unite, to prevent division and promote cohesion, but it starts with dialogue and understanding and poetry is a good starting place.
“Don’t wrap me up in the chains
of your poxy writing frames
or pick at my remains with your
‘point-evidence-explain’
or prod at my pentameters
or filter out my metaphors
without first knowing how they make you FEEL.
And don’t drain my soliloquies
with clinical analysis
or paraphrase some essayist
like some amateur ventriloquist,
just get thee to a library
and find something to LOVE.
The chances are the ghost of me
is in those pages too,
and, for now,
that’s enough,
so get gone
(I’ll be waiting for you).”
IOB 09.07.16
Hanky Park: the Salford skyline as depicted in the 1941 film version of Love On The Dole
I first came across Walter Greenwood’s ‘Love On The Dole’ when I was in my late teens. My granddad recommended it to me, during a conversation one rainy Saturday afternoon in the pub about my beloved Smiths. I spouted my adolescent critical analysis of the entire Morrissey back-catalogue whilst he politely pretended to listen, picking the non-winners for the 3.30 at Cheltenham. He’d never heard of them, of course. But when I started dropping references to Morrissey’s influences, to Shelagh Delaney and Alan Sillitoe (as if I’d actually read them), he looked up from his paper and recommended Greenwood. My granddad wasn’t much of a reader, but he’d read Greenwood’s novel after watching the film, when it was released in the early 1940s. It strikes me now that when he read the novel, he’d have been about the age I was when we had that conversation.
My granddad was brought up in Newcastle, during the Depression. A novel, not only set in the ‘hungry thirties’, but written during it, and serving as a lasting reminder of the harrowing effects of poverty, must have struck a chord with him. Here was a novel that reflected the gaslit world he had escaped into the Army from. Though the novel is set far from Newcastle, in the gaunt underworld of 1930s Hanky Park, Salford, poverty is universal. No wonder the novel was hugely successful, Hanky Park could be Liverpool, or as easily the East End.He must have seen something of his hometown in the dark, austere streets of the novel. I never got a chance to ask him.
For me, the novel was a million miles away. My 1997 Manchester was all neon lights, Oasis and the false new dawn of Tony Blair. It was a time of optimism; the city had dusted itself off from the 1996 IRA bombing and had drawn up a plan for renewal. The Tories were a thing of the past, terrifying tales to tell your own grandchildren when the time came. So, when I picked up the novel myself (I’d borrowed it from the library – probably alongside some New Order CDs and Bez’s Biography), it didn’t resonate immediately. A few pages in and I stalled.
Now, parts of the opening are all too familiar.
On either side of (the street) are other streets, mazes, jungles, of tiny houses cramped and huddled together, two rooms above and two below, in some cases only one room alow and aloft; public houses by the score where forgetfulness lurks in a mug; pawnshops by the dozen where you can raise the wind to buy forgetfulness…
I returned to Love On The Dole only recently, years after my granddad died. This time, it was different, I was hooked. I regret not being able to share it with him. And it’s as relevant now, in post-Blair austerity Britain, as it ever was.
We can recognise in characters such as the grim Mr Pryce, the local pawnshop tyrant, and his tributary Mrs Nattle, the vultures of poverty that circle our own high streets, the payday loan companies and exchange stores that serve as sad reminders that poverty still has its unscrupulous profiteers, now more than ever. Just as our own bookies and casinos squat on the high street, booming as we grasp at straws to rescue ourselves from austerity misery, the character Sam Grundy, Greenwood’s sleazy bookmaker, appears to be one of the only characters to prosper as the others flounder in unemployment and crippling cuts to welfare. Even the thuggish Ned Narkey, almost pitiful in his ironic lack of power and influence, is irked by Grundy’s ill-gotten wealth:
Instantly he appreciated Grundy’s prosperity, its easy source, the smug complacency of the man, his affluence, influence and ability to indulge his every whim. Comparing it with his own barren indigence made his poverty doubly maddening. Blind hate and envy dominated him; his impulse was to snatch at Grundy’s throat, fling him to the floor and kick his brains out…
Greenwood shows us not only the outwardly obvious consequences of poverty: the ragged clothes, the drawn faces, the dirt and grime, poignantly illustrated in Jack Lindsay, the former apprentice, “a dismal, depressing young fellow shuffling about with a slouching gait in broken boots and shabby suit,” who, ghost-like, progresses no further than the street corner he despondently frequents; but also the deep psychological damage that poverty wields, particularly on men and on masculine identity. Ahead of his time, Greenwood alerts us to the identity-crisis men faced, and would face even moreso towards the end of the century, as the masculine industries of coal and steel crumbled, as the foundries and pits closed, leaving a void, filled only with self-doubt and self-loathing:
It got you slowly, with the slippered stealth of an unsuspected, malignant disease. You fell into the habit of slouching, of putting your hands into your pockets and keeping them there; of glancing at people, furtively, ashamed of your secret, until you fancied that everybody eyed you with suspicion. You knew that your shabbiness betrayed you; it was apparent for all to see. You prayed for the winter evenings and the kindly darkness. Darkness, poverty’s cloak.
For Harry, the novel’s hapless hero, this frustration and despair is exacerbated of course by his relationship with Helen, his childhood sweetheart. We see him fall from the hubristic apprentice with a spring in his step to the unemployed man; we share in his panic, as he is suddenly propelled into the world of fatherhood, of responsibility, of the grinding poverty his parents are powerless to keep him from:
He was severed from the old way of life at home, now. Mother, father and sister were as strangers […] He would soon be a father himself! The thought made him scared, guiltily scared. He marvelled at Helen’s seeming composure. She did not seem at all disturbed now that they were married. He, a father though! He a silly, incompetent boy, dressed in the ill-fitting clothes of manhood.
But it’s the women of the novel, I think, that shine through. From Dorbell, Nattle and Jike, hovering around like the three witches of Macbeth, interspersing the narrative with whiskey-breathed commentaries, to my favourite, stout Mrs Bull, the hard-faced ‘uncertified midwife and layer out of the dead’. In Bull, Greenwood provides the blueprint for the fearless Northern matriarch, the Elsie Tanners and Ena Sharples of the world. In my favourite scene, Bull rebuffs the futile requests of the local ‘Good Samaritan’ clothing company rep, seeking the weekly instalment in vain:
She sat at her kitchen table, jug and glass in hand: ‘Call next week, lad. Ah broke teetotal last night,’ with assurance: ‘Ah’ll have it for y’ when y’ call agen. Mrs Cranford’s expectin’ o’ Tuesday, an’ owld Jack Tuttle won’t last week out. Eigh, igh, ho, hum! Poooor owld Jack,’ a guzzle at the glass.
Brilliantly, when the collector sulkily concedes defeat, lamenting that Bull will land him in trouble, she replies “Aach, trouble, eh? Tha’ll thrive on it when tha gets as owld as me.” This is more than comic relief that Bull lends the novel, it’s hope; it’s the grit that defies the spectre of poverty.
Arguably, it’s the women of the novel who remain the strongest, the most defiant. Whether through the shrewd business dealings of Mrs Nattle, the go-between for Pryce’s pawnshop, or Mrs Bulls’s gruff put-downs and blunt sermons (“Ah’ve had no eddication but Ah do know that there ne’er was parson breathed wot preached sermon about resurrection on empty belly, an’ mine’s bin empty many a time.”), or through Sally Hardcastle’s final sacrifice made to keep her family afloat, it’s the women who find an inner steel when things fall apart. “Gor blimey,” says Mrs Bull, “they think we’re magicians, an’ Ah ain’t sure that we ain’t.”
Ultimately, Love On The Dole is a devastating celebration of working-class resolve; on the one hand it laments and warns of the evils of poverty, yet it also reminds us that, despite the Pryces and Wonga.coms of the world, the Cash Generators or Sam Grundys, there is, to crassly paraphrase a Morrissey lyric, a gaslight that never goes out. (ouch)
I loved it. My granddad loved it, though I never got to find out why. So, if you’re lucky enough to have grandparents around and they recommend a book, read it. Even if you’re not ready. Good books will wait.
IOB 10.03.2016
Syrian snow
lands on homes,
roofless bones of brick.
It lands on barbed wire fences,
photographed in yesterday’s news.
Syrian snow
falls on the boats
of those whose only chance is to go.
It lands in Greece,
in Munich,
in Paris,
is carried across the Channel
to you
and me
and we turn over the TV,
close the door,
let it melt.
Syrian snow
tastes like ghosts,
like ash, like
Holocausts.
IOB 5.3.15
Manchester, 1987. It’s December, last day of term. We’re in the bathroom. My mother has me in a loving headlock and is brushing my teeth ferociously. I am seven. My older brother sits on the edge of the bath, awaiting the same violent dental cleansing. A smile spreads across his older face. He is itching with a piece of information, something he knows that I don’t, something that I simply, surely, have a right to know…
Butterfly Stitch
When you told me Father Christmas didn’t exist,
all three years older, leaning on the bath,
waiting for your teeth to be brushed,
I was secretly glad,
though Mam gave you a crack,
because there in that bathroom,
in my vest and pants, one sock, one shoe,
I grew into something older, new,
and something was removed
like a butterfly stitch
and later that day
when our teacher came and
assembled us all on the stained carpet,
and announced the arrival
of Father Christmas,
red suit too big,
pillowed belly and
cotton wool brows,
someone pulled down his acrylic beard
and revealed Mr Cohen, the head,
some cheered
and some kids cried,
but I already knew,
looked down,
realised I was wearing your shoes.
IOB 21.12.15
Lampedusa
And if I slip beneath
the water,
would the sun still
paint the surface,
and would the tide still
carry us
out to Lampedusa?
And if my hand loses yours
beneath the waves,
would I ever find you again
on the shores
of Lampedusa?
And will they feel this
in the Rhine,
in the Danube,
in the Seine,
in the Thames?
Sorrow in veins,
as lights come on
in homes reflected in
canals,
stars like fires
for the dead,
as fishermen make their way
back along lanes, their
backs against the cold,
far from Lampedusa.
IOB 8.10.15
Poetry, as I explained to the class, was never a real thing for me, as a schoolkid. For us, poets didn’t exist. They lived only in dusty books on that shelf of the library that nobody could reach. So, to have a real, breathing specimen standing before them today was a treat, I beamed. They didn’t seem so sure. At least, not at first.
Activities Week. The one week at the end of the year when all pupils in the school at which I teach are taken off timetable and sign up to a variety of events, trips and workshops that they wouldn’t get the chance to the rest of the academic year. A window of creativity in the gloom of the exam factory. At least, that’s how it’s meant to be seen. Many of the kids in front of us on that rainy morning last week hadn’t signed up to this. The computer games room was full. The football club was full. Even the board games activity was over-subscribed. So, apart from a few rare species that actually signed up to a week of art and poetry, the majority of pupils before us were added to the list as they simply had nowhere else to go. And so they found themselves enrolled in a week of poetry and art activities. Hm. This could go either way.
Luckily for us, we had enlisted local poet Tony Walsh a.k.a. Longfella (a pseudonym attributed to his towering 6′ 5″) and within seconds he had them hooked. We had booked him in for the day to help the pupils create some poetry of their own. The theme of the whole project was ‘Manchester’ and our relationship with the city. Our school is within a couple of miles from the city centre and we wanted the pupils to explore their identity, express how they feel about Manchester through art. Some of our pupils are Manchester-born, many others from other parts of the world, from Iran and Pakistan, from Somalia and Palestine. Our city is the thing that binds us, and we wanted to explore those links.
Project-based learning allows pupils to explore things in depth. In any normal school day pupils are thrown around a carousel of classrooms, one minute they are in a science lab the next they are in a sports hall, so there’s little wonder that by the time they reach my classroom, especially in the afternoon, their attention levels can be somewhat lacking. No matter how I frantically try to plunge them into the worlds of Dickens or Shakespeare, get them excited about semi-colons or even keep them awake long enough to work out what a subordinate clause is, the odds are often stacked against us. Sometimes, you can only skim the surface (within that 50 minute slot) before the bell goes.
So, to have a full week in an art studio to explore poetry and art, to me, was a blessing. To the kids, it was potentially a nightmare. Though Tony soon put them at ease. He had them up, out of their seats, moving around the room for a few warm up activities and before they knew it, they were writing. No fuss, no mither, no ‘please, sir, can I go to the toilets til this is over,’ they wanted to write. Within minutes we had a crafted a group poem, a fantasy piece , ‘I Am Fantastico’, in which we collectively invented a mythical character. Within minutes. Reading it back, you could see the pupils warming to this idea – we had created something. A character, a poem, a work of art. Five minutes ago it didn’t exist, and now it does. That slow realisation that it doesn’t matter if you’re in the bottom set for English (or the top set), everyone can create. And so it went from there.
Tony explored the city of Manchester with them without leaving the room. Through discussions and video-clips, poems and anecdotes, a patchwork formed of smoky industrial landscapes, chimneys and rooftops, of suffragettes and inventors, architecture, football and politics. The pupils were learning about their city, exploring and sharing their identities. Tony interspersed his anecdotes of Manchester with poetry – reading his own work aloud and showing clips of other local poets. This took poetry from the page, made it real. The pupils could see the poetry, access it, feel it. And it struck me – of course, all those times in class when I’d tried to introduce kids to poetry, trying to drag them across fields of Wordsworth’s daffodils, they had to first feel it, to see it, to believe it. Otherwise it’s part of something else. Part of academia. That world of dusty books and universities that they can only dream of being a part of. Elitist. Here, as they heard a real poet read his poetry or watch footage of local kids receive roars of applause at slam-poetry events, they could taste it. It’s like playing football for the first time after only ever watching old matches on VHS of long-dead players you are told are great. Suddenly, it’s a real thing.
It sounds cliche, but the pupils really did go on a journey that day. We had some kids who were previously that shy that they struggled to speak up to answer the register now confident enough to read their own poetry aloud to the group. We had pupils who had recently been removed from classes for repeated poor behaviour now focused, keen, writing. Taking pride in their work. Channeling their anger, their frustrations, their energy onto the page. Simply because they had the time to do it, in depth.
By the end of the day, we had a collection of poems. The rest of the week we dedicated to creating artwork to support it. It was great as an English teacher to work alongside an art specialist. Normally, in class, pupils would write in their books and that would be it. Some pieces might wind their way onto a display board in my classroom, but many would remain trapped in a pile of exercise books in a cupboard. So, we set about creating artwork that would take pride of place alongside the poems in an exhibition and in a printed anthology. We further explored the theme of identity, pupils taking pictures of each other and creating David Hockney style joiners with them, collages that distorted and reshaped their faces, playing around with their image. We took maps of the city and ripped them, distorted them, reshaped them, took images of the city’s architecture and played around them, creating new thing from familiar buildings. It was learning, but in a completely creative way. The pupils were exploring their identity, their heritage, their surroundings, but all the time creating new things, splicing flags of countries from all around the world with maps of the streets they now lived.
The most rewarding part of the week for me was on the final day, when pupils got to showcase their work. In a hall, in front of dozens of other students, they were invited to perform their poetry. Never, I thought. Some of these kids find it difficult enough to speak to each other, never mind perform poetry. But they did. And they did it well. With images of their artwork behind them, they read odes to the city they live in, elegies for lost childhoods, rants against bullying, stinging protests against war and stereotyping. And the crowd loved it.
So, if you want pupils to access poetry, to explore their identity or just to grow in confidence, project-based learning can be massively rewarding, for staff and students. I’ll definitely be doing it again. One of the great things about this week for me was working with the kids. Having the time to sit next to them and write my own poetry, show them, laugh at my bad lines and half-rhymes, create my own artwork, so they see it as something active, something developing. Importantly, I showed them my mistakes. We laughed at my horrific attempt at collage before they showed me how to put it right. And for once, the battle lines of ‘them and us’ came down, no impending school bell to hurtle them into Physics or Maths, time to shape something, including staff-pupil relationships. These things take time.
At the end of the day, on the Friday afternoon, I was able to give them a copy of their anthology (after a last-minute pleading with the reprographics lady) and they were spellbound, holding their work in their hands. In my head I was Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society, spouting about the importance of art and creativity, ownership and identity – to them I must have been a bleary-eyed teacher with seconds to go before hometime, waving a paper booklet at them and delaying their freedom, their escape into the weekend. But I think they got the gist of what I was banging on about. Maybe they’ll wave their anthology at their parents before setting up the X-Box and never look at it again, but hopefully they’ll find it again, maybe years from now and look back and laugh, with pride, at their own tentative steps into art, or at least at my horrific collage. Who knows – maybe they’ll be recognised as bestselling writers or artists by then, and I’ll be flogging their manuscripts on eBay…
The finished article!
Foreword, hastily written by some Year 10 pupils.
An example of one of the amazing haikus the pupils came up with.
I am Fantastico! Group poem.
Just one of the many great poems we collated.
Visual poetry
Poem I wrote alongside the pupils.
My team! The stuff of nightmares…
If you are looking for a poet to ignite some minds, I would heartily recommend looking up Tony Walsh (@LongfellaPoet) http://longfella.co.uk/ What a legend! He has disarming way with pupils. They instantly look up to him (well, it’s hard not to when you’re 6’5″). He gets great results through his enthusiasm and expertise. He literally passed the baton of the pen to our kids, leaving one shy lad in particular with the pen a poet once gave to him! Who knows, maybe he’ll be doing the same one day.
IOB. 12.07.2015
Today is Manchester Day. This is a poem I wrote about the way the city stays with you, even (as in this case) as you leave it, it will draw you back.
midasinreverse: ian o'brien 