The Poet Laureate reads his commemorative poem on the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Astronomical Society: BBC ‘Broadcasting House’ 12 January 2020

(Today 13 January, coincidentally the BBC reports the oldest matter from a meteorite 7 billion years in the making. It carries dust grains, ‘star dust’, formed before our worlds existed).

When I heard the lauded Laureate*

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The table, says Sergio, used to be an altar

It was sacramental, where the body and blood was truly shared

It was a confessional where all was forgiven, the Prodigal welcomed

Where you came in need and left fulfilled

Where you met in communion, bitterness laid aside, differences suspended

Where strangers were welcomed

Where to have was celebrated and to have not was left at the do...

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Wine Bar in Worktown

I am sitting in the Worktown wine bar

Wondering if my wine is corked

Wondering whether to complain

Wondering if I can be bothered

Wondering why I can’t be bothered.

In other words just filling the afternoon

Wondering not doing.

The girl behind the counter busies herself.

She’s doing. She’s wiping tables, filling sugar bowls.

She’s re-arr...

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Voices Off

Dry today and a powder blue sky

Liquid rays paint rubber plant shadows on the back wall

I ignore the “to do” list and read to John Coltrane

“You should be outside on day like this” voices my mother

“Got his nose stuck in a book again” mutters my father.

I could be sweeping up fallen leaves

Brushing the muddy path

Raking the moss

A fire perhaps to glorify a win...

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Plum blossoms in snow

Like a character from a Murakami story

Mr Nagata looks into the embers of his dying fire

And remembers.

Mr Nagata surveys the familiar images

And pulling the sack around his shoulders

Takes another sip of Ballantynes.

There is the girl who he tries to forget

Her black hair bobbed

Her white neck polished.

Mr Na...

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Lines written in the Tudor House on the 30thAnniversary of the death of John Lennon

Hey Johnnie

You hook-nosed bastard

You made specs sexy

And played a mean Rickenbacker

Attention seeking nihilist

Gob shite scouser

Merciless poison-tongued delinquent

Hiding the quiet man inside

To my dad’s amazement

You grew up and flew away

Sharing your dreams

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Today

The Palace and the tax office are rent asunder

And the dogs and swine lord it over the corpses

And the officials are queuing for the first flight out

And the Palace and the Tax Office are rent asunder

Yeah verily the Palace and the Tax Office are rent asunder

And Papa Doc smiles from the beyond

And the undead rise and their places filled by the newl...

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Having a shower after watching the News Headlines

It’s all about the 40th lime

And how I should rub my head with coconut butter

And every person wasting £400 of food a year

And other big headline claims

And I say

“Is that £400 of food from Aldi or from M&S?”

Who cares, it’s all cow pies to Desperate Dan

And it’s phosphorous bombs and child witches

And it’s Helmand Province and Hellman’...

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The Staff Room Celebrates

“Now I know you’ll want to go out

and join the celebrations, but remember Kylie,

It’s not clever being drunk.”

That’s it, thank God, let’s celebrate

And eat the pattied calf.

Let’s go to McDonalds after work

Then drink until the last spark

Of sobriety has been extinguished

And the world goes dark.

Oh we’ll need no excuses.

It’s the festive season, we’ve ...

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John Jelly 1958-2004

Like many people I probably became conscious of John Jelly through his sheer consistency, perseverance and reliability. Walk through Newport Street Passage any weekday between 11am and 1pm and he would be there. It was his pitch. Sensibly placed under cover and strategically located between the Town Hall Square and Ashburner Street market. Always dressed in the same, dark ...

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The Big Chill : all the right sounds but not necessarily in the right order

House

Garage

Punk

Funk

Dub

Rap

Beat-box

Drum ‘n’ bass

Jazz beats

Rare groove

Funked up

Multi phonic

Techno

Indie-pop

Soul

Electronic

Roots

Fusion

Hip hop

art pop

Funk laden

Rave

Deep funk

Grime

Kinetic

Electro

Lo fi

Disco

Doom metal

Baile funk

Downbeat

Acid house

Junglist

Ba...

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If  (....hardly original but eh!)

With due acknowledgement to Darren Thomas who would probably prefer to disown it.

If pigs get swine flu

Do sailors get brine flu

Do egotists get mine flu

Do cokeheads get line flu

If Geordies get Tyne flu

Do librarians get fine flu

Do policemen get crime flu

And binmen get grime flu

If tangents get sine flu

Do dusters get shine flu

Do lemons get ...

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Poets in Need

(in partnership with the Campaign for Real Poetry and Poet Relief)

“Have you ever wondered what it must be like to be laughed at and ridiculed. Difficult eh? Not nice. But how much worse to be ignored and unrecognised?”

 While you’re sitting there wallowing in the self-satisfaction that comes from not giving a toss what people think about you, mired to the armpits in TV soa...

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Little Roy

Little Roy, he’s a bit of a boy

And a lot more than a cuddly toy

He can sink more chips than Helen of Troy

And he’s got more sauce than a bottle of soy.

He’s got a brother called Kev, and a mother called Stella

Which helps explain why he’s a happy fella

He’s got more balls than a fortune teller

And more cards up his sleeve than Yuri Geller.

He’s a party gnome,...

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This is one of my oldest extant poems kindly published by John Hall in the first edition of Citizen 32.

 Ten Years After (1979)

I am bobbing in a tiny boat upon a velvet ocean

Above me the moon smiles down

I now know there is no moon rabbit

And they know it is not made of cheese.

It is merely rock and dust, lit by the sun’s aura

Its smile merely craters ranged across its surface

T...

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20 July 1969 One small step

We are watching the grainy monochrome images on TV in company with half the world, but at 12.30 I leave to walk under a moonlit sky down St Helen’s Road and into the depot. She does not like me working nights, nor spending my days at the beach while she types for eight hours shipwrecked in a babble of unfamiliar tongues. I’m striding and staring upwards in ...

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Guru

He is wise, his eyes have seen it all

You cannot grasp the breadth

Of his understanding.

He is profound

Deep down his wisdom

Spans the aeons.

He is a master, He is a sage.

He is deep, but he is not impenetrable.

He will peel himself back

Sheet after sheet.

He is translucent

Each skin a statement.

You can see and smell and taste

Each layer, like a luscious onion.

...

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as if by magic.....

One, easing the poetry bus down Radcliffe Road, approaching the bridge that spans the mighty Tonge.

Two, its last journey, all decisions made, Metro Salvage assure me they pay “top prices”.

Three, Joe, six, chunnering in the seat behind, goofing about school.

Four, BANG!

Five, brown blur slaps windscreen, disappears as brakes slam.

Six, simultaneous thoughts, (is that...

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The Writing Class

In the writing class we capture memories

Corralled and hobbled like prairie mustangs

We pen them in according to their colour, age and size

Taming them to break their spirits

Forcing them to learn new tricks.

They become our servants docile and less feisty

Hooves shod and harness polished

But deep down we know they will be always wild at heart

They will never truly be...

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The house style is imperial, conservative in dress and etiquette,

Vestments and head wear are de rigeur.

Superiors are approached with bowed heads

And addressed as Sir,Your Worship, Mrs or Madam,

Depending on their place in the hierarchy.

The peasants and minor clerks, have long known their place.

Patronage is too generous to jeopardise through flippant challenge...

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OK this is all very late and dulled by the passage of time and the fact that I took neither a notebook or camera with me. Crime of crimes I treated Latitude like a holiday rather than a marketing opportunity. Will I ever learn? It has taken me two weeks to recover from the excesses, the lack of sleep, the sanitation and the poetry saturation.

Before I dredge thr...

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Dropping the Mask

Dead Good Poets Society Wed 15 April 2008

The performances of Rosie Lugosi and Chloe Poems have generally left me feeling in much the same way as young children often feel about circus clowns. Well not quite hysterical jibbering terror, but a sense of wondering if there’s a victim involved in this edgy cabaret and could it be me. Cruel intelligence and a mask coupled with mate...

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THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY February Blog 2008

All night long the wind’s been whipping the tiles, and I’ve set my new super duper DAB alarm for six thirty but I can’t get to sleep and it’s already turned two. Somewhere in the ether is a heavenly choir which forces me to twice check to see if I mistuned the sleep function, aagh the horrors of technology. Then I get it, about three thirty by now, quite...

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Yesterday being Remembrance Day

I made a point of remembering

And joined several hundred other rememberers

On the Town Hall Square

Where I bumped into Alec Simister

Who I hadn't seen for ten years

Now there's a man who could wear a bowler hat and rolled umbrella

As well as any city banker, retired guards officer

Or Orange Lodge member

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