Jan Oskar Hansen is Norwegian, and has been a regular contributor to Write Out Loud for over four years. His poems often draw on his experiences as a sailor, or explore his memories. Jan is clearly a man of mystery, and we haven’t yet had any response to him for our Q&A, so we’ll simply let you enjoy his poem Summertime.

Summertime
by Jan Oskar Hansen

 When I was young, and it was summer
we went to the beach with a bulky gramophone
a stack of vinyl records and a bag of beer.
We drank and sang the modern tunes of the day
of the type, the elderly scoffed at and we
had to keep an eye on the police as it was
forbidden to drink beer at the coastline
(In Norway back then most things was banned)
In the night when the grown-up had left
we made love, and it was not needed to force
the girls they too came for sex and to choose
the man they wanted to marry and did.
I was a seaman then and when I came back
my most of the gang was married there were
only two left we didn`t bother with the music
but brought three bags of beer and talking about
how lucky we had been avoiding the marriage
trap, but knew in our hearts we were losers.