Barry's death, like Doug's such a short time ago, is a great loss. I
don't feel I can say very much, I never knew him well, but I keep
thinking this evening of the last time I saw him. It was early 1998, he
was reading with Geraldine in Huddersfield & they both read either side
of the break. At the break I asked him if he'd read some of his Odes in
the second half. He seemed really surprised and said something like 'you
mean you still like them?' It doesn't stick in my mind because I think
Barry was wonderfully modest or anything like that but because he seemed
to have no sense that I'm probably not alone in thinking that his Odes
were one of the masterworks of the mid-late 70s in English poetry.
His (I think) last publication, Sweet Advocate, contained a series of
Letters to Dewey Rodefer, prose-poems for a child, a celebration of just
being alive
Letter 19 DEWEY
Listen Dewey, I am a common man. I am common as muck. I am the
original muck-spreader after farmers Noble and Nicholl who built their
ginormous leaks up here in the high grounds and we all sat around and
read Zane Grey when the fires died and we were dead asleep until the
lentils and the beasts the next dawn.
Being a common man is most special.
What you have to do is turn it.
Letter Dewey 38
Here we are in the don't-give-a-toss department supplying some
attempt to understand the word probably.
Letter Dewey 50
Lay your heart upon the earthe.
AH
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