Hi Arthur,
This in an interesting re-write! The form you use – and the short lines that 
end the stanzas - and the control you exercise, with a precision of 
language, are really good. The description of the place, and placing the 
description in such darkness, conveys so many feelings.
But I feel uncomfortable, tho, with the way you describe the people! I guess 
I start to feel my rebellion against the poem in stanza 3 – where people are 
described with language about cows, a pack (of dogs?), and donkeys! Then 
language-about-humans is used only about the valleys that “tear comfort from 
each other’s arms.”
It may be, as you describe, that there is so much darkness but you not only 
offer nothing positive you deny the prospect of anything positive (even tho, 
as you say, you do what you can as a governor of the school!). I think 
Christina said it better than I can - but I sense, as a reader, I can’t 
remain passive in the face of so much description! It invokes a response!
I remember, tho, when I read Simon Armitage’s Xanadu based on an estate in 
Rochdale (Bloodaxe 1992) I glimpsed a similar environment. (It's different 
to yours but possibly well worth a browse, if you get the chance. And it 
wasn't too well recieved at the time... he was criiticsised for his stance 
and attitude). No matter what you think of why he did what he did in writing 
the book, however, it wasn’t intended to be a comfortable read. But, perhaps 
because of the way he wrote about people (and not always likeable people), I 
didn’t feel everything I feel after I’ve read your piece. However Tony 
Harrison, in V, writes about urban deprivation (but I could say he does it 
clumsily – spelling things out too much). Your piece, tho, seems to adopt an 
attitude Larkin often showed (but daren’t show overtly) where his disdain 
and repugnance for and of the working class culture of Hull really makes me 
angry. So it might be that I’m wanting to rebel against your piece because I 
don’t like attitudes I adopted by other poets as well! The phrase “guttural 
and stiff tongued” sounds so Larkinesque! (As an almost aside, when I read 
Larkin and stumble on his attitudes – The Whitsun Weddings book contains, 
perhaps, the “worst” examples, and “Here” is, for me, the worst of them all! 
  - I then turn to Douglas Dunn’s Terry Street to calm down!).
I guess the issue is one about openness. I sense the poem has closed too 
much down and, as a reader, it makes me want to open something up! I don’t 
think I want the poem to offer too much that’s positive (after all you write 
“Have I the right to be depressed?” and I can say, “If it’s as bad as you 
describe, then perhaps you haven’t...”). So I don’t think you should provide 
“a smiling picture” (your response to Christina) but I feel the poem’s doing 
too much for the writer and leaving no opportunity for the reader to bring 
any of their own insights to it.
I also find I can't link what you've written about how you see your role as 
a school governor (in relation to this poem and the previous version) with 
the lack of human feeling in the poem. It feels as if the poem may not be 
giving the kind of messages you intend.
Bob
And, as a PS, I’ve done a fair bit of writing about people living in 
deprived areas of Newcastle and I recognised, along with many artists and 
writers paid to work in the communities that gave me many of the poems I 
wrote, that much of the humanity of the places could be celebrated. Check 
out
http://www.nhi.clara.net/bs0125.htm
and
http://terriblework.co.uk/pamphwhole.htm
(and click on  pamphlet & chapbook reviews) for comments on what I’ve had 
published. I recognise, tho, that I usually focus on people – and how their 
environment affects them - more than where they live.
Bob



>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: The flats ( rewrite and extension)
>Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 18:01:04 +0100
>
>                             TheFlats
>
>Above ringing passages the wind mutters
>up flights of stairs pitched in gloom,
>wedged with shadows. Dust descends
>where muddled feathers rot and the purple
>lump of a decaying squab, beak still gawped,
>serves pulsing maggots that unravel its web
>of brief life.
>
>Here, all are guttural and stiff-tongued.
>The rank air threatens, stultifies,
>speech stilts as words shift,
>meaning decays and melts back.
>They tower, loom above streets,
>where the wail of sirens bode
>and night coils.
>
>Light spews across wet ways, a bovine piss
>clatters against the privy of a wall,
>a bawled obscenity pursues as the pack bays.
>Someone coughs and bleeds. Distant shouts,
>derisive as a donkey’s bray, hang like a curse
>in the reek of life grown cold and fetid as old bibles
>in dank cellars.
>
>The valleys of the night are littered
>with debris, ragged wads of shade,
>that merge, coagulate to thicker dark,
>tear comfort from each other’s arms,
>tangle and forget as the night bird sings
>to their flutes of subdued laughter and
>tunes of lust.






_________________________________________________________________
Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. 
http://www.hotmail.com