Hi Matt,
And welcome to the list!
And thanks for your remembering!
Looking back on those days, when Simon Armitage and a fair few others from
what was called (with a big smile) The Huddersfield School, kept appearing
at venues and they always meant it was a sparkling night! They used language
so differently, so cleverly! It was, so I thought, my language - but, try as
I may (and I did!), I couldn't then use it like that. I eventually began to
realise that their poetry was (often) a poetry of movement, or - if not
moving - the poet seems to be standing up, and I was writing most of my
stuff of the time as if I was sat down. Colin's poem moves, too!
Bob
>From: "Merritt, Matt - Leic. Mercury"
><[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: newsub/Sabbatical
>Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 09:38:21 +0100
>
>Hi Bob,
>The last line you're thinking of is "one thing we have to get, John, out of
>this life." It's from November, which was in Zoom, and I think the Selected
>Poems too.
>Love the poem, Colin. I never get tired of Robinson being revived, and I
>think you've breathed new life into him here. I wasn't mad about the
>lobster
>line, but I think the rest of it works really well.
>Matt
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Bob Cooper [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: 08 September 2003 21:44
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: newsub/Sabbatical
>
>
>THIS EMAIL HAS BEEN SWEPT FOR VIRUSES BY THE NORTHCLIFFE GROUP MAILSWEEPER
>SERVER.
>
>Hi Colin,
>Good ol' Robinson again! Sort of Simon Armitagey (I write with a smile!)
>and
>OK for that! Such a demotic, energetic, style fits the subject matter well.
>The last line has an echo of another Armitage poem in it (but, even tho
>I've
>searched I can't find which one!)... Something he used to read with the
>preface that he'd taken the line from the old TV cowboy series, Alias Smith
>& Jones. I'm still finding myself startled by Robinson being like a lobster
>in "altered" water (not sure if altered means warming water?) and not sure
>-
>if the journey began in the morning (I mean he's driving to work and I'm
>assuming he's not a night-shift worker! - how it can have become night so
>quickly. Oh yes, another thing, "a rag man, a bone man" - we used to have
>"a
>rag & bone man" (ie one man, not two separate men...) but I almost miss
>noticing that because I'm caught by the rhythm of your words! It's a fine,
>fun, serious, rememberful read! Bob
>
>
> >From: Colin dewar <[log in to unmask]>
> >Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: newsub/Sabbatical
> >Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 20:12:56 +0100
> >
> >Robinson's Sabbatical
> >
> >
> >I was too confident
> >driving that route to work, day after day.
> >I took for granted
> >the vast distances that armies marched in a month
> >that I passed with my foot on the pedal
> >so carelessly it seemed I dreamt my way
> >along the road.
> >
> >I wasn't paying attention.
> >I got distracted
> >by a crow that flew straight overhead
> >and in that direction
> >turned off at the roundabout
> >when I shouldn't have,
> >and it's not an ordinary day anymore.
> >It's not as calming as things are
> >when they're dead familiar.
> >
> >I had forgotten what hazards I roared past,
> >much faster to rabbit and robin
> >than it seemed to me
> >dreaming at the wheel.
> >I'd become accustomed to the hedgerows
> >with stiff twigs aligned in one direction only,
> >see now what I'd missed before,
> >the upturned thorns,
> >mud caked on the heifer's haunch
> >and the ruts on the track
> >to the knacker's yard.
> >
> >If I drive in a straight line
> >I might get back to where I was,
> >to what seems precious now
> >and not be diverted and lost,
> >the hot car hard behind me,
> >making it impossible to stop.
> >
> >If I could only find my way back
> >I would not feel like a lobster
> >that finds the water altered
> >for the first time,
> >so guided in
> >to a rough area by night.
> >
> >Some people live here all their lives,
> >in houses with dark windows,
> >in doorways with plastic bags,
> >blank faces of children staring back,
> >syringes by bridges in moonlight,
> >the genitals on walls in red paint.
> >
> >Heaven knows how I came to be here,
> >in such a state.
> >I will work as a rag man, a bone man,
> >a banger of nails
> >but I have to get back to my life.
> >
> >
> >
> >Colin
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Hotmail messages direct to your mobile phone http://www.msn.co.uk/msnmobile
_________________________________________________________________
Use MSN Messenger to send music and pics to your friends
http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger
|
