W. Terry Fox Cheshire's Longest-Serving Poet Laureate

On Ice With Strings

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:30:00 +0000

Jack Frost is having a right laugh, isn't he? Ain't he just. The cold-hearted, light-fingered old git has gorn and spangled everything. Above (and below) is a faux toe Lynda took of our summer house a couple of days ago. Since then, the jolly Mr Frost has danced all over the snowfall in his white-spangled pointy shoes and dressed it in diamonds. It now looks like summat Queen E would wear on her head at one of her balls (I use the word advisedly).

As you can see above (and above), StringFing made it to the Coachmakers last night and played to a much-depleted but absolute quality audience. We did Please Don't Drop Your Bombs On Me as promised, but the guy who requested it was another dood kept under house arrest house by the treacherous insurgents Ice and Snow. We'll be keeping the song in the set for a while so, liberated from his incarceration by the prophesied soon-upcoming army of sun beams, he will hear it next time round.

Oh, I have had to go back to sticking the W. in front of my name. There is simply too many references to the Canadian hopping hero to conveniently find the far far fewer references to the British shuffling non-heroic me. So it's the plus the W. for everything I do, but I won't be prefixing StringFing with my name as it's listed in the personnel in all publicity.

In the fotie of StringFing are two stalwart geezers who like real ale and real music too much to be kept away by a mere bit of weather. The camera flash has lit the room up more than it really was and the sustainable pine forest Jason has created on the joanna ain't usually there. Other than that, and a few dozen people, that's how it mostly is. Come along. Go on. You'll feel all the better for it duck.

May you become horizontal only when it's your own idea.

Terry

Chilling Out

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:59:00 +0000

All of Mow Hill is white and fluffy. What's been going on? A downfall of our downfall, that's what. I had to cancel our StringFing practice. The slippy slidy snowy drifts gave me no choice. Ain't it pretty, though? he asked from the haven of his big comfy chair by the radiator in his writing corner.

Actually, this particular radiator is not all that efficient and my toes are bloody freezing. So thanks natural forces for the pretty pretty snow, but it can go away now. I want the roads clear for our gig at the Coachmakers tomorrow night.

I have a poetry competition to judge and a load of marking to do for uni. The cancelled rehearsal has given me time to start doing it. Oh joy.

The photo is StringFing at the Coachmakers last year. Last year . . . Doesn't time whizz along? It only seems like a couple or four weeks ago.

Don't forget to feed the little bird doods. They're struggling.

Be safe,

Terry

Turning Over A New Year

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 10:14:00 +0000

Well here it is: New Years Day.

Ruth said to me, ‘Will you be saying two-thousand-and-ten or ‘twenty-ten’?’
‘Oh, two-thousand-and-ten. It’s a number, after all,’ I said
‘Yes, and ‘twenty-ten’ sounds so American,’ she said. I agreed. Then she said, ‘Ah, but we do say, the Battle of Hastings was in ‘ten-sixty-six’ don’t we?’ Call it what you will, this day milestones a new year for us islanders. Let make it a good one.

Under its new banner (Literally. I sewed and painted it myself), StringFing will be doing On A New Years Day at the Coachmakers, in Hanley, this Wednesday evening. It is 68 years since the explosion at Sneyd Colliery that took 57 lives. It was deemed unlucky to cut coal on a New Years Day. The miners broke their rule cuz in 1942, most of the world was involved in war for which coal was essential.

We will also be doing Please Don’t Drop Your Bombs on Me – a personal plea to the owner of any finger hovering over a big red button primed to trigger a nuclear bomb. Of course, I use it as a plea of restraint that includes anybody who has any bad intentions towards anybody else.

On that subject, here’s a poem I wrote a while back that has cropped up in my mind a few times lately:

FANX 4 THE ROCK N ROLL

Great balls of fire, blues suede shoes,
whole lotta shakin’, summer time blues.
Rockin’ in the jailhouse, King Creole,
sure beats dancing round the ol’ maypole.
You can stick yer missiles an’ yer tanks, Yanks,
but fanx 4 the rock n roll.

Long tall Sally sleeps in ma kitchen.
When Johnny plays the git-tar ma feet start itchin’.
Add a back beat an’ I’m outa control –
reelin’ an’ arockin’ like ma spine’s bin stole.
You can stick yer missiles an’ yer tanks, Yanks,
but fanx 4 the rock n roll.

Be-Bop-A-Lula, she rocks ma clock,
slippin’ an’ aslidin’ like we’re never gonna stop.
That backbeat music has claimed ma soul.
Shumann, Schubert? shove em’ up yer ‘ole.
You can stick yer missiles an’ yer tanks, Yanks,
but fanx 4 the rock n roll.

***
Hey, I’m starting to sound a bit anti-American here. I isn’t, ain’t, am not, won’t, anti anyone. It’s just certain attitudes and actions I can’t do with. Besides, those doods across that great pondly divide make some cool guitars and, like I say, they’ve given us rock n roll.

Seen from my window, Mow Hill is coated with a heavy frost right. It is a misty morning. The sun has lit up all the east-facing windows. I can just pick out the castle in the deep greyness of what looks like a range of distant and brooding mountains.

I ain’t the Cheshire Poet Laureate any more I'll have a bit more time to get on with organising the completion and delivery of my Village Verse collection. I have set my sights on the middle of the year. We'll see. I've been trying to get it off the ground for yonks. If it ain't one thing holding it up it's another. Usually me not being able to raise the printing costs.

The night before last, just as me and Lynda were about to unscrew the top off a bottle, we had a call from Sheila to say Jim Eldon was over for a few days and asking about us and would we come over to the Swan, in Acton, for a session. It was great to see Jim and Lynette again. He was in his usual engaging form: his warm and gravelly voice over a scraped fiddle; quirky, individual, and right on target in. A proper ‘now’ version of the tradition.

Jim's music is part of a homely, home-spun, make-and-do tradition that I pay into. Nothing to do with academies and museums and dusty archives and intense and privileged education and training. It’s the result of a people after a long day’s work, taking their fiddles down from the hooks on the wall and grabbing a melody from the air and raising their voices to life. Wonderful. A lot of playing and singing was done, years ago, during the long, dark agricultural winters when the work was less. I was pressganged by a captain of industry when I was a kid and, consequently, spent most of my working life in factories. But it was an urban version of the same thing. As I think I have posted earlier, my first job was weeding kale fields (a line of kids working their way through an endless crop) but, the farm was doomed for redevelopment and the job was concreted over and factories grown where the pastures and crop fields were.

A wake of controversy always follows Jim. A lot of people can’t get a handle on his range of material: He’ll do a sea shanty followed by a song he wrote last week followed by Rockin’ All Over the World. Wake up you people! that’s exactly what the tradition is, does, and always will. EG, those Morris tunes that are often held up to be the epitome of the tradition – Jockey to the Fair, Constant Billy, etc – were all popular songs. Wake up, wake up! Or at least pipe down and listen.

Me and Croz recorded an album with Jim in . . . Croz, I google, thinks it was around 1979, but I am pretty sure it was a few years later. Yeah it was. I remember Amy, then a little girl, running out to give me a hello cuddle when I got back from one of the recording sessions. It must have been at least the middle of the 1980s. Jim and me were on fiddles and Croz was on the cello. I remember when we were trying to decide which version of Soldiers Joy we’d play. There was the more widely-known version, a cool, very different take on it that Jim had discovered and a version I had invented. We decided in the end to string them all together. Check it out if it’s still around. The album is Jim Eldon and the Sharpshooters.

At the Swan the session was in full swing by the time we arrived. Some of the musos I knew, some I didn’t: Jim fiddle and voice; Croz fiddle and melodeon; Sheila English concertina; Bryn (?), guitar and great songs; a guy from the Boat band on melodeon (sorry, dood, don’t know your name. Ace player, though); an older guy with a good voice; a younger singer and box player with a good voice; Lynette, tambourine and dancing feet.

Me and Lynda made our contribution on tambourine and guitar. Ee, it were gradely. Yeah, and we did the lot: trad tunes and songs, some not-so-old songs, and some with the ink still wet on their pages.

‘Trad’ singers have always done the songs of their forbears along with the songs they have written themselves and the new songs of others. Some of the early folksong collectors used to complain that the singers whose repertoires they were archiving kept wasting their precious recording time on non-traditional material. The tradition ain’t one solidified, frozen thing. It’s ever-changing and circling around. What's new today is traditional tomorrow. The tradition is what Jim does and what StringFing does.

I’m off the have my first breakfast of the decade. Look out for yourselves and for everybody else you can give a helping hand to.

Terry

ALL'S QUIET 'CEPT FOR ME AND ROBERT JOHNSON

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:13:00 +0000

He’s singing Last Fair Deal Gone Down. Every song the beautiful slender-fingered man ever recorded is mine for my delectation on 2-CDs. It’s been a great Christmas. I got some new boots too, so I’m all set up for the New Year. Lynda’s asleep and the house seems to echo emptiness now that Amy and Dave have gone back south.

I’ve acquired the body shape of Mr Pickwick. My old frame has suffered some major dietary abuse, over the past few days, in the form of whiskey, whisky, gin and cakes and cakes and gin and whisky and whiskey, but my much-depleted finances reassure me that this bloated frame will only be temporary. Just as well. Another few days of it and I’ll have to use a mirror to see which shoes I'm wearing.

The addition of the fabulous Ms. Emily Louise Tellwright on cello to Adam and my music-making is official and the way it is from now on. We are rambling 3-dom road, doods. ACW and me half-heartedly called ourselves Up to Scratch at first – you have to tag your product. We are now called: StringFing. Adam thought my name should be prefixed to the StringFing I came up with, so it’s Terry Fox’s StringFing. I have dropped the W. for the music. It will continue to be part of my official writing name though.

Emily told me that she met a fella from Heymaker days who has requested we do Please Don’t Drop Your Bombs On Me when he comes to see us at the Coachmakers on Wednesday January 6th. Yeah, oh yeah. Thanks dood. I’ll be pleased to do that song again. Especially now we are graced with the cello. There was a group of soldiers who turned up at the Arts Centre whenever they were on leave – I’m talking 1980s here – who always requested that song and sang along with it knowing the words as well as I did. I was curious about that. It’s anti all that stuff. They said, ‘But it’s about NUCLEAR war, man. No soldier likes nuclear war.’ Fair do.

Meant to tell you a while ago: my friend Liz Almond has another collection of poetry out. She is gentle and wise. Her new collection is called Yelp. Give it a read or four or five. It gets better with rereading like all good poetry does. Yelp is, as is said, available from all good bookshops. Liz was my personal tutor at uni. Read her poetry and you will know how lucky I was to have her as a mentor.

January’s issue of Cheshire Life has given half a page to me and my poem Homage to Cheshire. It rounds off my two years as Poet Laureate for the county. It’s the end of the scheme too. I suppose I could carry on calling myself Cheshire Poet Laureate until such time as the scheme is revived and I am officially replaced. However, enough is enough.

Although the people in the Cheshire Arts Service who inherited the project from the remarkable Liz Newall did not have her vision, commitment and flair and basically did bugger all that was positive beyond handing me the crown and a smooth handful of dosh (for which I am honestly grateful), the appointment has been brilliant for and to me. My 2010 diary bears testament to it’s ongoing benefit as the poetry gigs are rolling in. Once I sussed the lack of support I just got on with it myself and made it happen.

A few weeks ago, I hosted the awards evening of a poetry competition on behalf of de Winter PR for Adoption Matters North West at the Bank of America in Chester – have I mentioned that? I can never remember – I also delivered Mending Nets, the poem Adoption Matters commissioned me to write. I met two terrific poets there: Gladys Mary Coles and Jim Bennett. You should check them out. Terrific people too. Both of them are characters. Famous around Merseyside. You have to be good to be noticed up there. Jim’s into English trad too. Like me, he makes music as well and has a CD due to be launched soon. Google it, why don't you?

Jim noticed that I wasn’t (as he delicately put it) ‘widely published’ as a poet and very kindly mentioned me to a good man in the publishing business who connected me up with another good man who expressed interested in my stuff. But do you know what? I let it go, doods. I had a bit of an epiphany.

I ain’t an ambitious sort of a geezer – except when it comes to playing guitar in front of an audience when I am often a little over-ambitious – and I know I should push myself more in order to cement meself into a more comfortable position, but I can honestly say that I am happiest when I am doing my stuff locally. Community above celebrity every time, mates. Communal riches above personal wealth. That philosophy don’t always seem so groovy when my small harvest of food is being carried down the conveyor belt towards the great yawning gob of a Tesco till. It’s the creed I got, though, and it’ll do for me. Are you all right with your packing, sir?
Yeah, I would like more gigs as StringFing, more gigs as W dot poet-fella, more gigs as the Woodlanders Country Dance Trio (yeah that’s a threesome too these days) and more gigs with the other combos, assortments and liaisons life has fitted me up with but, above all, I’d like them to be local.

As far as the future publishing of my poetry is concerned, I will do it myself. That way I will have full editorial control. Never again will I allow myself, if I can possibly escape it, to be in position where someone like Ms. Sherman of the Arts Service can interfere with my text.

On the subject of publishing, me and Dave Wright went up to the Old Man of Mow and the castle yesterday. Dave took some more of his black and white photos for our Village Verse project – his foties, my pomes. Mow is my favouritest place. Inspires me every time. It’s got a unique and special vibe. Anyway, with luck, and provided I can get the gold together, 2010 will be the year Village Verse actually gets printed. Mind you, we’ve been working on it on and off for about eight years so I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Reading Village Verse and talking about Mow Cop is a gig in itself. I have done it a couple of times. The last one being at the beginning of 2009 for the U3A, Alsager Civic Hall. I love doing it and I plan to use Dave’s photos from the collection projected on the wall for future Village Verse gigs.

Hey, Robert Johnson has loved in vain and gone silent until tomorrow. I must get some sleep too. May no hellhounds get on your trail.

T.

AHAY!!

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:50:00 +0000

At last! for a while, and for some weird and undiscovered reason, I couldn't access my blog to post a new entry. But, thanks to the magikings of the remarkable Dave Wright, I am now enabled so to do. I haven't got time right now to write now. In the meantime:

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY READERS

AND MAY YOU BOTH HAVE A GREAT NEW YEAR

Terry

Down on Watford Farm

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:39:00 +0000

Hey, how are you? Lynda and I went down to Richmond in the capital city for a couple of days to stay with Phil Colclough. And captial it was. The weather is a whole pullover warmer down there. The Thames was looking magnificent - more beautiful than I remembered her. We went to Watford to see my skin and blister Marlene. We had seen Marlene in Llandudno earlier in the year when we all met up for dinner. It's well ages since I saw Watford town, though, and it's every bit as crap as I recall. I had to meet Phil at Watford Junction station. I walked there from my sisters - it ain't far - and I cut down the Bridle Path. Well it used to be called the Bridle Path. I don't know if it still is. Wow! what a dodgy walk that was. It's amazing how from another place you look when you step off your own manor. Loads of predatory doods about giving me the evil eye. I'm paranoid at the best of times (thank you Father Kif and Mother Skunk) but walking the back alleys of Watford brought it all back home. When ever I had a panic attack in the old days, I used to roll another spliff. What a mistake that was. I only use strictly legal drugs these days: the ones prescibed to combat high blood pressure, and also alcohol. Alcohol must be Ok, no harm at all. I mean, if it was dangerous in anyway, I'm sure it wouldn't be allowed. Weed must be far worse cuz it's banned, surely to goodness, innit?

Phil was on good form and Lynda and I had a great time. The big prize for me was the voices. When I told Amy that she asked me, 'The ones in your head or the ones outside?' Happily, campers, I mean the voices outside. The buzz of conversation in a Thameside pub brought nostagia home to me on a truck. Man, I could have basked in it for a week or two. The voices of the land that nurtured you must shape you in some way. It's funny cuz Watford, apart from triggering off some vague and uncomfortable mental state did nothing else for me.

My Watford, the Watford of my childhood: jumping off haystacks, crouched down weeding kale fields for 9/- a day (big big money, believe me), climbing trees, catching adders with a forked stick, fishing, falling in the river . . . just does not exist anymore. The first farm I worked on - a dairy farm - is now a housing estate. The entrance road to it is Cow Lane. But, as Seasick Steve says, 'That's all right. I ain't the same as I used to be either.' I miss it, though. There is something about working on the land that seems to make more sense of life. It seems a proper thing to do - something not based on airy fairy bollocks and bullshit. Although, I suppose it is literally based quite a lot on bollocks and bullshit, and fairies feature quite a lot in agricultural folk lore too. You know what I mean though, don't you?

It was good to see Phil and my sister too.

Songs of the Triassic Sea, my cycle of four lyric poems has been handed in to Spaces and has met with their approval. Great. A pleasure and a relief. It was so enjoyable to write. I wish I had commissions like it all the time. It ended up as a film script with a running time of around 20 mins and I am hoping to raise funds to get the film made. In the meantime, Ian banks is bringing his vid camera down to the Coachmakers, on the first Wednesday in October, to record parts ii) and iii) - Ram Your Spike and Winsford Town. These will be posted on YouTube and be the basis, hopefully, for attracting the funding for the full film.

Gotta go. It's National Poetry Day on Thursday 8th October and I've got loads to sort out.

Hope life is treating you.

In Stoke: Tez. In Watford and London: Tel.

That Which Is Owed, etc

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:34:00 +0000

How now, folks?

A while back, I explained that Anne Sherman of the Cheshire Arts Service had stubbornly refused to let me have page proofs of my poetry collection ‘Somewhere in the Night’ and the ‘Homage to Cheshire’ anthology that (allegedly) I edited. In consequence, textual mistakes were allowed to go to publication. The result was two or three broken hearts and one extremely naffed-off Cheshire poet laureate.

It became apparent on its publication why Ms. Sherman had held the page proofs of my collection from me: she had made extensive, unsanctioned alterations to the text of the notes I had attached to my poems.

In my book (pun intended) for one to interfere with another’s intellectual property is an unforgivable arrogance and a literary offence second only to plagiarism. The ‘Homage’ anthology suffered along with it because Ms. Sherman could hardly have given me page proofs of the collective work whilst holding back the page proofs of my own work.

I made a promise to the offended ‘Homage’ poets that, by way of a small compensation, I would post their poems on my blog in their correct form. For my own peace of mind – and please forgive the indulgence - I will also post the original text of the notes of my collection. And this process, my dear blog-eyed mates, I will spread over time but starting right now:

Apologies to ANGI HOLDEN. Angi’s poem should have read:

OVER COTTON MILL FIRE
A monument at Over St. John’s Church, Winsford,
commemorates the victims of The Over Cotton Mill Fire:
28th October 1874.

Solemnly figures crowded the Wheatsheaf
as spinners described the friction fire:
a single stray spark had caught the cotton slub
consuming the mill in a hilltop pyre.

Before the Coroner witnesses told
how a young woman burned, snagged by her shawl;
how, trapped four floors up, a girl flung her babe
to the crowd, then jumped. Both died in the fall.

They dug out the bodies of five more spinners.
So where, asked the jury, should the blame lay?
A community shattered; families made homeless;
three-hundred workers without jobs or pay.

No water was kept in buckets at loom-side.
But, said the coroner, none was to blame,
though a portable engine, kept on the premises,
might have helped willing hands douse the flames.

Friction from pulleys ignited loose cotton,
filling each stairwell with smoke as fire spread.
Cause: Accidental, the coroner recorded
against each of the names of the Over Mill dead.

Erected by public subscription, a monument
which shows how the value of life was so small
at a time when bosses were powerful, mighty:
this common grave by a churchyard wall.

- Angi Holden

I must warn you, dear readers, that I am doing my very best here but I am dyslexic and it is quite possible that I will present new errors as well as correcting old ones. Angi's poem in 'Homage' is punctuated differently and the last two stanzas are run together. Be sure to let me know if there are any errors in this representation, Angi.

Now a quick bit of justice for my ‘Somewhere in the Night’ collection:

My commissioned poem ‘QUESTION FOR WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY’ had the following foot note:

‘- Commissioned by the CCC for Friday 6th June 2008, World Environment Day. Not quite what was being sought from me, I think, but there was no way I could overlook this ludicrously self-defeating project initiated by a mayor of San Francisco.’

Ann Sherman deleted this and inserted in its place:

‘Commissioned by Cheshire County Council for
World Environment Day 2008’

I suppose my notes above only make sense if you know the poem. You can find it here in an earlier posting.

Hey, I feel better already.

I road tested two of my ‘Songs of the Triassic Sea’ with Adam at the Coachmakers last night – Ram your Spike and Winsford Town. I was pleased with how they went. It’s always good to do new material. Next month, hopefully, we’ll be doing them with Emily on cello.

Also next month (first Wednesday in October), Geoff Walton has promise to bring his bouzouki along – and play it, of course – and Martin Waters is going to play some flute with us. I can’t wait. I wish we played there every week instead of every month. You must come along. You’ll enjoy it. It’ll be an all-too-rare chance to hear Martin play.

There must be some discerning landlord or landlady of a good Cheshire, real ale pub who is up for paying me and Adam to gig there on a regular basis? Mid-week, we can easily be bribed with a few quid and free ale. Get in touch. Don’t waste another moment. You know it makes sense: Folk music (traditional and new), lyric poetry set to music, audience participation, invited musician friends coming along to take part, great, great atmosphere . . . need I go on? Well, get on the phone, then.

Alex played a good set last night. He sang, ‘Pretty Saro’, a trad. American version of an old English ballad, and three Macedonian folk songs. It’s terrific how music and the human voice in music can transcend language. Some old mates showed up at the gig, too. Always a pleasure.

OK. I’ve got to go now and sort out some poems to read as part of a concert that the Congleton Choral Society is putting on at Congleton Town Hall in October.

Does anybody remember a song of mine, 'The Numbers Game'? I don't have a copy of it. I know it opened with the words: 'The world abounds with trouble / it's the melancholy truth / nothing can be done about it / not a thing that's any use / somebody picked a number / too far back to blame / now we're running in decreasing circles / in the numbers game'. Adam likes the song and says I keep writing things that remind him of it. I often recycle my own material (tho' mostly intentionally) so it wouldn't surprise me. It would be nice if someone out there has a recording of it.

Got to go. Cheerio. Remember: take it easy – but take it.

Salt of the Earth

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:22:00 +0000

Lynda dropped me off at the church to say goodbye to John. We had a bit of diffulty finding the place. It's a rough part of town. A few yards from St. Benedicts, I didn't make way for another motorist quite as fast as he thought I should have done and he wound down his window to snarl something I didn't catch that ended with, '. . . you fucking werewolf.' It made me smile at the time (from the safety of our car) and I thought, 'Yeah, well, I suppose I do.' What a thoroughly unpleasant chap, though, what?

John would have been proud of his children. Mary gave a terrific eulogy in her father's honour. Her description of her dad's character described exactly the man I knew. Those two things don't always match so perfectly. It goes to show what a genuine bloke John Waters was.

As always with funerals, there was a comical dimension. Look, landmates, I'm not a catholic - I ain't anything as far as religion is concerned - and I was hoping to slip into the back of the church where I wouldn't intrude or stick out like the proverbial swollen thumb. But, when I got there, the church was packed out. A tribute to people's regard for Johnie. I heard the usher say to a woman in front of me, 'Are you going up stairs?' She said, 'No.' and went off into the church. So I said to the fella, 'I'd like to go up stairs, please.' He looked puzzled, 'You want to go upstairs?' he asked. 'Yes,' I said. He asked me again, 'Upstairs?' I said, 'Yes, please.' He said, 'Do you know it's for the choir?' I'm glad he questioned it. Anyway, I ended up on the right-hand side of the church right up the front. I felt mega uncomfortable.

My social plight was compounded when I realised that the usher, had neglected to give me an order of service booklet. This was, no doubt, because it had thrown him so completely off key having a complete stranger - and a werewolf, too boot - asking if he could join the choir.

The opening hymn was announced which everybody read from their booklets. But, hey, The priest had also given the number of the hymn in the hymn book, a copy of which I had picked up on the way in. Fine, except the words in the hymn book were different to the lyrics in the booklet.

The mass was of a high kind with three men in robes and a robed altar boy ringing a bell. As the service went along, I was able to lose myself in the ritual and the smell of the incense and the intoning of the priests and the singing of the choir and congregation and their calls and answers and the poems of the scriptures. A real sense of peace came over the place.

There were tears, of course. The death of a loved one is painful. Like I say in 'Talking Revolution', nobody really ever wants to die. Even those couples who buy one single and one return ticket to Switzerland would prefer to the ill partner to be well again and get two return tickets instead. If you are distressed enough, and there is no turning back the clock, death can appear as sweet release, that's all.

Mary's moving tribute to her dad made me very glad I went. There is a great comfort in religion for believers.

Emily came round today to put some cello on two new pieces of mine. Have I mentioned this new work I am doing? I really must start reading my own blog. Ian Banks of Atoll-UK, on behalf of Spaces, has commissioned 6 artists, of which I am one, to respond to Cheshire's Weaver Valley and Winsford Waterfront regeneration.

Ian is a top geezer to work with. He is helpful in the utmost without ever trying to get you to conform to an agenda of his own. So many of these commissioners (and, unfortunately, you don't know who you are) try to turn you into themselves-as-artist. Not so, with Ian. Consequently, he gets a better result from everybody.

My way into the Weaver project was through an article I read that explained Cheshire's salt deposit is the remains of a triassic sea. In other words, 250 million years ago, Cheshire was ocean. That's fascinating to me - the Cheshire salt is the cinders of a burnt up sea. I did a couple of field trips, talked to people and did a load of rooting about in museums and libraries and, under the title of 'Songs of the Triassic Sea', I have written 4 lyric poems, each set in a different epoch of the Weaver Valley and Winsford Waterfront:

i) The Ballad of Old Salt (phantasy of pre-history and the spirit of the sea)
ii) Ram Your Spike (a worksong/shanty of open pan salt making)
iii) In Winsford Town (a contemporry pastoral)
iv) Over and Under (a prophesy foretelling the rebirth of Old Salt)

The first is a dramatic monologue which I am still working on. The other three pieces are finished so far as the text is concerned but I have some musicical settings, and that's what me and Emily were putting together. I am hoping to road test ii) and iii) individually at the Coachmakers before I schedule a special evening performance for the complete work.

Phil Johnson dropped in today, too. We ended up playing some English dance tunes: me guitar, Lynda tambourine, Phil mandolin, Emily cello: Jenny's Reel, Tiger Smith's Jig, Speed the Plough . . . The rafters was ringing, doods. What a dandy way to spend an afternoon. Lynda baked some currant scones and brewed up lashing of tea. And that's what I'm gonna do any minute now - have some more of the ol' fruit of the Beko oven courtesy of the Tambourine Lady. Just in case you are getting the wrong idea about my domestic life, please note that I cooked tea tonight.

I'll post the Songs of the Triassic Sea lyrics as soon as they have been officially presented to Ian. It wudna bey rayt, as they say in Stoke, to do it beforehand.

I've started reading David Copperfield again. It'll go nicely with the cup of Rosie Lee.

Oh, yeah, before I shoot off, Tatton Park, RHS show: Cheshire Life have done a little feature on it. My mugshot made the online version, but they must have thought it a vision too far for their more-sensitive hard-copy readers cuz it was cut from that. Here's the link: http://www.cheshirelife.co.uk/main-menu-gardening-gold!--197897

Oh, yeah an' all, Shooting Stars is back on the telly. See? Life ain't all bad, are it?

See you later, folks.

Life At Both Ends

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:10:00 +0000

Talking of Bobby Bonehead aka Curly the Caveman and a few other akas, as I was last time: Trawling through my book shelves looking for Ted Hughes 'Pike' poem (an exemplary text for a lecture on the 'eagle eye of the poet' {Auden???} that I was sketching out), I chanced upon a 1980 diary which I'd kept because Amy was born that year. I leafed through it for reasons of nostalgia and the sort of curious enquiry time generates and came across this entry:

January 10, Thursday
Bob Coppard for bodhran lesson - 8.30

8.30 being the time I arranged for the callow youth to turn up, not what he paid me cuz I didn't charge him anything. I feel that I have played a large part in his becoming a children's entertainer. Sorry kids. Did I tell you that Rob and I were working in effluent treatment at the time? Tis true. You'll get nothing but the truth here, ain't that a fact?

Back to the more-recent past. I had my meeting with the Dean of MMU Cheshire - one Mr. Dennis Dunn - re the continuation of my associate lectureship there. We got on well from the outset in a ducking an' dodging sort of way (Asked had I come to berate him or to sort things out? I said, 'Well, yes'). In absolute fairness to the good Dean, he expressed surprise and dissatisfaction at HR only permitting my employment to be continued until Feb 2010 and said he would address the matter that very afternoon and get it sorted. He was as good as his word and I now await a contract for the whole of the 2009/2010 academic year. Our meeting settled down quickly and we discovered that we had a few views in common. More on this when I have signed the contract.

Some very sad news: Dear old Johnie Waters has passed away. John was a terrific bloke. A kind and gentle man and an absolutely fabulous flute player. He was from Sligo and a founder member of the Green Velvet Ceili band along with Jack Baynes, Jim Sweeney, Frank Preston and the rest of the boys who had moved on or who I knew less well. I don't know exactly when the Green Velvet was formed. I remember seeing them playing for a dance at the Holy Trinity Church social centre in the middle 1960s. I had popped across from a friend's flat in the same road to buy some fags and stayed to listen for a while. They played 'Black Velvet Band' and then a couple of reels I didn't know the name of. Of course, I didn't realise at the time what a big influence they were to become on my life a decade later. Charlie Ferguson (later known as Chris Ferguson) from Bangor, NI, another wonderful flute player, introduced me to the boys.

I met Charlie at Jason Hill's folk club at the Sealion pub in Hanley. Under the influence of Robin Garside, a folk-singing friend of Lynda's (they went to the same art school where Lynda was studying painting under Arthur Berry - that's a funny expression, ain't it. What an image!). Robin lodged with us at our house in Mow Cop at one time. I had started to play the tin whistle. I thought I could play it OK and did a couple of gigs on it with Robin. Then I heard Charlie and realised I couldn't play it all. Hearing Charlie was like all your records coming to life. We became good mates, Charlie and I, and he taught me to play the tin whistle properly and to play the bodhran. Thing was, where the bloody hell could you get a bodhran from? We're talking donkeys ago here - pre the Chieftains and all that.

To be a fan of Irish trad in those days was rare and regarded as quirky. It wasn't even cool to like it in Ireland at that time. Coming home that same night as I had met Charlie, me and Lynda were heading for the bus stop with Jason and Becky. I was so utterly drunk. Becky stepped out in the road in Hope Street without looking properly and nearly got run down by a knobhead in a car that was going too fast anyway. The knobhead blasted his horn and, startled in my drunkeness, I reeled back out of the way against the window of Chatfield's music shop. There in the window was a bodhran.

The next day, I wondered if I had merely dreamt it. But it turned out that Denis Chatfield had been having a clear-out of his stock room. The drum had been ordered by a Keele student some years before and never collected. So, thanks to student apathy, I was fixed up. It cost me £3.50 and wasn't a very good drum. I later learned to make my own bodhrans and made dozens of them. Now and again, I used to see bands on TV using one of my drums. I don't have one of my own make anymore. Anybody out there got one I can buy back? I've given up making them now. It's too time-consuming. I've been working on a big tambourine now for about two years and it's still only an unfinished frame and when you understand that the frame pre existed as a garden sieve you'll see how feckless I have become with the making.

I bought the bodran on the Saturday morning, Charlie showed me how to go on with it on the following Tuesday evening and we played at Jason's Club on the Friday. We played everywhere after that. Everyone who heard Charlie play wanted to hear him play again. We played with Dick Gaughan, Nic Jones, Tony Hall, the Rev. Kenneth Loveless, that geezer from up Newcastle . . . oh gawd . . . Vin Garbutt, that's it, and loads of others I won't attempt to recall right now as it occurs to me that I need me breakfast and a long cup of tea. I do remember we played for the Keele Rapper side, too. Do they still have one? There is something special about the drum and tin whistle or flute playing together. The interplay of rhythm between the two is endlessly variable and exciting. The two instruments can be clearly separately heard as they interweave. Chance has a magical input too. Well, it does when the whistle player is as inventive as Charlie was (RIP). Charlie had a very NI style - lots of tongued notes like the 'tight' piping of NI pipers.

At different stages of time and on different stages, come to that, I played bodhran, tin whistle and piano with the Green Velvet Band. Terrific music. As good as it gets.

Johnie taught me so many tunes and encouraged my playing. He did the same for dozens of others. His son, Martin, is a flute player of awesome capability and the beautifullest tone in the world. His daughter, Mary, as a young girl was extraordinary on the tin whistle. She had a way of playing that was quite unique - great rhythm and individually creative ornamentation. What a family! I lost touch with John some years ago. John, Martin and Mary and Jack played at my 40th birthday at the Red Bull in Kidsgrove. Lynda arranged it all. After chucking out time, a bunch of us went back to our cottage by the canal (We'd bought it off Paul Atterbury who is one of the Antiques Roadshow presenters. He, or his Mrs, Avril, took all the light fittings with them and the ceramic fittings from the bathroom). A few people brought bottles of wine. Thing was, me and Lynda didn't drink wine at the time, it was something that only ultra sophisticates did, and we had no wine glasses. But, on the other hand, we did have plenty of egg cups. I have an enduring image of Avron White, an American drummer living in Stoke - a very cool dude in a white suit and shades - standing there in earnest conversation with Biker Bill, drinking merlot out of a Winnie the Pooh egg cup.

I will be saying goodbye to Johnie on Tuesday.

Is This Some Kind of Record?

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:21:00 +0000

Hey, two weeks on the trot! Is this some kind of record? Well, yeah, it's a blog . . . You really are a mentallist when you start interviewing yourself, aren't you? Politicans do it regularly.

Guess who came marching into my living room on Tuesday, after an absence of 15 years?

Lynda and I invited Emily and Rob (Emily always calls him Mr. Cochrane) round for lunch and a chat. Lynda cooked a beautiful veg curry with cauliflower cooked Japanese style - as shown to her by Hisami a world ago. We ate in the garden, it being a glorious sunny day. I say 'ate', 'scoffed' is probably the more-accurate verb here. We came back indoors, after scoffing a few of Lynda's homemade scones with strawberry jam, to play some music. I say 'scoffing', but 'eating' is probably the more-accurate word here, as we were all slowing down a bit after the curry.

Emily plays the cello. Lynda practically swoons when ever she hears the cello played well and was looking forward to some Elgar but, as soon as Emily got her cello out, I got my accoustic guitar out. I had been waiting for this opportunity. I played Emily an English reel which she learned in the blink of an eye. We started to run through it together. By the time we had gone a couple of times round the tune Em was playing seconds as well as the melody, being the terrific muso she is. It was sounding soooooo good. Emily's musical background is ideal for the onbeat cool of English dance music. I decide to switch on the ol' recorder to let her have a listen to how good she is. We were just hitting in to the second A part, when in he walks:

Rob the Bones. I say, Rob the bloody Bones.

In 1985, Geoff Walton, Rob Coppard, Adam Fenn and me, were recruited to play at, and promote in the lead up to, the 1986 Etruria Garden Festival. We were separated from the other musos and thrown together by Baz (RIP) because we all played folk stuff. As it was, Rob had become a minor celebrity (which reminds me that, a couple of years before that, Arthur Scargill had figured in the musical life of my family. But, of course, he was a miner celebrity, not the same thing at all).

Rob the Bones' celebrity was due to his appearances on the Ester Rantzen show, 'That's Life', as a bones player. There was a competition, as far as I can recall, to find out who was the best bones player in England. I don't remember now why it was deemed so important to know that. Anyhow, I don't think Rob actually won it, but he did capture the interest of a lot of people in along the way. He is terrifically good at bones playing - two-handed and everything. The role of Geoff, Adam and me was to play music to showcase Rob. That is why after we had to briefly consider Geoff's 'Bodran Bodran' and 'The Friendly Pebbles' I hastily came up with the name: BONESHAKER.

We turned out to be the only musicians hired by the Festival who were more interested in making music than getting pissed, smoking dope, and aimlessly jaming over rock riffs for hours. I am not saying we were not guilty of any of that. I am just saying organised music was our priority. Consequently, when it came to crunch time, Boneshaker was the only band that had got an act together. It followed that, initially, at least, we got all the gigs - all the live promotions, all the radio gigs and all the TV. We were literally on one or the other at least once a day for weeks. We did the lot. Local radio local to us and in far-off towns. We did Woman's Hour on Radio 4; Folk On 2; that worldwide programme; early morning TV programmes; daytime TV. Our favourite was Saturday Superstore with Keith Chegwin. I loved doing that cuz not only did i like the programme, I got some goody bags to take home to Amy who was 6 at the time. We gigged with a whole motley crew at the Etruria Fest: Bob Holness; Grot Bags; The Yetties; etc., etc. And laugh? I laughed my bloody head off. We played at the front gate; in the African Village, in the Japanese Garden, on the train - everywhere - And, oh, yeah, we featured in a channel 4 documentary called, 'Stoke in Bloom'. The whole thing was a blast.

So in walks Rob the Bones. The music stopped. It was helloes all round and me and Rob began doing that, 'Do you remember when . . .?' thing that ain't very nice for other people who weren't there cuz as the memories come flooding back, you start talking in short hand to each other. So sorry to Emily and Rob and Lynda but, come on, 15 years . . .

We talked about the time when we had both started working at the same factory: Simon-Hartley in Etruria. Rob was a young apprentice, I was a bit older and was brought in from Manpower to sort out the design and implementation of some financial incentive schemes (don't get me started on the belief of most management that the working class are only motivated by money and need to be supervised at every momentor else they will swing the lead. Whereas the middle classes are both naturally motivated and thoroughly trust worthy . . . )

Me and Rob got talking at Simon-Hartley and found we had some musical interests in common. Rob told me his ambition was to learn the ol' Irish drum - the bodhran. He had mentioned it to the right geezer, of course. I showed him how to pit his patters on the skin of a murdered goat that had been stretched across an old wooden riddle. For free, mind you.

BUT

does he mention this on his web pages? Does he mention Boneshaker and his initiation into the world of gigging and getting paid for it?

NO HE DOES NOT.

He mentions Greg and the Boatband, as well he should, but of his old Boneshaker buddies?

NOT A WORD.

I'll give you his link and you can check it out for yourselves. I have emailed him about it. It'll be mildly interesting to see how long he takes to put that right.

Here's the link:http://www.robcoppard.com/

He's into loads of entertainment stuff these days and has developed and expanded his skills as you will see. It was great to see Rob again. Thanks for taking the trouble to track me down, dude (Through this blog, as it happens). And Emily, we must pick up where we left off asap and can you owe Lynda some Elgar, please?

I had my meeting with the Dean of MMU Cheshire re their HR teams heinous ageist policies. I will tell you about it as soon as it is diplomatic to do so. Suffice to say, the situation, allegedly, is to be moved moved forward. Time will tell and so shall I.

This is great news: James Harker, a bright, hip, thoroughly nice, talented, MMU Writing student, having completed an extemely successful first year as an undergraduate, has been awarded the editorship of the student magazine, PULP. The post could not have gone to a more-worthy or more-capable person than James. Where have the students mags with real edge gone? It looks like, with James' appointment, at least one of them will be coming back. All the best, James. You will be missed at uni.

All the best, too, to you, who read this, and all the best, too, to you who do not read this. So long as you are compassionate, respectful-where-appropriate, human beings with good intentions, I wish for a long, pain-free life to you all. May each one of us be sustained by enlightenment.

Laters.

Is Anybody Out There?

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:47:00 +0000

It's so yonks since I got around to writing this, ain't it just? Last night, I played the Coachmakers in Hanley (what a great little boozer it is and they're gonna knock it down, the tow rags, just like they knock everything and everyone down that's any good) with ACW Fenn, mandolinist to the blissful, and he nagged me about failing to keep blogging. I am self-evidently NOT a natural born bloggist. Is it possible to be a 'natural born' at any such construct???

Writing in a blog about something that I have just done seems fairly irrelevant to me. I mean, why would I care? It done and gone. Even more, why would you care? The only justification would seem to me is if it was used as a creative vehicle in poetry or prose - which certainly could happen with a blog although I doubt that I am committed enough, or bloggist enough, to pull that one off. Come to think of it, I don't think I have read any blog that has pulled that one off. Come to think of it, I don't think I have read any blog.

It was my intention to keep a meticulous account of my days as Cheshire Poet Laureate. Coffee has that effect on me. It makes me think that you and I are different people altogether. I only drink tea now and my plans for myself are far more realistic. I will no longer keep up the pretence of writing a continual coherent narrative. I shall only post what ever falls out of the ends of my fingers on the qwerty. Actually, mine is not a qwerty any more, but a qwfty. It's turned Welshy through wfar and tfar.

What I shall attempt to do very soon is put things right with a few poets who contributed to the 'Homage to Cheshire' I allegedly edited. Anne Sherman of the Arts Service steadfastly refused to allow me to see the page proofs of the CCC publication (and more of this later in connection with my collection 'Somewhere in the Night' which I disown as being unrepresentative of my work). Consequently, there was no proper proof reading or final editing carried out. Naturally, errors got though - which is exactly what showing page proofs to authors and editors is designed to prevent. Some of the errors originated with me, some with the printer or whoever(?). They could have all been put right before publication had A.S. observed the usual courtesies and procedures. I apologise to the offended authors and hope to publish their poems in corrected form on this screen any day soon.

There is a whole big ageist thing going on with MMU Cheshire and me, too. Grey is the new black, don't you know? I will give you the low down on all of that. I have booked an appointment with the Dean on Tuesday morning, to get stuff said to me, face to face, instead of having rumours and facts whispered to me in corridors and encoded in doublespeak and liptrick in emails. I am happy to tell you straight away that my students, unasked by me, have been wonderful in their support of my cause. They really have been fantastic about it. And, so too, have been members of the Writing staff. It is in gratitude and respect for them as well as for myself that I determined to see the thing through and hopefully bring some integrity and commonsense back into play in the thinking of the MMU Cheshire policy-makers.

But, right now, I have remembered I have a few cans in the kitchen. NOT in the frig, you understand? Why the hell would anybody want to drink icecold ale? All right, in Oz you would, but you'd want to drink it inside the frig there, wouldn't you?

This blog, you and I, have officially lost out to three or four speckled hens. Adios.

APPY NOO YEER

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:52:00 +0000

It's been a long, long time (again) since I updated this B-log, ain't it? I always mean to keep up to speed but it seems to need an outside influence to actually get me round to doing it. This time it's a posted comment from 'Anonymous' reminding me of Heymaker and those Bridge Street Art Centre days - well nights, then - and asking for the words of Weird Sisters.

One time, we had gone on stage at 10pm for our second set. We hit the groove, the songs were flowing like booze, the solos were drawing circles in the sky. We were just rolling out the ending to Weird Sisters when Cyril, the top geezer who ran the place, leapt up on stage waving his arms and shouting: 'That's it. Finish! Finish! Enough!' I said: 'Oh, come on, man, one more?' His eyes popped out of his hairy old face, and he screamed: 'It's two o'clock in the fucking morning!' No stamina, some people.

Good to hear from you Anonymous.

WEIRD SISTERS

When the full moon shines
On the village green
And ancient chimes
Strike 13 . . .

Weird sisters
Weird sisters

Did voodoo do
This trickery?
Magic weed?
Psychomancy?

Weird sisters
Weird sisters
Weird sisters
Put this spell on me

Round and round
The cauldron go
In the poisoned
Entrails throw

Mandrake root
Briony
Valerian
Rosemary

Weird sisters
Weird sisters
Weird sisters of the night
Put this spell on me.

© W. Terry Fox

Travel safe.

National Poetry Day

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:26:00 +0000

OK, it’s a day set aside by someone, sometime, to be a poetryful day up and down and across the islands we are living in and not forgetting that landload of poets joined to us by the Irish Sea.

As is usual with these sorts of occasion, it’s a good or bad thing depending on who’s doing the celebrating. In as far as I meet as many students who have been put off poetry at school as I meet who have been engaged by it in those brutal seats of unlearning.

I instinctively rebel against any suggestion of national co-operation on 'special' days. I think, ‘Right, if next Thursday is National Poetry Day for the British nation, I shall make it my own National Non-Poetry Day.’ However, one of my obligations as Cheshire Poet Laureate is to come up with, and deliver, an event for NPD. So do it I did.

Lynda and I had a prior-arranged short but long-awaited holiday scheduled - an extended weekend break in the Land of my Fathers. We were to set off in the late afternoon of NPD. This meant that an evening performance (other than one to an audience of newly shorn sheep, a ginger goat, some heart-meltingly-pretty flop-eared rabbits and a few hens on an isolated Welsh smallholding) from me was out of the question. And anyway NPD ain't about me it’s about poetry.

I was talking to Amy one evening on the telephone. She told me that the month of October was Family Learning Festival. So, hand in hand with her wisdom and experience with kids, I designed a project that would cover both celebrations.

Right from the word go as CPL I wanted to do stuff for schools as web downloads and I sketched out a few projects in lieu of finding some support from the CCC. To my great and continuing disappointment there was no spark of interest shown by them. Then, through a chance meeting at a poetry performance I was giving at the launch of a library’s new educational DVD , I found an interested person.

Hey! Not only was she interested but she told me that she would copy anything I sent to her boss who was more directly responsible for what went on in the county schools than she was. Wonderful!

I whizzed off a couple of sketched-out projects and awaited their response. But

NOTHING. NOWT. ZILCH.

I left it for a decent interval (two or three weeks) before emailing them again. But again

NOTHING. NOWT. ZILCH.

And I still haven’t heard a word from them.

In spite of that brickwall, I was convinced it was the way to go. One little project can reach hundreds and hundreds of people in one fell swoop, far out-classing me mumbling my humble rhymes and reasonings to a cohort of converts in some October library.

After a bit of thought the Skwigmaroo Project was born for NPD.

1) I rang round until I had got 28 Cheshire primary schools interested. I emailed them a copy of my Skwigmaroo poem (ref an earlier posting) and invited the children to take a copy home and read it to their families, and do a drawing of a skwigmaroo underneath the poem. This was to fit in with the aims of the Family Learning Festival and my interpretation of this year's NPD theme, ‘work’.

2) The children were then invited to invent an animal of their own and to make a poem about it. They were also invited to email their poems to me for posting on a notice board at the MMU, Alsager.

I have since been phoning round the schools trying to find out how many children actually took part but it is proving difficult: schools are busy places and messages aren’t always being passed on to the right people; those who say they are going to phone or email back often don’t etc. BUT on the figures I have collect so far AT LEAST 500 children took part and it might easily be in excess of a 1,000.

Inevitably, fewer children went as far as making a poem and emailing it to me but nevertheless I received poems about all kinds of invented animal:

the Trumparoo
the Dolpharoo
the Crickaphin
the Dog-belly-cat-head
the Skwigglepig
the Boxeye
the Darter
the Geyco . . .

to name but a few!

I held one more event for NPD too. I, and a group of my 2nd Year undergraduate poets held a read-round at the uni. It was terrific. Some read their own poems, some read the poems of well-known poets like Stevie Smith, Edwin Brock, WB Yeats, and Roger McGough. They all read beautifully. It was fantastic to hear such a range of accents and to hear poetry read with such warmth and insight. Uplifting stuff. Above are the photos I took. Seeya soon.

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:57:00 +0000

ALL RIGHT, AWRIGHT, ALLWRITE . . .

You do not have to remind me, I am well aware of what a feckless lanky, bog-eyed scribbler I be. Too busy to write my blog when ever I have thought about it, and failing to bring it to mind when I could have managed a quick peck or two on the qwerty.

Do you do this: think about writing something, or to someone, carry on composing the piece/letter/blog in your head – you may even go back over it to do a bit of revision and editing – and when you’ve got it finished in the Writing Room of your Mansion of Grey Convolutions, you forget all about it cuz you’ve then got the feeling that the job has been done and dusted?

I do the above daily. Years can pass without me physically writing to a friend or relation. They feel neglected but, in fact, I have been in regular touch with them by my one-way mental mail that has a nice bright red post box but no collection service as yet. It’s not an explanation that goes down with any great success, though.

Come to think of it, I did have a go at writing this blog a few weeks ago. Yards of it I wrote, straight onto the page, then, inexplicably, lost it in the ether. Computers are reckoned to be sooooooooooooooooooooo clever but they are thick most of the time. And how they try to talk to you!! Bog off! You are a machine. I paid for you, and if I want to, I will pound you to pieces with the wheel end of my office stool. Now stop talking and get on with that simple task I set you.

We had a friend once, Graham Thorley (R.I.P), who was a genius. He could do anything. He was taking and printing his own colour photos before most people had heard of them. He made all the equipment to do it and, in some instances, made the tools necessary to make the equipment with. He had a motto: ‘Anything man-made can be made by man.’ Meaning made by him, naturally. And he could. He did. He made his own computer. His computer was a bit brighter than the average. It was far in advance of anything available commercially. Graham was a terrific artist and designer too. Like I told you, the guy could do slutely anything.

Buuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttt, anyhow, with the help of programmes and posters, Lynda’s power of recall and a few stills harvested from the whirling montages of my mind, I will endeavour to piece together the events that fill the chasm opened up since my last entry, on 13th July 2008, by my extreme lack of blogness.

‘making a nOIse in libraries’

The making a noise ‘tour’ was in support of a fortnight when people with visual impairment were especially thought of. Poets are in their element here, of course, with poetry being essentially an aural/oral medium.

I took a small PA system to library after library in Cheshire, and performed my poem ‘Words’. It’s a piece that takes about 51/2 - 6 mins.

I chose the late opening hours of the libraries I went and performed the poem 2x in the hour if the late opening was one hour and 3x if it stayed open for two hours. I loved it. There were not many people about in a lot of them. Those that were there viewed it largely in a detached and bemused way. One or two people came on purpose to hear me – great - but it wasn’t really about that. It was about its surprise value and its celebration of the spoken word. What I did get – I this is the best reward – was loads of emailed requests for the poem: individuals who wanted a copy for themselves or to pass on to friends and lovers who’d missed the performances; writing groups who wanted to discuss it at one of their meetings, and a nice lady who wrote to me weeks after and offered me a gig to perform it as the opening gambit of the new year of the University of the 3rd Age at Alsager Civic Centre.But more of that later.

My first nOIse gig was at Congleton public library. Mike Drew there is a cool guy and really into what I was doing. He took a few photos – I’ll stick one of them on here in a min – and asked me if I would consider coming back to do a longer set on a Saturday morning when there would be a max audience. I’d be happy to do that. I’ve got a collection simmering away on the back burner that would be ideal. It’s a collection of poems and lyrics, a bit political and with a bit of angst. I’m calling it: ‘IT’S MY SHOUT!’ It’s built up of my roots pieces like ‘If Yer Working Class’ (Yes, yer muvver should’ve told you the way the system works/’Ow they love to be living off yer sweat, grabbin’ all the perks/From the cradle on, they take yer best, then make you obsolete/If yer working class yer on yer arse more often than yer feet. Etc. You get the idea). And poems of private pleasures like ‘Rhythmic Habits’ and ‘I Want You’.

That’ll do me for now. I’ll try and import that photo. Tootle-pip.

Oh, the only photo I can find is of me and Lynda playing in the Coachmakers. That'll have to do for now. I told you computers were thick. T'ra again.

OOH AR, OOH AR

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:29:00 +0000

I've done my visit to the village school - a beautiful little place set in a cosy little village on the Cheshire plain, in sheep-farming country. The children were a delight, the staff welcoming and pleasant. I really enjoyed my morning there. Here is the pirate poem I mentioned in my last posting:

PIRATES

Call me Jolly Roger, mates!
Jolly Jane and me,
Are the fiercest jolly pirates
Who sail the jolly sea.

We wave our swords in a fearsome way.
'Ooh ar, ooh ar,' we shout.
When jolly me and jolly J
Go Pirating about.

We both wear black eye patches, too.
Our parrot, Jolly Jones,
Wears a hat like we do,
With a badge of skull and bones.

Pieces of eight and shiver me timbers!
We'll soon be off to Spain,
After eating our fish fingers
And if it doesn't rain.

Jolly pirates, Jane and me,
But please don't look so worried.
It's only in pretend, you see,
'Cos real pirates are HORRID!

The children clapped the poem without being asked and went on to write their own pirate poems. The whole school had turned out in pirate costume - including the teachers. Yo-ho-ho. Great. Too often teachers think they are above that sort of thing but not these good people.

It reminded me of that old old thing with school uniforms where so often the teaching staff proclaim all kinds of benefits of school uniform yet never wear it themselves. How two-faced is that. I hate school uniforms. I think they contribute towards intolerance of difference. Some say that it gets around children sulking a begging and fussing and fretting to get the latest trainers. Well, I've got an idea: while they are in school, why not educate them out of being such avid little consumerists and slavish followers of fashion?

I did another poem from my minute but growing repertoire of poems and rhymes for the young:

SKWIGMAROO

Have you heard of skwigmaroo?
They come from Cheshire, mainly from Crewe,
Dress only in red or three shades of blue,
Secure their beaks with a silver screw,
Fix their wigs with peppermint glue,
Put all six feet into one big shoe,
Paddle The Cloud in a pink canoe,
Laugh like a drum, sing like a zoo,
Say nothing at all when a poem won't do.
There's none such fun as skwigmaroo!

I rarely use exclamation marks but I seem to dip in the bag for them with the children's stuff. I think jolly uncles must keep a few in their waistcoat pockets.

In answer to another question from a reader of this blog: Yes, unless otherwise stated, all the poems posted here are (c) 2008 W. Terry Fox.

One last observation: There are no men on the staff of many of the primary schools I have visited. What a shame it is that we have become so tainted as a society that a man can find it too problematic to say he wants to work with young children. It leaves a gap in the early stages of a child's learning that I am sure cannot be good for them or society at large.

I'll tell you about my 'make a nOIse' in libraries gigs next time. In the meanwhile, take good care and read some poetry.

T.

Writing In The 19th Century

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:16:00 +0000

Our gig of contemporary songs at the Coachmakers was well-received. BUT they wouldn't let us go without Adam getting his low whistle out (now, now) and us playing 'Women of Ireland' and the 'Tarbolton' reel. It'll be a mix of traditional and contemporary from now on. Makes sense cuz that's where we're at, really - oh 'cept Adam has a penchant and great ability for bluegrass. Seems odd to me. Like going about in fancy dress. He says it's 'tuning into the zone'.

Well, swash me buckle!

I am invited to a little village school to read some poetry to the children and to look at the work they have been doing for the National Year of Reading. They are having an Arts Week with a pirate theme so I thought, 'Methinks perchance I shall write a small poem for them.' I have never written for kids before. Even when I was going to school with kids I didn't write for them. None of the kids I went to school with would have understood what I was on about. I set about writing and an odd thing happened: the writing kept coming out in a strangely archaic form with highly 'poetic' inversions couched in stilted, self-consciously 'correct' diction. I can only think that I was projecting my own childhood reading experience (Tennyson, Wordsworth and similar other caped prosodists) onto my own writing. It took me ages to shake it off - if I ever did. I'll post the pirate poem after the school visit and you can judge for yourself. T'was weird most utterly, dear reader my dear, by my beard, forsooth, most weird.

Nowt but the real thing

A few people have asked if Lynda cast the ceramic likeness of my boat race in the mask photo. Absolutely not. Everything she does is created by her own magic hands from a big blob of raw clay. Amazing to watch.

See you later.

making a nOIse in libraries

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:02:00 +0000

Hello bods. A peasant poet would be a cool thing to be. I don't find urban life attractive at all. Mind you, me and Lynda are lucky as we are on the semi-rural edge of the county. But, having said that, those red roofs are slowly creeping up the hill.

Lynda took the photo that now graces my blog. It's my promo photo for 'making a nOIse in libraries' fortnight. I shall be performing my celebratory poem 'Words' at Congleton (Thurs 10th July 6-8pm), Alsager (Frid 11th July 6-7pm), Macclesfield (Mon 14th July 6-7pm), Bollington (Tues 15th 6-7pm) and Sandbach (Wed 16th 6-7pm) libraries on their late nights. Lynda sculpted the face I'm holding out. She did a portrait head of me when we were in Mow Cop and put in the garden and the face fell off. 'Words', by the way, takes 5 1/2 - 6 mins to perform so I shall be doing it twice on the one-hour nights and three times on the two-hour nights using a small PA and without a formal audience. Come along and give it a listen while you're choosing your books.

Me and Adam are at the Coachmakers tonight. We're doing an entire evening of our own stuff ie. no trad material - just to break the mould. Good ale there. Can you believe it is going to be knocked down? I can. The Stoke on Trent council, in my view, is more than irresponsible. some of these transactions need looking into. It's commerce before people every time. Preferred ways of living are sacrificed to the gods of the bank vaults owned, usually, by people who live nowhere near their bloody developments.

Be fortunate. Be wary. Ta-ra

Hey Nonny No, A Blogging We Will Go

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:32:00 +0000

Hey up, youths and lasses, ow at?

Since my last blog: I emailed my World Environment Day poem to Anne, of the CCC, ahead of the day and waited to get some reaction but ................................ NOWT, my mates, NOT A THING.

I was hoping to raise a bit of debate with this one because, as I mentioned in a previous blog, I suspect the WED thing to be another bit of double-talk - SINCERE apologies to all well-meaning people involved and to W E Day itself if I've got it all wrong. Trouble is, as far as I can see (and maybe that ain't very far cuz of all the pollution that's about), the people best placed to save our planet from further damage are the very people who have a vested interest in keeping things exactly as they are and therefore LIP SERVICE is what one tends to get, I think. And that's a worse thing than these people doing nothing at all cuz they seem to be kidding us into believing they are doing something to clean their shit up and address all the anti-life stuff they do, mainly but not exclusively, in the cause of capitalism, when the fact is they are very probably not.

I mean, be serious for a moment, capitalism is, by its nature, abusive because it relies on profit being generated by giving a lower than a true or proper market value for 'goods' received and for people's time.

So, with all that in mind, my commissioned offering for World Environment Day was this:

QUESTION FOR WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY:

Do colour me green and forgive me if I
Ultracrepidate, but how many city mayors,
Precisely, does it take to fly from around the globe to
Luxuriate in San Francisco conference suites
In the cause of collectively forging a path towards
Cities greener enough to compensate at least
In so far as the environmental damage incurred by flying
To San Francisco city mayors from around the globe
Is concerned, in their much-publicised pursuit of
Environmental policies engendering advance, in
So far as city mayors can, on World Environment day?

W. Terry Fox

Those of you with a keen eye will see at once that this is an acrostic (I know, it's all right for me, I planned it). None of you will fail to notice that the eleven lines go all round the world and disappear up their own jacksy.

Ultracrepidate? Yeah, what a great word! Chambers Dictionary has it: 'to criticise beyond the sphere of one's knowledge'. Don't get many chances to use it although it could probably be used against me several times a day.

BUT, NOT A BLOODY WHIMPER, boys and girls. Evidently the commission 'collapsed' (and before my poem not after it). What that means I am waiting to have clarified and hope to let you know.

Anne of the CCC, she under whose wing the Cheshire Poet Laureate shelters, has effectively gone part time. A pity because it must mean less time available for this CPL. I thought I could feel the rain.

While on the subject of CPL's: a former one, Jo bell, www.bell-jar.co.uk/4598/18801.html is a friendly sort of poet who is kind enough to give me a mention now and again (she and the other formers share a dressing room under the name of 'Bunch of Fives' and good they are too, I've been and gorn and taken meself out to see em at Keele university - that seat of learning in Staffs what I taught at once: Short and Sharp - Writing The Short Story; European Classics in English Translation; Detective Fiction. It all seems like someone else. Weird - but my Google Alert tells me she has got SUMMAT WRONG that I would be lacking in my duty if I did not correct. Jo has stated that I am to be Cheshire Poet Laureate only until March 31st, 2009.

HEY NONNY NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

Jo is right in so far as I am officially contracted by the current CCC up until the end of March. This is because that is the last possible date they can contract me to. After that date, a new structure of local government is going to be introduced for Cheshire. My position in this is, to me at any rate, v. v. and v. interesting.

Two possibilties exist and, mates of poesy, these are they:

Possibility 1) The new regime will choose to maintain the CPL scheme, in which case I will remain as the Cheshire Poet Laureate until the end of December 2009 - a full two years.

Possibility 2) The new regime will decide to let the CPL scheme go, in which case I will remain as the Cheshire Poet Laureate for the rest of me wrinkly life.

I've just got time to tell you about the Congleton Garden Festival: Fantastic! Soopadoopa weather, bundles of nice smiley people, great organisation, a neat day altogevver.
Midsomer Murders without the slaughter/Just William without the annoying little prat.

If you want to make your own, the ingredients are:

Congleton Park
Lovely English Summer's day
Striped marquees, white tents and blue tents
Flower arranging
The WI
A Lord and Lady (Wilbraham) to open the proceedings
Refreshment stall
Bouncy castle
Music over a PA system
Gardener's Question Time
Art Display and participation
1,000s of visitors

Me and Lynda shared a tent. She did 'Play with Clay' (I ain't the CPL for nothing) and worked non-stop all day from 10am to 4pm with the kids, getting them to make all kinds of stuff from yer actual old mother earth. Wonderful. Working clay in this way seems so theraputic. 'Naughty' kids got chilled out within minutes and all the kids were blown away with what they did. Lynda is BRILLIANT with them too. I would have had them all lining up to attention, policed by a few bouncers before I felt I could cope. Lynda knows just when and by how much to guide them by. Result was, they ALL had a terrific time - loose and creative and free. A woman with amazing qualities.

Lynda also had a small exhibition of her own work that attracted a lot of attention. Nice photo of her with a couple of her pieces in the ol' Chronicle.

I did 'Grow a Poem' - visitors to the tent added a couple lines each to an on-going poem; 'Plant a Poem in Your Garden- - a suggestion that gardeners should put some poems in amongst the flowers, either their own or their favourites of others, with examples; 'e.poems' - visitors could choose a poem, from a folder of my poems, that they wanted emailed to themselves or a friend. I also had 'Dance of Fools' sale. Everything was a hit. I had takers aplenty for everything. I was so glad to have been part of it. Well done Congleton Community programme and fanx Jo Money.

Hey, must make time for a couple more things: Went to former CPL John Lindley's book launch at Congleton library on Monday 16th - the day after the Garden Fest. What a turnout! The room was packed and John gave a knockout presentation. Naturally, I bought a copy (John bought a copy of my 'Dance of Fools' at the G. Festival). It's good, very good, very unusual - poetry/social history/entertainment. Cool. John always gets it right. His new book is called: 'House of Wonders'. Get a copy. Mind you if, like me, you haven't got much money then buy a copy of 'Dance of Fools' instead.

Amy tells me that her 'Twizzle Bird' collection of limited edition prints is still selling steadily. Wonderful, eh? They were only originally going to be on show for the Bristol Arts Trail. Then proprietor of Massala asked to retain them beyond the Arts weekend and they've been selling ever since. Me and Lynda are the proud possessors of a hedgehog one.

Bub bye.

Up In The Summerhouse Adoing Of Me Blog

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:07:00 +0000

Yea, I'm up in the summerhouse adoing of me blog. I see that I haven't got around to posting anything since 12th May. That is the date on which I emailed Anne of the CCC to see if any progress had been made on my website. I had a couple of circulars from her (to me and the exCPLs) about different poetry things going off in the county but nothing about my website. I emailed her again last week and got a reply. I evidently misunderstood and the CCC are not prepared to provide a website but will provide a web page for my 'Homage to Cheshire' project for 2009. Setting up a website is not a skill of mine nor do I have the dosh to pay someone else to do it so I guess that knocks it on the head. What I will do is post poems up on this site.

This misunderstanding between Anne and I resonates with my theory that people are generally more interested in poets than they are in poetry. My paymasters, the CCC are patently no exception. Their website carries a picture of me (courtesy the Sentinel) and some quotes from a statement I made about my stance in poetry but not a single line of my writing. Odd, ain't it? There is, of course, another dimension to this with it being the CCC: I am paid by them, presumably, out of public money. Do the public not have a right to see what they are getting for their tax? Anyway, I will start putting that right with immediate effect. Here is my first commission for the CCC - an extra to my five core commisions. It is my poem for Holocaust Memorial Day. The Memorial Day took the form of a very moving event at the Ellesmere Port Civic Hall.

Ishmael, Jacob, Rachael and Anna . . .

Ishmael, Jacob, Rachael and Anna,
Joseph, Miriam, take back your names.
By cyanide, rifle or strung from a scaffold,
By disease or starvation, you died just the same.

They brought you by train, huddled and herded,
Truck-full by truck-full, galloped and whipped;
Skittish and squealing, prodded, curse-worded,
Tethered, shorn, branded and stripped.

They beat you and took your young from your caring,
Weighed-up and yoked you and put you to work,
Or culled you for slaughter, wild-eyed and flaring,
Piled carcass on carcass to rot on the dirt.

Ash from the chimneys falls like snowflakes,
Clogging throats, blinding eyes.
Gas chamber doors slam on new intakes,
And emptied of angels loom Auschwitz's skies.

Ishmael, Jacob, Rachael and Anna,
Joseph, Miriam, take back your names.
If your deaths are to be worth living,
Never must we kneel to tyrants again.

***
(I pronounce the names Jacob and Joseph as if they begin with a Y)
***

There you go then. That was my first commission and that was when I felt the difference between writing a poem from your own musing that you may later decide to put into the public arena and writing a purpose-built poem designed for public consumption. I have become much more tolerant of the lesser poems of others (I mean in comparison with the main body of their own work NOT in comparison with anything I've done!) in a similar position - Tennyson, Motion, etc. It has also given me insight into Shakespeare's brand of rhetoric. I felt it was a big responsibility trying to be a kind of spokesperson for others whilst keeping within the frame of my own beliefs.

Lynda and I had tea with Ron and Jill Milne, on Saturday - in this summerhouse, in fact. They are great friends of ours and happen to be well-read, articulate people with a great sense of humour and who are unafraid of speaking their minds. It is to them I sometimes run when I am in doubt about something I have written. They always have something apposite to say. Their comments sometimes hurt a bit but they are never unkindly meant nor are they ever able to be dismissed. It is to them I went when I had drafted my Holocaust poem. They always get what I am doing and are able to nudge me back on path if I stumble off. I am still unsure about the last line of my Holocaust poem. It's a bit heavy-handed. It worked in performance, though. And that's what I mean about the difference between public and private poetry.

Hey, I'm really glad I've started putting poetry up on here. I was playing into the hands of my own theory, wasn't I?

I've been out with the Woodlanders Country Dance Band a couple of times since my last posting. They really have got it all going on. I love English traditional music, especially when it rocks a bit. The caller for the recent gigs has been Linda Westrup. I had heard of her over the years but never actually worked with her before and she is terrific to work with. The dancers love her. She's got a really nice calling voice not at all like the screech of others I won't mention. She introduced a couple of innovative dances of her own. The tradition lives on. I just love getting a chance to play guitar and fiddle all night. The Woodlanders is the best dance band I have played with to date and that really is saying something. It took me two days to come own off the last gig.
On the 22nd May, there was the 'unveiling' of the Footprints project mosaic at Alsager library. The children who had made the mosaic under the direction of artist Su Horrell came along and so did the young poets I had worked with at Excalibur school. It really was a fine and pleasant day and the sculpture looks good especially from upstairs in the library looking down. There were a few speeches and I read the poem I had been commissioned to write. The Chronicle took photos and did interviews and BBC Radio Stoke came along and did interviews too. I found the radio interview strange. The guy with the mic kept looking away from me after he had asked a question. He perhaps was preoccupied with something techinical. I am used to interviewers at least pretending to be interested and it put me off to the point where I completely forgot what I was on about and dried up. I kept giggling to myself about it afterwards but I think he was annoyed - maybe he thought I was nuts. Mind you, that's a good thing about being a poet, the stereotypical poet is a half-crazy dreamer and you can get away with things others can't.

Here's my poem for the Excalibur Primary School / Alsager Library project:

FOOTPRINTS

At Alsager where four roads meet, the traffic beats
its changing rhythms on tarmacadam and plate glass

To the west, the rumble and crash of falling masonry as
a university campus is laid bare, for more shops and more houses

where generations read environmental science, art, music, philosophy,
got drunk on new ideas and fell in love with the world;

yellow classroom huts where hares nested in the gaps below
and boxed each other in the madness of springtime;

small copses where pirate squirrels swung through the rigging
of tall trees on swashbuckling winds;

where, in the dreams of old farm hands, mixed herds still graze
on clover-rich pasture and hectares of wheat still stand tall in the crop fields

and horse pairs snort and blow as they put their muscle to the plough;
where the farmer's own fathers, fathers cut clearings in the forest for homesteads.

On a small green island by the public library where four roads meet,
a sweet and gentle offering by children of the Excalibur Primary School:

industrial and domestic scraps of our time - circuit boards,
broken cups and toys - encapsulated in a giant figurative footprint.

The traffic murmurs a prelude to the carbon surge of eventide.
Cherry trees with chain-sawn arms hold pink blossoms out to the sun.

***
I've just thought: the line breaks of these poems will be destroyed by the format of the posting. They will overrun and get tucked under the next line. Oh well. I should tell you that the Alsager Rotary Club helped finance the Footprints project.

In between these two commissions I did another for the National Year of Reading, 2008. It's due out on a poster soon too, I hope, as there's only half the year left already. I'll post that one up next time and also the commissioned poem I have written for World Environment Day (June 5th) that I have a feeling will go down like a concrete glider - not perhaps the best expression, as a concrete glider might be looked upon rather favourably by the WED people as an alternative to the aeroplane. I am also working on what to do for the Congleton Garden Festival of 15th June.

When I went to Alsager library they had four banners which, as I recall it, were to do with Freedom and Liberty, Getting Away From It All, Crime and Punishment, and the Second World War. With Gayle Hawley's permission (Alsager's every-friendly, ever-helpful, ever-keen librarian), I stuck up some poems in response to these banners: Black Ivory, A View Of Mow Cop, Wayward Women And Fallen Men, Ballad Of An Owd Sowjer. The banners are left in a Cheshire library for a month and then moved to the next library in the county. When the guy came along to collect the banners for the move, he asked to to take my poems along with them which I was delighted to agree with, of course. So now, my friends, I am on tour and with no on-the-road expenses, no dreary miles to beat along and no seedy hotels needy to catch some respite for my old grey weary head. How good is that? Ta-ra.

The Twizzle Bird and Other Stories

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:39:00 +0000

I knew that writing this blog would be more than I would get around to doing most of the time and the length of time that has elapsed since my last posting rather proves my suspicions about my motivation. But, blimmin' ink, dudes, I've been busy. In no particular order: this weekend just gone, Lynda and I went down to Bristol to see Amy's exhibition at Massala - part of the Bedminster Arts Trail. Here's the link so that you can get a flavour of what she was showing.

http://www.sbaweb.co.uk/arts_trail_2008/artists_a-z

Eight, short-run, limited edition prints from mixed media originals. Wonderful stuff. I know where I want to go for the cover of my CPL collection (nepotism or not). It's nice to be honestly able to say that I would have be knocked out by these images even if I did not know who had produced them. There were a few poets in evidence in Bristol too, doing good contemporary writing and some ceramicists and painters using text in their work to good effect.

I had a gig with Adam at the Coachmakers last Wednesday evening. We were going to do a couple of poems but some older blokes came in and were singing along to the songs so we kept the sets pretty much to songs they knew. There was a real sense community going on. That's a great thing about the English and Celtic song tradtions, they belong to everybody and there's a great sense of belonging in them.

Adam told me he thinks my previous posting about the lecturer I had a personality clash with sounds 'bitter'. Well, yeah, it is. My family was going seriously without for me to be at uni and if it wasn't going to work out for me, I would have been putting them through hardship for nothing. It also shows that Adam is probably a nicer geezer than me and doesn't hold grudges like I do. I don't mean to.

As part of the Footprints project I have been commissioned to write a poem for, I went along to the Excalibur school to help the young poets there with their pieces for the project. 'High five' to them all (this seems to be their preferred way of celebrating achievement). They were so hard-working, immaginative, uncompetitive, supportive, charming, engaging, sincere and funny. They wrote some excellent small poems on the subject of recycling and reducing our carbon footprint and preserving the planet. They also came up with this:

'DON'T BE A FOOL, BE RECY-COOL'

We should put them in charge of the world for a while or at least ask them what they want of us. After all, what's good for them is good for the world.

While I was there I met Sue, an old mate of Lynda's and mine from back in the days of the Dragon Fair and the Butterfly Fair at Rode Heath. Me and Lynda were playing folk rock with Heymaker, Sue was a fire-blower, juggler and assorted other circus skills person - part of the Steve and Jan's unique Hole House Farm entourage. These were such resourceful people. They would make a night's entertainment of the highest quality out of whatever was around them at the time. I once helped provide the music for a shadow puppet show they put on. Me on fiddle, Matt on melodeon. The shadow puppet characters we cut out from cornflake packets and taped onto withies. The shadow screen was a bedsheet (borrowed from one of the mobile homes of their endless mates) stretched between two sharpened stakes driven into the grass. The light came from rags wrapped round the top of another stake and soaked in paraffin and driven into the ground. For added bite and humour, many of the characters were recognisable as friends and family of the crowd. We have all put our minds to more conventional employment since then but Steve and Jan's formidable invention has left its mark in a good way. Sue's sense of theatre, people skills and heart-warming inclusivity are in high profile in the preschool centre she now runs. Steve and Jan went to Australia to live, years ago now. It's funny cuz Steve always looked Australian and now, I suppose, he is.

Joyce of the CCC has come up with three Braille copies for 'pAUSE fOR a pOEM' which I find really exciting. They look so arcane and magical. I can't proof read them, of course, but I'm sure they're fine and dandy. It's a big step closer to getting that show on the road, as t'were.

Lynda and I have signed up for the Congleton Garden Festival weekend. Lynda will be doing her clay magikings and getting the kids to have a go and I am planning a garden-related poetry installation and some inter-active poetry. More about that next time.

I should be working on my poem for Footprints but I somehow can't. I have also been commissioned to write one for World Environment Day. The two things overlap too much in my head at the moment. My first reaction on hearing about WED was: World Environment DAY? DAY??? - shouldn't it be that every day? The WED people have been going on about it for years with a different catch phrase for every year. Does this kind of profiling really do anything, I wonder? Or are the copy writers sitting at their office desks coming up with smart things to write about recycling on their recycled paper while the earth rots around them like Nero of legend and his ol' violin? The solution to all this poisoning of the planet is so simple as well. To give just one example: The use of cars is bad for the planet? OK, stop using them then. Sorted.

I did a poetry workshop with a reading group at Shavington school. They were great young people. We played around with some rhythm strings to get in to the meanings of rhythm and then they came up with poems about where they live. There is a lot of stuff poet folks are doing that deserves a more-public profile. I want to get what they are doing up on my official website as soon as it is in existence. I've emailed Anne at the CCC to progress it but I've not heard anything yet.

Sneyd Colliery Explosion, 1942

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:21:00 +0000

Grahame Shrubsole, head of MMU Cheshire music faculty, turned everything round for me when I was a student. My first year as an undergraduate was really exciting. To be among people who took music and writing seriously was mind-blowing for me. My creativity doubled over night. I was lucky, too, in that I had been in factories for most of my working life and I had a highly developed work ethic. I worked six times harder than the majority of students I met and for seven times as long. Alas, the music part of my degree took a dive in the second year. I was taught by a different bloke and we did not see eye to eye. He awarded me what I felt to be (an still do) unjustifiably low marks for everything I did. It was difficult to take from a guy whose own experience was severely limited and whose own compositions were lamentable. He was exciting himself with ideas that I had shunned as passe when I was fourteen-and-a-half. The only good thing about him was that he was incapable of irony. I mean, he really didn't get it at all. Here's a quick example: One day, he was drinking from a novelty mug that had something mildy blokey on it. He plainly thought this accoutrement made him look like one of the guys. I forget what the slogan was - something tossy like: 'Tea? I'd rather have a beer'. He was making a show out of drinking from it, drawing attention to it. I flattered the child in him by nodding towards it and saying, 'Nice mug.'
'It was given to me by a grateful student,' he told me.
'Leaving then, were you?' I said.
He didn't bat an eyelid even though I must have had a right sly look on my face.
'Yes,' he said.
'Thought you must have been,' I said.
But apart from the occasional small victory like that, he brought me down. I was disenchanted and, after two years of studentship, seriously out of money. Amy will confirm our low financial status. We had peas on toast for tea one day. I took a year out then went back. For my third year I had Grahame as tutor. He is a musicologist - a man with an awesome knowledge and experience of music. He is respectful of everybody and can communicate even the most complex of theories. He understands muliplicities of musical traditions and knows how to push the envelope in the 21st century. You can imagine my delight when he so generously offered to arrange a song of mine (blimey, there's a pun there, as will be seen) for male voice choir.

The song came about because Lynda saw an article in the Sentinel about a local mining disaster, showed me and I wrote a song about it and started doing it with Boneshaker. When my biography, Battling Jack, came out I was giving a reading at Kidsgrove library and I had the pleasure of meeting a man who had worked down the pit in question at the time of the disaster. His interest in the Turpin boxing family had brought him to the reading and we got chatting during the interval. This man's son, I found out, sings in a local male voice choir and it gave me the idea that my pit disaster song and therefore a significant piece of North Staffs social history, could be part of the repertoire of a local men's choir that has its roots in the social life of the local coalfields. The man's son thought the idea was a good one but explained that before a choir master could make a decision about it the song would have to be aranged in four parts: two tenor, two bass. I went to Grahame for advice . . .

I had a meeting with Grahame today and he played me some of the musical sketches he has made for the arrangement and they are fantastic. I was prepared to have to compromise, as is often the case with collaborations but, to my huge delight, his ideas are both empathetic and innovative. It has lifted the project to another level. I can't wait for the next move.

Adam has posted our Up To Scratch version of Owed To Paddy O' on our MySpace page today. Have a listen to his playing of the low whistle. You will agree it is everything I claimed for it. I am one lucky geezer.

Owed To Paddy O'

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:32:00 +0000

I did my second recording session with Adam today for my 'pAUSE fOR a pOEM' installation. We put the music to 'Owed to Paddy O''. Me on guitar and Adam on low whistle. What a soulful sound he makes on that thing. A single note played the way he plays is enough to send shivers up your spine. His timbre and vibrato reminds me of a hero of mine in my New Orleans Jazz days: the clarinet player George Lewis. Have a look at and a listen to George on You Tube playing Burgundy Street Blues. A different kind of music to Adam's but the same life vibe. I'll get the Paddy O' track posted on our Up To Scratch MySpace page. It qualifies because we have been doing that poem on our duo gigs.

Joyce of the CCC has agreed to do the Braille copies of the installation poems, which is brilliant. I was intrigued by Braille. How did it work? I knew that the black squiggles on the page that we interpret as sounds were changed into bumps but in exactly what way I could not imagine. It turns out (if I have understood Joyce correctly) that there are two kinds of Braille: 1 & 2. Braille 1 has an arrangement of bumps for each letter. Braille 2 is similar but has some short cuts built in. Some commonly ocurring parts of words - like 'ing' for instance - have a single collective symbol representing the three letters. The effect of the transcription on my poems will be that the line lengths will be much extended - perhaps one line becoming two lines - but the all-important line breaks will be preserved. My pictorial poems will lose their shape but that hardly matters as that element is an addition rather than essential to the meaning. I've been asked why I am doing an installation for blind people? Well, I'm not. I'm doing an installation for everybody. I'm just trying to make sure visually impaired and blind people aren't left out. I am well pleased with how it's progressing. I've even found time for a couple of new poems. They'll stay on ice for a while and I'll have another look at them before I release them into the wild.

I bumped into Alaa, one of my uni students, by the sarni shelves in Tesco. My teaching was cut short this year as reported. I didn't realise how much I missed the students and the Writing workshops until I spoke to him. They are such good people and talented writers with such goodwill towards other people and their work. Roll on the new academic year.

I heard yesterday that some venues have been holding back from inviting me to do poetry gigs because they thought that I was still recuperating from the road accident I was in. The happy fact is (happy for me, anyway) is that I am up and running and up for anything as of yore. So thanks for the consideration but bring on the poetry gigs. I have the words. I have the desire. I have the motor . . .

My poem, READ / A / BOOK, commissioned for the National Year of Reading is to be sent to not only all Cheshire libraries but to all Cheshire primary and junior schools. I have sent in the photo Lynda took of me reading to an amusing tree to be put on it. I thought if it is insisted my picture's on it then it would be made more tolerable if there was a smiley tree in it too.

FLASHBACK: Friday Jan 18, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:16:00 +0000

My official take-over as CPL from Jo Bell, CPL 2007. The gig was at Neston Public Library on the Wirral. Neston is an amazing place - a seaside with no sea. Where there was once sea, there is now grass. It's brilliant, especially when the wind blows the grass into waves. Ironic. I do like to be beside the leaside . . . It got silted up through lack of use. Time and tide wait for no man.

The library has just celebrated 100 years of existence. 'Neston Free Library' originally. What a social innovation that was! Books on free loan to the working classes. Many a kid chucked out of formal education early must have furthered their studies there. How many horizons did it widen? How many future trade union leaders did those shelves foster?

It was a good gig. Lynda and I enjoyed Jo's stuff. Lynda said she thought Jo's voice had a compelling, sophorific quality that suited her work well. I agreed. Jo read first as the out-going poet then I read as the in-coming one.

There was a bit of a mouthy geezer in the audience who shouted at me in the Q & A session we had at the end when I inadvertently attempted to answer a question addressed to Jo. It turned out to be John Gorman (ex Scaffold with R. McGough, M. McGear). The last time I'd spoken to John was on the set of Ready, Steady Go! in 1965. He was with Scaffold, I was with Cops n' Robbers. Obviously, I had more reason to remember him that he had to remember me (check out McGough's 'Let Me Die A Youngman's Death'. He does some terrific stuff).

A discussion arose about 'modernity'. It came out of the fact that I often use rhyme in my poetry. Someone suggested that rhyme might be a thing of the past and, if you want to be modern you won't employ it. I was surprised. I hadn't thought about it much - never seen myself as this thing or that thing, modern or otherwise. I'm not consciously trying to belong to any club or society or movement so it has never been an issue for me. I'm lucky enough to be able to rhyme or not rhyme at will (ie. lucky enough to have spent a lot of time reading, had good mentors and to have been free to work hard at writing). I use rhyme when it feels right to do so and prose poetry when ever that feels right. Perhaps it's probably more to do with rhythm than rhyme because rhymes have got a big elbow when you use them staccato fashion and a more-gentle nudge when you use them legato. What I love about as well is that it brings attention to the rhyming word pairs and you can build up some extra images that way. I don't think I could I be without rhyme all the time. It wouldn't feel natural. Nature rhymes. Have a look around you.

A young guy at Neston suggested that maybe the use of rhyme was so retro it represented a new modernity. Take your pick. My compatriot in San Francisco, Jack Hirschman, now in his seventies, doesn't use rhyme as far as I know. Jack is a wonderful wordsperson. One of the beat generation, a socially aware poet. Maybe that approach to writing is city stuff. Metropolitan - hums of the city. It was great to hear people discussing it all.

When I did some gigs in France, the hosts labelled me: 'W. Terry Fox (GB) Folk Poete'. I think I like that. Yeah, I suppose that is what I am, a folk poet. Two of my favourite poets, Thomas Hardy and John Clare were rhymers. They, like me, were also folk fiddle players and lovers of traditional folksong. Maybe that's where the rhyming comes from.

The people at Neston - in the library and in the town - were exceptionally friendly and pleasant. Lynda and I hope to go back there soon.

'Dance of Fools' Review

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:43:00 +0000

The Congleton Chronicle has given my 'Dance of Fools' collection a terrific review. Big thanks to 'JAE'. I had not realised I was so preoccupied with the inevitability of my own demise until I read this piece.

Chris, who runs the 'Room at the Top' cafe in Congleton (his menu is ace with loads of vegetarian options which pleased Lynda. There are newspapers put out for customers to read, art installations, etc. It has some of the Bohemian vibe of the Soho coffee bars in the early sixties) has kindly put 'D of F' on sale there. A donation to his pet charity, the RNLI, will be made for each copy sold. I made a weak joke about climate change and the fact that I was concerned there wasn't a life boat within miles of where I live, which prompted Chris to tell me that there was once a lighthouse in Congleton. It was built to warn motorists of a notoriously hazardous bend in a road. The lighthouse was switched off during WWII for obvious reasons and became redundant when the road was made safer. It apparently remains in history as the only ever inland lighthouse.

Better news on my 'pAUSE fOR a pOEM' installation: the CCC are sorting out the braille transcriptions for me. I am really encouraged by that. Which reminds me: when I was planning this project, I thought having my poems transcibed into braille would turn reading them into a tactile experience (you know, "feel the poem"). It seemed a reasonable proposition to me until I spoke to Colin Antwis, Secretary for Chester National Society for the Blind, who said as patiently as he could, 'No, Terry. It's just reading!'

Cheshire Poet Laureate 2008 / 09

noreply@blogger.com (W. Terry Fox) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:28:00 +0000

My aim is to keep a running notebook on my tenure as Cheshire Poet Laureate.

The trouble with diaries, logs, journals and blogs, as I am just finding out, is that they take time to write. The more you write, the less you have to write about. This blog was organised for me by my long-time mate Karl who is a pro software engineer of the highest order and should not have been bothered with such a lowly task. But he did it in 2 mins flat whilst eating his tea so I don't feel too bad about it. I am three months into my laureateship and I will back date my notes, sometime, to cover the beginnings.

Today I have been recording 11 poems for my 'pAUSE fOR a pOEM' project. I have been doing this with Adam who I make music with from time to time.
Ref: www.myspace.com/scratchsongs
Naturally, there will be music with one or two of the poems. My 'pAUSE' project is intended to be a poetry installation in a museum or art gallery and to be inclusive of the hard of seeing and of blind people. I have experienced some mild official resistance to this so I will have to go it alone. You can be hard of seeing in more ways than one, can't you?

Had a phone call this evening about 'Footprints' - an environmental project in Alsager involving the public library, mosaic art and young people's poetry. I'm up for it. Sounds great. I'll tell more when I know more.