Paul Stephenson, feedback 2 .4. 2018
Paul runs round Europe as if it were a school playground, and
sometimes writes poems on the Eurostar.
‘What you do when you get the call is take it …
‘Once given a seat today (not tomorrow because
tomorrow is too late), what you do is pack, sit
on a shell-shocked suitcase …’
On one level,’ Turkish Delight’ is about Byzantine Cathedrals, and yes,
Turkish Delight. It’s also about words, immediacy, vision. About
makng space for the sub-conscious to flit free.
We jogged to rhythms and repetitions in a lot of long lines. We roamed
maps, dug into literature (Balzac) had glimpses of family life,
especially fathers, in sentences cut and reformulated to a resonant
tumble of words.
Paul’s poetry is confident, contemporary and alive. He enjoys self-
imposed constraints, tells tall tales, embroiders facts, leads us up the
garden path with sometimes fabulous, preposterous journeys. Even his
titles can be misleading. ‘The Baltic Woman’, for instance, might more
accurately be ‘The Baltic as Woman’. Without the preposition, things
were more exciting.
Hot from Brussels, he read fourteen poems in the first twenty minutes,
and the same number in his second spate. This was a lot to absorb. But
fired by his playfulness, many bought his pamphlets to catch up, at a
more leisurely pace, on what they might have missed.
*
From the floor there were seven ‘Father’ poems, some of which filled
us with compassion for these fragile creatures and their forgiving
offspring.
‘So now, lying there, next to mum
Both of you cold and damp
I can’t feel angry any more’ (John L, ‘My Father’)
‘the thin skein / of this life / is best / left / where / it is’ (Pippa)
‘A schoolmaster of huge energy and presence / though discipline
over-shadowed love’ (Maureen)
Both Pol and I saw our Pa in his asparagus bed.
Evelyn chose a jingling grandfather poem (Map of Life by David
Wood) . Peter W came with Paul Durcan’s inimitable ’10:30 a.m. Mass,
16 June 1985’
‘It’s Father’s Day – this small, solid, serious, sexy priest began -
And I want to tell you about my own father …
If there was one thing he liked, it was a pint of Guinness:
If there was one thing he liked more than a pint of Guiness
It was two pints of Guiness.’
Nigel brought Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Choirmaster’s Burial’, a father-
figure whose death becomes mythical. Almost in harmony, was Alice
Oswald’s engagingly lyrical ‘A Short Story of Falling’ from Jill and
Owen’s daughter, Anna.
‘which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again.’
More sobering was Daphne’s ’Leave to Remain’, a poem from the
current Magma in which a chaffinch stands in as metaphor for an
immigrant waiting for UK citizenship.
‘Here he lies, off the list, ruffled fluff on olive green
flight feathers stiff …’
Or Peter Smith’s ‘Easter Sunday morning poem of 1938’ by Bertolt
Brecht:
’My young son / drew me to a little apricot tree by the house wall /
away from a verse in which I pointed the finger at those / who
were preparing a war … In silence / we put a sack / over the
freezing tree.’
*
On May 12, I hope you will bring North Norfolk poems to the Open
Mic in
Wells Maltings as part of the Sea Fever Lit. Festival
www.seafeverliteraryfestival.com.
*
In the meantime, keep an eye on www.saltmarsh poetry.co.uk