Drawn up lines
Featured Poem
This month is the completion of my first year of the website and the monthly thoughts.
It is hard to be positive with a thought at the moment. A vile dictator, Putin, is attempting to take over a democratic country in the belief that he is rebuilding some kind of Golden Age of Russian Empire. He commits atrocious war crimes, tells lies, and ruins the Russian peoples. In the USA a vicious right-wing Supreme Court take away Women’s Right To Choose under a bizarre belief that the country must live to the rules as written down in the 18th Century. They have dealt with abortion and now have their sights on contraception, intimate sexual acts as carried out in private and same sex marriage. In the UK we have a government of mediocre ministers led by an inveterate liar and self-publicist; I grant that Johnson makes the right calls on Ukraine but look how he grandstands the issues in order to deflect from his appalling, dishonest, shabby behaviour.
Much of the problems facing our world stem from our borders – trade restrictions or tariffs, independence or empire, wars and refugees. In Drawn Up Lines I have attempted to look at these issues; at how they manifest themselves and how we are addicted to them.
Reading
I have completed two terrific books. The first is Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. She creates an imagined landscape, based on much research and huge creativity, to explore the death of Shakespeare’s 12-year-old son and the effect it had on him. Shakespeare’s son was called Hamnet, which is exactly the same name as Hamlet. The other book was by comedy writer John O’Farrell, Things Can Only Get Better. It covers these years as a Labour activist from Labour’s defeat in 1983 to Labour’s victory in 1997. It is a testament to his activist commitment through many dark years. It is as touching as it is funny. For me it is personal, too; I moved to Birmingham in 1984 to work in Labour politics so followed much of his journey.
Writing
I have completed a large piece of work, this month, General Guidance. This is an intensely personal piece of work and hard to write because of that. It’s being road-tested by a few close colleagues as I write; I shall gather their feedback before I try to move it on. Tom, the composer for the Music Play The Recycling Magpie
Has now completed 19 of the 20 songs. He and I will meet together for 5 days at the beginning of August to ensure we have the tightest possible lyrics, and can top and tail songs. So I am doing a tight edit on the script ready for that.
I feel I am becoming mentally paralysed; worn into a state of non-creativity by the constant wash of bad news. There is the terrible war in Ukraine, cost of living, energy prices, and we live in a country whose government is led by a compulsive liar who brings dishonour upon our communal sense of democracy and decency. So perhaps I should be representing this in my writing?
Instead, I have moved in the opposite direction. The Die is Cast is a kind of fantasy poem, though rooted firmly in New Street, the main street in the centre of Birmingham.
It appears on the face of it to be a slight poem; and indeed it may be one. There are certain structural elements which aim to strengthen its claim to be a poem. It’s a rather quiet poem, unassuming.
Yet I would claim there is a Big Idea behind the poem, all things we write must be built on a Big Idea. It’s about the conflict between living joyfully and the inability of some to see that possibility. Or about joy being undermined by malevolent powers which could just possibly mean I am reflecting the world around us.