The Ruined Hall (from The House on the River) live at the Lynn Guildhall.

alternative lyric as published in 'Doin Differen't 2015) 

Strange that an Encyclopaedic Age

Leaves Fye Bridge House un-reckoned on its page.

But wait! a lace-cuffed bard with limpid eye

Is halted by a spirit thrilling by…

‘I haunt the former greatness of this Hall -

Before a ceiling floored its gothic stage,

My cheek is paper-white, my poppy

Mouth the blemish on a poet’s page.’

‘Consumptive spirit! Wild! Unbounded! Free!

O sleepless beauty past all human measure.’

She falls upon the thorns of life. I bleed!

Her gates of Eden open at my ple-….

‘I pine for Ruined Hall and sing

An elegy of days before a floor

Plucked window’s eye and clipped the wings

Of church-like space, staired flights unknown before!’

I charge her cup again, again, and ever:

Our Road to Wisdom’s Palace is Excess;

Her blood lips wailing for her demon lover

And black eyes staring from her naked breasts!’

Repeat ‘Consumptive spirit…’ Chorus

Alas! A pounding at the door, the vision flies.

The Parson calls on business, and the Poem ...dies!

The Ballad of the EAS Rider

The working class at University in 1977, when you got a grant and there were no tuition fees. 

lyrics

Twisting round my hair in knots, 
Twisting round your neck with thoughts. 
My oh my, you have to agree 
Certain issues of poetry 
Can’t conceive of a harmony. 

I’m twisting pastoral flowers into your face. 
I’m twisting your kind of thinking into place. 
I’m twisting… 

Listening to you plum for choice 
Between degrees of passive vice. 
‘There’s much that may be said for Donne.’ 
I am the outside world come in, 
Butchered hands and axe grinding, 
OPEN YOUR ED AND LET ME IN! 

I’m twisting pastoral flowers into your face. 
I’m twisting your kind of thinking into place. 
I’m twisting …. 

Your rich aesthetic literariness 
Is like the lush grass on a grave. 
My oh my I’m rotten through 
But life moves through and it’s sick, of you. 
I’ll thrust you off me and trample you. 

I’m twisting pastoral flowers into your case 
I’m twisting your kind of thinking into place. 
I’m … Terminating this debate!

Robert Kett, knight of the Commons

Today, a significant day in East Anglian history - the death of Robert Kett, hanged from the walls of Norwich castle on...
Posted by Poppyland Publishing on Monday, 7 December 2015

PS. I performed this at the launch of Doin different on 6 December, as dramatic verse modulating into a melody by Tim Chipping for the chorus. The score of this is also available along with background information about Kett, and the classic ballads The Twa Corbies and The Three Ravens, in the book.

Ephemera?

A moment in the life of Prince of Wales Road, Norwich, ( 7.05 pm, March 10 AD 2011.) Prince of Wales was the road taken by we two UEA alumni to meet Melanie's 'old' history teacher from the 1960s, appropriately a princely Welshman from Cardiff and - in defiance of all the other evidence here - still sporting a determined head of curly hair. History shall not pass.