 |  | Bristol City are promoted to the Championship. |
Coca-Cola Football League One : Table 05 May 16:57
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
May 06, 2007
Sheer poetry!!!
May 05, 2007
Arthur Milton (Poem of the Month, May 2007)
Arthur Milton.
(The Last Man To Play Football and Cricket For England. Played for Arsenal , Bristol City and Gloucestershire. He could also knock off the Telegraph crossword in the dressing room in 20 minutes.)
Denis Compton. Willie Watson, Arthur Milton.
Icons from an age of the gentle sportsman.
Graced the football/cricketing whites of England
On pitches they turned to the greens of Eden.
Now Arthur is dead, who just for one season
Graced the wing of a City pitched for promotion
And centred so sweetly – for Gentleman John
(His England team-mate) to score clean and strong.
Arthur (like John) was a craftsman
With hard ball too, an England batsman
Wielding willow like wand. Where have they gone?
These angel wingers with muddy shorts on?
These gods of the crease who retire to be postmen
And weighed so lightly the fields they scored on?
So rich in gifts, so poor in ambition,
Premier players unpampered by mammon.
Sleep well, old Arthur, God’s own Bristolian.
If we go up today, as we did in your season,
Give us your quick smile from sporting heaven.
April 29, 2007
Homage to PG Wodehouse
I'm just getting to the end of Uneasy Money by PG Wodehouse. I have recently read his Leave It To Psmith (1923) , Summer Lightning (1929) Thank You Jeeves the first full length Jeeves and Bertie novel (1934), along with several giggling re-reads of the classic J. and B. short stories. They must be the best convalascent reads on the planet. It strikes me that Uneasy Money, in particular, but all of them really, have all of the coincidences and complications of a Thomas Hardy novel, only they are comic instead of tragic. After all, we all get enough of the former at home and work. Wodehouse for me is Hardy's smiling twin, his dialectical opposite. The grim realist dystopian George Orwell (an unexpected admirer of Wodehouse) wrote that Bertie Wooster, if he ever existed, was probably killed in the trenches sometime during the First World War. Sad and true. But thank God Wodehouse didn't let that get in the way of an imperishable story.
April 16, 2007
Tales Out Of School- A Retired Teacher Lets It All Out
Below is my publicity shot for the Edinburgh Fringe. It was taken by Si Barber for the TES at Hunstanton Funfair. Note the highbrow fringe. The show is about someone who after twenty seven years of telling teenagers off and giving them work to do that they really don't want to do finally gets the chance to leave school and get a life. I'm doing nine nights in a row instead of my usual dozen first night nerves every one night stand series but hoping it will all be more than a nine day wonder because I'm looking to turn it into a serious tour. The plan is that the Star Club in Hamburg books me for a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, then that a young businessman named Epstein decides that an Edinburgh fringe and a cute suit will widen my appeal. After that, a booking at the Oasis club Manchester, a national tour, Garethmania and the Big Break in America via the Ed Sullivan show etc. One thing I will NOT do is play Sunday Night At The London Palladium by command of Her Majesty or accept an MBE. Oh all right, Ma'am, Brian, if you think it will help book sales...
April 13, 2007
April Poem Of The Month
Look, I have come through
I hear a moan - of the earth, but unearthly -
On the other side of the wall.
I creep round, girding my loins from some horror.
"A lamb's having birth!" pipes a child, beckoning.
I join the haggle,
Watch the quiet kindness of humans
As the lamb's bud-horns lock her
In the coffin of her mother's womb,
Watch them wrestling with spindly legs, dashing for aid,
While, irrelevant but insistent,
A turkey courts hens round our shins,
Feathers at full sail, twirling in absurd vanity,
Tattered, matted, red-sore raw and ugly beyond belief.
A man returns with a lifeline of coarse string.
A woman helps him coax birth
From the patiently groaning ewe.
The lamb is dead on the hay.
They lay it at the mother's mouth for her to lick.
"Is it all right?" asks someone, stupidly.
I knew it from the start.
....But the lamb stirs.
My heart shouts with the joy of it.
Life!
Stubborn, hopeless, quivering
March 20, 2007
www.garethcalway.co.uk
My site has been rebuilt and relaunched by a genius.It is now almost ready and you can have a look at it. This is the URL for my website proper:
www.garethcalway.co.uk
and on it you'll find all the world wide scrapbook called Bard on the Wire, all the archives and the pages based on each of my books. And of course the purchase page.It is now a purchase page you can actually buy direct from. Just click on a button and one of my books can be heading your way. This relaunched site has everything in fact except poem of the month, which you will find here on the blog instead.
The blog will remain as a chatty extension to the main site,
http://garethcalway.blogspot.com
but if you want the real McCalway, it's on www.garethcalway.co.uk
www.garethcalway.co.uk
and on it you'll find all the world wide scrapbook called Bard on the Wire, all the archives and the pages based on each of my books. And of course the purchase page.It is now a purchase page you can actually buy direct from. Just click on a button and one of my books can be heading your way. This relaunched site has everything in fact except poem of the month, which you will find here on the blog instead.
The blog will remain as a chatty extension to the main site,
http://garethcalway.blogspot.com
but if you want the real McCalway, it's on www.garethcalway.co.uk
March 06, 2007
Soccer chants are ancient history
Press cutting from the TES
by Warwick Mansell, Times Educational Supplement
Published: 23 February 2007
Is there poetry in football songs? Gareth Calway, head of English at Smithdon high in Hunstanton, Norfolk, and official poet of Bristol City FC, thinks so.
The ritual of chant and counter-chant is a "beautiful example of the poetic craft", says Mr Calway, who last year recreated the intensity of the terraces in a series of lessons.
Some might question the poetry in "We are the boys in red and white/We love to drink and love to fight", or "We love you city, we do" - but not this supporter, it seems.
The centrepiece was a CD he played of a Bristol City song, in which the fans let their opponents know where they are from and then, not very gently, mock their arch rivals, Bristol Rovers.
Some sections of the following extract have to be handled with care in the classroom. The chant runs: "Everywhere we go/People want to know/Who we are/Where we're from/We are from Bristol/Bristol City/ We are the boys in red and white/Love to drink and love to fight.
"We hate the Rovers/But City we love you/We love you city, we do/We love you City, we do/We love you City, we do/Oh, City we love you."
The class is then invited to devise its own, slightly sanitised, version, with "love to drink and fight" replaced with "love to do our work all night", and with another local school replacing Rovers, which they then sing.
Mr Calway used the football songs in a lesson also covering traditional African hunting chants and the poetry of the Bible. It finished with pupils writing their own verse on a subject of their choice but using the rhythmic structure of the football anthems.
Mr Calway believes football matchday rituals follow in a long tradition of oral poetry, dating back to the choruses that formed the backdrop to ancient Greek theatre.
"The pupils love the lesson," he said. "I also use drums and old football rattles to add to the atmosphere in the classroom. I even said the aim was to get complaints from other classes about the noise. Actually we didn't have any. Some of the boys I taught really wanted to learn. Some stayed behind to talk about the structure of a chant they had heard at Norwich City, writing it down and then trying to learn it."
Mr Calway will be presenting a workshop on the "poetry of sport", which will also look at the lyricism of recent writing on cricket, at the National Association for the Teaching of English's annual conference in Manchester on April 1 and 2.
* www.nate.org.uk
by Warwick Mansell, Times Educational Supplement
Published: 23 February 2007
Is there poetry in football songs? Gareth Calway, head of English at Smithdon high in Hunstanton, Norfolk, and official poet of Bristol City FC, thinks so.
The ritual of chant and counter-chant is a "beautiful example of the poetic craft", says Mr Calway, who last year recreated the intensity of the terraces in a series of lessons.
Some might question the poetry in "We are the boys in red and white/We love to drink and love to fight", or "We love you city, we do" - but not this supporter, it seems.
The centrepiece was a CD he played of a Bristol City song, in which the fans let their opponents know where they are from and then, not very gently, mock their arch rivals, Bristol Rovers.
Some sections of the following extract have to be handled with care in the classroom. The chant runs: "Everywhere we go/People want to know/Who we are/Where we're from/We are from Bristol/Bristol City/ We are the boys in red and white/Love to drink and love to fight.
"We hate the Rovers/But City we love you/We love you city, we do/We love you City, we do/We love you City, we do/Oh, City we love you."
The class is then invited to devise its own, slightly sanitised, version, with "love to drink and fight" replaced with "love to do our work all night", and with another local school replacing Rovers, which they then sing.
Mr Calway used the football songs in a lesson also covering traditional African hunting chants and the poetry of the Bible. It finished with pupils writing their own verse on a subject of their choice but using the rhythmic structure of the football anthems.
Mr Calway believes football matchday rituals follow in a long tradition of oral poetry, dating back to the choruses that formed the backdrop to ancient Greek theatre.
"The pupils love the lesson," he said. "I also use drums and old football rattles to add to the atmosphere in the classroom. I even said the aim was to get complaints from other classes about the noise. Actually we didn't have any. Some of the boys I taught really wanted to learn. Some stayed behind to talk about the structure of a chant they had heard at Norwich City, writing it down and then trying to learn it."
Mr Calway will be presenting a workshop on the "poetry of sport", which will also look at the lyricism of recent writing on cricket, at the National Association for the Teaching of English's annual conference in Manchester on April 1 and 2.
* www.nate.org.uk
March 05, 2007
Workshop At Milborne First School, Dorset, Friday March 2
Ah! if only all schools were like this. The Head told me he believes that the prerequisite of all learning is that the child is happy. Very good, I thought, they all say that. But this learning environment really was a happy one. Set in a wonderful Wessex wold a few miles north of Weymouth, this well-appointed and extremely well resourced new school had a welcoming Wessex air. It wasn't just the setting or the (unusually spacious and well-purposed) modern building, it was that not only the children but the staff seemed happy in their work. I did not hear a negative whisper all day and that includes all the various support staff! Is it something in the water down Wessex way I wonder? Children got on with their work with happy enthusiasm. Staff also seemed to all like their classes, each other and their Head!! (Like I said, this is rare!). I also liked all the classes, aged between 4-9, all young enough to call me "Gareth" and show me their work with grinning pride, some so young they called me "Author". "Bye bye Author" as I left will be an enduring memory.
I have had several experiences now with the younger end of the school age-range now and I have to say, the complete lack of cynicism and the big-eyed wondering enjoyment of words and all things creative of that age range at Milborne was a real restorative. It was a six hour drive down for me after work the previous day and I also had a car breakdown and a need to call the AA (the car people not the alcoholic agency) so I was wondering if it was worth it when I travelled in to this relatively unfamiliar territory.
Well, it certainly was. Even the fact that the school was not in Weymouth (as I expected) - hence all the compensating w alliteration here - could not take the edge off a wonderful day, chanting, becoming and bespeaking animals and revisiting infant memories recorded in crayon drawings with captions like "I am four/ I poo on Daddy's shirt!!". I understand there is even going to be a 100 page booklet of the poems produced and properly printed. So all power to you, Milborne. One of my best ever days in a school!
I have had several experiences now with the younger end of the school age-range now and I have to say, the complete lack of cynicism and the big-eyed wondering enjoyment of words and all things creative of that age range at Milborne was a real restorative. It was a six hour drive down for me after work the previous day and I also had a car breakdown and a need to call the AA (the car people not the alcoholic agency) so I was wondering if it was worth it when I travelled in to this relatively unfamiliar territory.
Well, it certainly was. Even the fact that the school was not in Weymouth (as I expected) - hence all the compensating w alliteration here - could not take the edge off a wonderful day, chanting, becoming and bespeaking animals and revisiting infant memories recorded in crayon drawings with captions like "I am four/ I poo on Daddy's shirt!!". I understand there is even going to be a 100 page booklet of the poems produced and properly printed. So all power to you, Milborne. One of my best ever days in a school!
January 31, 2007
February Poem of the Month
crucifix
the key you wear
around your neck
opens a door
cut from a tree
used to hang a man
i am still that man
a son of god
but love not
to be crossed so cruelly
for wanting to love thee
notes
Something very weird happened last night. I was reading Susan Cooper's book "King of Shadows" for a review with some Schubert playing. On page 164 there is a reference to a girl wearing a key around her neck. Through a series of concentrated Proustian associations, I was back in 1974 and the above poem - which I wrote then but have long since lost and forgotten - popped verbatim and complete back into my head. Whatever you think of the poem - it's the poem of a nineteen year old I used to be in a relationship and a world long gone - this experience must have interest for how the mind works and/or how poetry is retained and written. I'll try to reassemble the clues at the scene of the crime. I was living alone in an illegally sub-let student bedsit room in Weymouth. (see "Gap Year, Weymouth" in "Exile In His Own Country" for another poem reclaimed from the same shipwreck). I had the key to that room on a string around my neck to avoid losing it. My girlfriend from the otehr side of town wore a cross in the same way. I used to spend most of my supplementary benfit on the rent, a classical music album and a book instead of food every week - a Romantic education. I was studying the Romantics and I had bought "Schubert's Greatest Hits" -an intro to another kind of music. I had heard my hippy uncle rehearsing a play of manners at the college in which a character says "I love not to be crossed". I remember being a bit complacently proud about stealing that clever satirical line of wit back for the Romantic agony. The poem came complete then just as it did again last night. Its emotional directness, ardent conflation of sexual and spiritual yearning, inferiority complex flirting with messiahanic complex, are embarrassingly naked to me now but the fifty year old writing this apologia is still proud of the simple lyrical blast I wrote then instead of all this fiddling about now. There are worse crimes than being eighteen/nioeteen, studying Romanticism, an being desperate to get laid by the last coy mistress of the 70s.
I suppose I was trying in my own way to preach the Everlasting Gospel with Blake, Leonard Cohen and other such heroes of my late teens.
I'm going to do a workshop in Weymouth early next month and will be having a look at the physical door in Abbotsbury Road that suggested the symbolic one of the poem. I really did believe Jesus would have been appalled by a religion in His name that was to do with locked doors rather than liberation. I really did believe that everyone had the potential to be a Son of God. I still do. It was a bit hard on the girl to blame her for crucifying the Jesus she worshipped, perhaps - she was much more Martha than Caiphas - but I still do believe that our modern Church/Chapel would be among the frontrunners to crucify the Messiah if he did return so I have to stand by that too.
the key you wear
around your neck
opens a door
cut from a tree
used to hang a man
i am still that man
a son of god
but love not
to be crossed so cruelly
for wanting to love thee
notes
Something very weird happened last night. I was reading Susan Cooper's book "King of Shadows" for a review with some Schubert playing. On page 164 there is a reference to a girl wearing a key around her neck. Through a series of concentrated Proustian associations, I was back in 1974 and the above poem - which I wrote then but have long since lost and forgotten - popped verbatim and complete back into my head. Whatever you think of the poem - it's the poem of a nineteen year old I used to be in a relationship and a world long gone - this experience must have interest for how the mind works and/or how poetry is retained and written. I'll try to reassemble the clues at the scene of the crime. I was living alone in an illegally sub-let student bedsit room in Weymouth. (see "Gap Year, Weymouth" in "Exile In His Own Country" for another poem reclaimed from the same shipwreck). I had the key to that room on a string around my neck to avoid losing it. My girlfriend from the otehr side of town wore a cross in the same way. I used to spend most of my supplementary benfit on the rent, a classical music album and a book instead of food every week - a Romantic education. I was studying the Romantics and I had bought "Schubert's Greatest Hits" -an intro to another kind of music. I had heard my hippy uncle rehearsing a play of manners at the college in which a character says "I love not to be crossed". I remember being a bit complacently proud about stealing that clever satirical line of wit back for the Romantic agony. The poem came complete then just as it did again last night. Its emotional directness, ardent conflation of sexual and spiritual yearning, inferiority complex flirting with messiahanic complex, are embarrassingly naked to me now but the fifty year old writing this apologia is still proud of the simple lyrical blast I wrote then instead of all this fiddling about now. There are worse crimes than being eighteen/nioeteen, studying Romanticism, an being desperate to get laid by the last coy mistress of the 70s.
I suppose I was trying in my own way to preach the Everlasting Gospel with Blake, Leonard Cohen and other such heroes of my late teens.
I'm going to do a workshop in Weymouth early next month and will be having a look at the physical door in Abbotsbury Road that suggested the symbolic one of the poem. I really did believe Jesus would have been appalled by a religion in His name that was to do with locked doors rather than liberation. I really did believe that everyone had the potential to be a Son of God. I still do. It was a bit hard on the girl to blame her for crucifying the Jesus she worshipped, perhaps - she was much more Martha than Caiphas - but I still do believe that our modern Church/Chapel would be among the frontrunners to crucify the Messiah if he did return so I have to stand by that too.
January 27, 2007
City Go On The Attack
CITY GO ON THE ATTACK
(as broadcast today on Radio Bristol and published in the Western Daily Press)
08:00 - 27 January 2007
How many Os in Middlesb(o)rough?
Some people think there are two.
There's one - except this Saturday
A nought at the end will do.
But what will the City figure be?
What number will settle the score
With credits to Murray, Showunmi
Maybe? Just the one? Maybe two. Maybe four?
Gareth Calway, Bard of Ashton Gate
(as broadcast today on Radio Bristol and published in the Western Daily Press)
08:00 - 27 January 2007
How many Os in Middlesb(o)rough?
Some people think there are two.
There's one - except this Saturday
A nought at the end will do.
But what will the City figure be?
What number will settle the score
With credits to Murray, Showunmi
Maybe? Just the one? Maybe two. Maybe four?
Gareth Calway, Bard of Ashton Gate
January 18, 2007
January Poem Of The Month
Sending Coventry
Put our first away win
For months on a pedestal
The goals went in
Bang! bang! like a pistol
Our attack like infantry
Their defence like crystal
We went to championship Coventry
And sent them to Bristol!
Put our first away win
For months on a pedestal
The goals went in
Bang! bang! like a pistol
Our attack like infantry
Their defence like crystal
We went to championship Coventry
And sent them to Bristol!
January 10, 2007
In Time of Warne
In Time Of Warne
And now the battle’s over, let us praise
The awesome victors, never down for long,
But when they’re down, immeasurably strong:
At Edgbaston just two runs short, outplayed;
At Manchester, Lee’s Last Stand saved their day;
At Trent Bridge, following on, they still piled on
A total only just too few for Warne
To spin the English difference and erase.
And when they’re up, not even England’s best
- 500 plus in Adelaide, Perth, Day One –
Can stop the outback ranger, wild McGrath
From storming back to win – to pass – each Test,
His face a grinning sun, nor subtler Warne
From lifting cricket with his Last Hurrah.
© Gareth Calway, official poet laureate Bristol City FC,
on temporary loan to Sportsworld.
As broadcast on the BBC World Service, Jan 2007.
Sportsworld's producer rang me up last Friday evening and asked for an accolade for Warne and McGrath. I drank a few glasses of (strictly non-Australian) red wine, gritted my teeth and wrote this sonnet. The next day I broadcast said sonnet personally by phone while 149 million listeners worldwide hung on every word, including one woman as far away as Dersingham, Norfolk - a "first time World Service listener"- who contacted me later to declare herself a "first time World Service listener", and also, I assume, to be enthralled, not just by the glorious poetry but by the towering sporting achievements of two Australian cricketers over the last decade. Extraordinary that two men who have made me miserable on so many occasions should be the inspiration for this world-flung sonnet and also for this unexpected connection with a new WS listener living over four miles away. Sportsworld has twice called my contributions 'prose' - I think (and hope) they mean 'verse' - but for those who wonder what my prose tribute to the two great antipodean sportsmen would be, it's this - thank God they've gone, the smirking Aussie b******s.
And now the battle’s over, let us praise
The awesome victors, never down for long,
But when they’re down, immeasurably strong:
At Edgbaston just two runs short, outplayed;
At Manchester, Lee’s Last Stand saved their day;
At Trent Bridge, following on, they still piled on
A total only just too few for Warne
To spin the English difference and erase.
And when they’re up, not even England’s best
- 500 plus in Adelaide, Perth, Day One –
Can stop the outback ranger, wild McGrath
From storming back to win – to pass – each Test,
His face a grinning sun, nor subtler Warne
From lifting cricket with his Last Hurrah.
© Gareth Calway, official poet laureate Bristol City FC,
on temporary loan to Sportsworld.
As broadcast on the BBC World Service, Jan 2007.
Sportsworld's producer rang me up last Friday evening and asked for an accolade for Warne and McGrath. I drank a few glasses of (strictly non-Australian) red wine, gritted my teeth and wrote this sonnet. The next day I broadcast said sonnet personally by phone while 149 million listeners worldwide hung on every word, including one woman as far away as Dersingham, Norfolk - a "first time World Service listener"- who contacted me later to declare herself a "first time World Service listener", and also, I assume, to be enthralled, not just by the glorious poetry but by the towering sporting achievements of two Australian cricketers over the last decade. Extraordinary that two men who have made me miserable on so many occasions should be the inspiration for this world-flung sonnet and also for this unexpected connection with a new WS listener living over four miles away. Sportsworld has twice called my contributions 'prose' - I think (and hope) they mean 'verse' - but for those who wonder what my prose tribute to the two great antipodean sportsmen would be, it's this - thank God they've gone, the smirking Aussie b******s.
January 02, 2007
Anthem for a Doomed Series
Anthem for a Doomed Series: Melbourne, Dec 2006-12-28
(With sincere apologies to Wilfred Owen for repeating tragedy as farce.)
What broken winds for these collapsing losers
Only the laughing Bronx-jeer of the crowds,
Only the monstrous blast of Aussie boozers
Can knell this mournful blue sky lined with clouds.
Another innings ending in disaster,
Another ‘rescue’ bowler hit for four,
The “sound-the-cazoo” rally-charge of batters,
Another chance not taken: that’s the score.
An orchestra of media explanations,
Diminuendo notes of patchy play,
The dirge-ereedo of bowling plans astray,
The cello notes of Aggers lost in drums,
The sigh of Hayden, Symonds still not taken,
The groan as loss becomes annihilation.
© Gareth Calway 2006
Official Poet Laureate Bristol City
(Unofficial Poet In residence Sportsworld, BBC World Service)
I hope all this is wrong with regard Sydney of course and last night's batting was probably England's best all day in the field since Adelaide. I hope I'm writing a pastsiche of a Great English Poem without it being a parody for Sportsworld next Saturday. (By the way, if you have an idea for a great English poem to pastische for Sydney that fits what's happening there this week, please let me know and I'll try to oblige). I hope we all have a Happy New Year basking in sustained English sporting success. But at present, the hope that springs eternal is lost on holiday somewhere along the Great barrier Reef.
(With sincere apologies to Wilfred Owen for repeating tragedy as farce.)
What broken winds for these collapsing losers
Only the laughing Bronx-jeer of the crowds,
Only the monstrous blast of Aussie boozers
Can knell this mournful blue sky lined with clouds.
Another innings ending in disaster,
Another ‘rescue’ bowler hit for four,
The “sound-the-cazoo” rally-charge of batters,
Another chance not taken: that’s the score.
An orchestra of media explanations,
Diminuendo notes of patchy play,
The dirge-ereedo of bowling plans astray,
The cello notes of Aggers lost in drums,
The sigh of Hayden, Symonds still not taken,
The groan as loss becomes annihilation.
© Gareth Calway 2006
Official Poet Laureate Bristol City
(Unofficial Poet In residence Sportsworld, BBC World Service)
I hope all this is wrong with regard Sydney of course and last night's batting was probably England's best all day in the field since Adelaide. I hope I'm writing a pastsiche of a Great English Poem without it being a parody for Sportsworld next Saturday. (By the way, if you have an idea for a great English poem to pastische for Sydney that fits what's happening there this week, please let me know and I'll try to oblige). I hope we all have a Happy New Year basking in sustained English sporting success. But at present, the hope that springs eternal is lost on holiday somewhere along the Great barrier Reef.
December 26, 2006
Boxing Day
In The Bleak Midwinter (post Dec 7)
I wrote this on Boxing Day 1994, in Cranham, Gloucestershire, and feel a bit the same today in Sedgeford, Norfolk. Boxing Day was the day the servants got their Christmas Boxes, incidentally. It had nothing to do with boxing. Imagine the day after the Lord Mayor's show, with all the teams you support losing, and nothing in your Christmas box. The imagine an Indian spiritual master appears in your woodland path and says, "Yeah, but you knew that really didn't you?"
watched
by the rich guarded
silence
of cotswold
farms
and a blinding sun
through bare trees
and the jagged saw
of a dog at the gate,
i wonder
what my pilgrimage
to an indian summer
half a world distant
taught me
about this old track
of unchanged england
wrapped up in compliments,
temporary as tinsel,
a feast that goes cold,
a santa that never
really delivers
as i slide
down my frozen hill
of ignorance
on slight city shoes
made in ahmednagar
towards
a painful wisdom.
I wrote this on Boxing Day 1994, in Cranham, Gloucestershire, and feel a bit the same today in Sedgeford, Norfolk. Boxing Day was the day the servants got their Christmas Boxes, incidentally. It had nothing to do with boxing. Imagine the day after the Lord Mayor's show, with all the teams you support losing, and nothing in your Christmas box. The imagine an Indian spiritual master appears in your woodland path and says, "Yeah, but you knew that really didn't you?"
watched
by the rich guarded
silence
of cotswold
farms
and a blinding sun
through bare trees
and the jagged saw
of a dog at the gate,
i wonder
what my pilgrimage
to an indian summer
half a world distant
taught me
about this old track
of unchanged england
wrapped up in compliments,
temporary as tinsel,
a feast that goes cold,
a santa that never
really delivers
as i slide
down my frozen hill
of ignorance
on slight city shoes
made in ahmednagar
towards
a painful wisdom.
December 17, 2006
December Poem Of The Month (Part VII)
My webmaster's away so I'm doing this myself. Hope it works. Happy Christmas everybody!!!
3. Christmas Eve 8 pm. (from Norfolk Carol 1996)
My daughter's dropped the torch
From iced fingers
Snowing the bulb
So the batteries don't connect
To its heart-warming glow
And we can't see the carol sheet...
But the wagon is hung with fairy lights
Frosted with moonshine
And we look like a Christmas card.
And we finally get
Past the too-crowded Inn
To the Promised Place-
A stable of prototypes:
Some faithful sheep farmers
With a vision of angels
If not of the road;
Three love-crazed riders
As seen on Look East
(Come out of the sunset
On secret paths
Across low fields
Of mud-chastened pasture
And shoots of corn the green
‘Green’ used to be
When the world was young,
Through winter-silent
Norfolk afternoon villages,
Church windows glinting
Like texts of mediaeval Latin)
An unmarried mother
(With a "lily-white"
King Herod of Sleaze
Biting her back,
Her face pure as Venus,
Her faithful Joe
Not quite the winner
Her parents had hoped for)
And tucked out of sight
Behind a bottle bank -
A babe in a crib.
The outlook
None too bright
As I lift our broken lamp
And the brass strikes off
And my voice stumbles in flight
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light,
The hopes and fears
Of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
3. Christmas Eve 8 pm. (from Norfolk Carol 1996)
My daughter's dropped the torch
From iced fingers
Snowing the bulb
So the batteries don't connect
To its heart-warming glow
And we can't see the carol sheet...
But the wagon is hung with fairy lights
Frosted with moonshine
And we look like a Christmas card.
And we finally get
Past the too-crowded Inn
To the Promised Place-
A stable of prototypes:
Some faithful sheep farmers
With a vision of angels
If not of the road;
Three love-crazed riders
As seen on Look East
(Come out of the sunset
On secret paths
Across low fields
Of mud-chastened pasture
And shoots of corn the green
‘Green’ used to be
When the world was young,
Through winter-silent
Norfolk afternoon villages,
Church windows glinting
Like texts of mediaeval Latin)
An unmarried mother
(With a "lily-white"
King Herod of Sleaze
Biting her back,
Her face pure as Venus,
Her faithful Joe
Not quite the winner
Her parents had hoped for)
And tucked out of sight
Behind a bottle bank -
A babe in a crib.
The outlook
None too bright
As I lift our broken lamp
And the brass strikes off
And my voice stumbles in flight
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light,
The hopes and fears
Of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
December Poem Of The Month (Part VI)
from Norfolk Carol, 1996
1. Christmas Eve, 3pm
The elements of Christmas -
Fire and ice -
In this tempered Arctic sun
That burns in the trees.
In these pools like skating rinks
Deep and dark and even.
Ice
In the flinty ground
And the bitter Easterly.
Fire
In the solstice sunset
Bleeding the black woods
And its ice-pink afterglow
And its fire-blue areola.
Ice
In the barn-wide rising moon.
Ice
In my soul as I'm turned
To the unlit wings
That cradle and grave
The sunset's light show.
Fire
In my soul
At a rising star
Burning like ice
In the polar blue.
Fire
In my hearth at home
(Crackling through logs),
In the farmer's field
(Roaring through twigs),
Red-raw and orange
Tongues of life-lust:
The vital, stripped down
Simplicities of winter.
This poem’s companion piece will be posted on Dec 24
December Poem Of The Month (Part V)
Final Assembly (post Dec 17)
The unpurged images of term recede
And, hark, the herald angels with dirty faces
Sing in excruciation.
They get younger each year and I,
To serve them half my days resolved,
Get no younger with them.
The praised boy who fishwise leapt with joy
Five Christmas terms ago
Grins at the clapping school now, sardonic.
Where has he gone - are we going - so fast?
O Jesus! still these discordant Years,
That carping torn, that gong-tormented Sea.
The unpurged images of term recede
And, hark, the herald angels with dirty faces
Sing in excruciation.
They get younger each year and I,
To serve them half my days resolved,
Get no younger with them.
The praised boy who fishwise leapt with joy
Five Christmas terms ago
Grins at the clapping school now, sardonic.
Where has he gone - are we going - so fast?
O Jesus! still these discordant Years,
That carping torn, that gong-tormented Sea.
If Kpiling Was At The Waca
If you can keep your bat when all about you
Are losing theirs for nought ‘protecting’ you,
If you can trust yourself when coaches doubt you,
But make allowance for their cod-calls too;
If you can wait and not be stressed by waiting,
And, being dissed, don't deal in disrespect,
And, being slated, don't give way to slating,
And yet don’t gloat at those who can’t select.
If you can spin a dream ball like the master
And bowl him too, and blunt that Aussie’s aim,
If you can meet Disaster and Disaster
And laugh and add a Five For to your name,
If you can bear to hear that name mis-spoken
By commentators, pundits, toffs and fools
And watch the chance you span your team to, broken,
And turn, and spin again with worn-out tools:
If crowds that jeer you, never jar your virtue,
If crowds that hail you king don’t halt your touch,
If neither Poms nor Aussie foes can hurt you,
If records count with you, but not too much;
If you can fill the series-losing innings
With finger spinning glory and some runs,
Then England’s yours and everything that's in it,
And, Pan EH Sar, you’re the Man, my son.
Are losing theirs for nought ‘protecting’ you,
If you can trust yourself when coaches doubt you,
But make allowance for their cod-calls too;
If you can wait and not be stressed by waiting,
And, being dissed, don't deal in disrespect,
And, being slated, don't give way to slating,
And yet don’t gloat at those who can’t select.
If you can spin a dream ball like the master
And bowl him too, and blunt that Aussie’s aim,
If you can meet Disaster and Disaster
And laugh and add a Five For to your name,
If you can bear to hear that name mis-spoken
By commentators, pundits, toffs and fools
And watch the chance you span your team to, broken,
And turn, and spin again with worn-out tools:
If crowds that jeer you, never jar your virtue,
If crowds that hail you king don’t halt your touch,
If neither Poms nor Aussie foes can hurt you,
If records count with you, but not too much;
If you can fill the series-losing innings
With finger spinning glory and some runs,
Then England’s yours and everything that's in it,
And, Pan EH Sar, you’re the Man, my son.
If Kipling Was At The Waca
"If Kipling Was At The Waca" was broadcast to the world, by an Indian woman broadcaster, at 2.15 on Saturday 16 December, with the correct pronounciation of Panesar's name. And Bristol City were 1-0 up v Millwall at the time...
December 13, 2006
Don't You Know Who I Am?
Don’t you know who I am? - 07 Dec 2006
Article from Sec Ed Magazine, Thursday 6 Dec 2006.
(Posted on my staffroom wall all week but I don't think anyone's noticed! Case proven, I think.)
Fifty is a dangerous age. Just as dangerous is 25 years’ teaching experience. Last November, with both measures clicking creakily and noisily into place, I decided to meet the challenge head on. I’d suffered for my art. Now it was the nation’s turn.
I planned a book, and a national tour promoting it. The book is called Exile In His Own Country and includes a prominent school section called Marked for Life. The tour would take in theatres, arts festivals and schools and in the latter include poetry workshops for pupils and staff. The final tour date – a home fixture just outside the old Smithdon Hundred close to my school catchment area – brought the project to a close last month. It has been a life-affirming, and life-changing year.
It has also had its funny moments. Writers in schools often complain that their presence and purpose has not been made clear (to pupils – or even staff) in advance of their visit. Never mind a cogent introduction, staff sometimes don’t even know who you are – or what you’re doing in their assembly, or even their classroom. They’re grateful, but puzzled.
You have to explain your function to them there and then, with the pupils listening in. After decades of working in schools myself, none of this surprises or fazes me. The person who has set up the visit is sometimes away that day or double-booked starting an exam somewhere or in a vital, or at least compulsory, briefing, or managing a pupil no-one else can deal with, or maybe even talking to the press about your visit.
They have forms to register (or fill in) and no-one to cover them. It’s no-one’s fault. Schools have remorseless routines with staff rushing from pillar to pigeonhole all day long – bells driving at them as if they were Pavlov’s dogs – and any variation in the day requires a major effort to facilitate or even to remember.
Staff are also very protective of their classes. They know what these pupils have to learn by the end of term, what exams they’re taking, what coursework hasn’t yet been done. They know their names and their needs – special and ordinary.
However, once you’re in the room and working with pupils, a kind of liberation comes over the teacher concerned and they tend to be the greatest assistants on God’s earth, grasping what the writer is trying to do immediately and doing everything in their power to help make it happen. They are sometimes like translators – “It’s like the refrains in the war poetry we’ve been doing Craig” – and they are invariably your right hand man or woman with anything you need to make the most of your time with the pupils.
Even the function of the teacher in the room with you as simply a supportive presence is a vital part of the writer-in-school experience. Schools pay good money to get the writer in and the role of the teacher is never mentioned or prepared, but it can double the value and make the time go an awful long way.
The writer meanwhile is usually trying to adapt the hours of creative tuition he has planned to the clock-oppressed slot he has been allotted with each group. The teacher who’s booked you wants the best for all his or her pupils, naturally, and so sometimes sets up well meaning but unworkable arrangements.
One school hilariously asked me to perform my complete 90-minute show non-stop to each entire year group in succession all day. When I do the show in the professional theatre, I get an interval at half time, an adult, theatre-literate audience, all sorts of technical protection, lights, music etc, and it still almost kills me. And that’s just doing it once.
In the desert heat of last summer, in different schools, I performed the show to year 9s. My own idea and not a good one. I have learned my lesson (it wasn’t funny at the time when my use of a mild swear word at the end of a poem about my Uncle Dai was greeted with the heckle “language!” from a mock-indignant year 9 boy, though I treasure the experience now).
Apart from the physical impossibility, such non-stop “performance” is not a good use of time. Teachers themselves can often help you improve what you are offering for their pupils with feedback, though of course this usually comes afterwards – hence the value of a return visit.
A writer works best with smaller groups over an extended time, with the emphasis gradually moving from his own models to the pupil’s responses. The ideal would be one – or at most two – groups worked with intensively all day, from warm ups to a finished piece of writing. It’s an ideal and, as a teacher myself, the realities of budgets and of the greatest benefit to the greatest number obviously come in to play, but it’s worth bearing in mind. The experience can and should be priceless. Don’t spread the writer too thin. The experience has much more value in the long run if it’s focused towards more time with less people than the reverse.
It’s also unsatisfactory if the writing has to be left as a follow up for homework. The writing requires the professional’s response at that stage as much as – if not more – than any other, and there’s always the chance that, with curricula being as crammed and hectic as they are, the follow up won’t get done. Some work is so good, too, the writer might be able to recommend possible publication outlets or competitions.
I came home on National Poetry Day in October – a wet miserable Thursday – after a day’s workshop in a seaside town school in Norfolk and felt exhausted and elated at the same time.
This was not because my photo and news of my tour were on the front page of this publication (though that was nice), but because I had got some year 11 boys drumming the desks and chanting call-and-response football poetry, then writing their own war chants with absorbed and conscientious grasp of structure, rhythm and all the devices. It was real work. And, at 50, you don’t want to be doing anything less.
Gareth Calway is head of English at Smithdon High School in Norfolk. Exile In His Own Country is available via www.garethcalway.co.uk or www.bluechrome.co.uk To talk to Gareth about poetry workshops on football, schooldays or other themes, call 01485 571828.
Article from Sec Ed Magazine, Thursday 6 Dec 2006.
(Posted on my staffroom wall all week but I don't think anyone's noticed! Case proven, I think.)
Fifty is a dangerous age. Just as dangerous is 25 years’ teaching experience. Last November, with both measures clicking creakily and noisily into place, I decided to meet the challenge head on. I’d suffered for my art. Now it was the nation’s turn.
I planned a book, and a national tour promoting it. The book is called Exile In His Own Country and includes a prominent school section called Marked for Life. The tour would take in theatres, arts festivals and schools and in the latter include poetry workshops for pupils and staff. The final tour date – a home fixture just outside the old Smithdon Hundred close to my school catchment area – brought the project to a close last month. It has been a life-affirming, and life-changing year.
It has also had its funny moments. Writers in schools often complain that their presence and purpose has not been made clear (to pupils – or even staff) in advance of their visit. Never mind a cogent introduction, staff sometimes don’t even know who you are – or what you’re doing in their assembly, or even their classroom. They’re grateful, but puzzled.
You have to explain your function to them there and then, with the pupils listening in. After decades of working in schools myself, none of this surprises or fazes me. The person who has set up the visit is sometimes away that day or double-booked starting an exam somewhere or in a vital, or at least compulsory, briefing, or managing a pupil no-one else can deal with, or maybe even talking to the press about your visit.
They have forms to register (or fill in) and no-one to cover them. It’s no-one’s fault. Schools have remorseless routines with staff rushing from pillar to pigeonhole all day long – bells driving at them as if they were Pavlov’s dogs – and any variation in the day requires a major effort to facilitate or even to remember.
Staff are also very protective of their classes. They know what these pupils have to learn by the end of term, what exams they’re taking, what coursework hasn’t yet been done. They know their names and their needs – special and ordinary.
However, once you’re in the room and working with pupils, a kind of liberation comes over the teacher concerned and they tend to be the greatest assistants on God’s earth, grasping what the writer is trying to do immediately and doing everything in their power to help make it happen. They are sometimes like translators – “It’s like the refrains in the war poetry we’ve been doing Craig” – and they are invariably your right hand man or woman with anything you need to make the most of your time with the pupils.
Even the function of the teacher in the room with you as simply a supportive presence is a vital part of the writer-in-school experience. Schools pay good money to get the writer in and the role of the teacher is never mentioned or prepared, but it can double the value and make the time go an awful long way.
The writer meanwhile is usually trying to adapt the hours of creative tuition he has planned to the clock-oppressed slot he has been allotted with each group. The teacher who’s booked you wants the best for all his or her pupils, naturally, and so sometimes sets up well meaning but unworkable arrangements.
One school hilariously asked me to perform my complete 90-minute show non-stop to each entire year group in succession all day. When I do the show in the professional theatre, I get an interval at half time, an adult, theatre-literate audience, all sorts of technical protection, lights, music etc, and it still almost kills me. And that’s just doing it once.
In the desert heat of last summer, in different schools, I performed the show to year 9s. My own idea and not a good one. I have learned my lesson (it wasn’t funny at the time when my use of a mild swear word at the end of a poem about my Uncle Dai was greeted with the heckle “language!” from a mock-indignant year 9 boy, though I treasure the experience now).
Apart from the physical impossibility, such non-stop “performance” is not a good use of time. Teachers themselves can often help you improve what you are offering for their pupils with feedback, though of course this usually comes afterwards – hence the value of a return visit.
A writer works best with smaller groups over an extended time, with the emphasis gradually moving from his own models to the pupil’s responses. The ideal would be one – or at most two – groups worked with intensively all day, from warm ups to a finished piece of writing. It’s an ideal and, as a teacher myself, the realities of budgets and of the greatest benefit to the greatest number obviously come in to play, but it’s worth bearing in mind. The experience can and should be priceless. Don’t spread the writer too thin. The experience has much more value in the long run if it’s focused towards more time with less people than the reverse.
It’s also unsatisfactory if the writing has to be left as a follow up for homework. The writing requires the professional’s response at that stage as much as – if not more – than any other, and there’s always the chance that, with curricula being as crammed and hectic as they are, the follow up won’t get done. Some work is so good, too, the writer might be able to recommend possible publication outlets or competitions.
I came home on National Poetry Day in October – a wet miserable Thursday – after a day’s workshop in a seaside town school in Norfolk and felt exhausted and elated at the same time.
This was not because my photo and news of my tour were on the front page of this publication (though that was nice), but because I had got some year 11 boys drumming the desks and chanting call-and-response football poetry, then writing their own war chants with absorbed and conscientious grasp of structure, rhythm and all the devices. It was real work. And, at 50, you don’t want to be doing anything less.
Gareth Calway is head of English at Smithdon High School in Norfolk. Exile In His Own Country is available via www.garethcalway.co.uk or www.bluechrome.co.uk To talk to Gareth about poetry workshops on football, schooldays or other themes, call 01485 571828.
December 11, 2006
December Poem Of The Month (Part IV)
Advent Calendar Selection Box
from Sheer Paltry
Bard Of Bristol
"You’re supposed to be at ’ome!!"
Standing in my team red before a game, yelling the chants - in and out of sync,
The main feeling is of being a complete fraud.
It's not that the team doesn't matter to me:
It matters enough to give me a heart attack.
It's just that, with only distant memories of 2-3-5 to fall back on,
I never really understand what's going on.
There are fifty blokes with a view I could ask from anywhere around me
But they each seem to be commentating on a different match.
And I live five hours from Bristol so it's hard to stay in touch.
And, however you market it, the match atmosphere is just like you get in a men-only garage -
Oily, reductive, ferociously competitive about everything and nothing-
Aggravated by six pints of booze and ten thousand men-brains,
The kind of thing I went to University to get away from.
If it weren't for the tightening in the stomach every match day,
The inferno of baying noise - purged by love and loyalty
(And comradeship and chantorion and cheer,)
The shiver of the perfectly pitched pass,
The tantalising tactical one twos, the toothsome tingling tackles,
The faith-affirming final ball through the box,
The frantic flash of foot through frenzied ball
The fluent flight of ball through air into flapping net,
The fabulous tapestry of red against blue over green,
The red knights tilting at perfection,
The pavilions of banners, pennants and scarves,
The child’s red and white Christmas of the goal consummations -
Then I probably wouldn't bother.
from Sheer Paltry
Bard Of Bristol
"You’re supposed to be at ’ome!!"
Standing in my team red before a game, yelling the chants - in and out of sync,
The main feeling is of being a complete fraud.
It's not that the team doesn't matter to me:
It matters enough to give me a heart attack.
It's just that, with only distant memories of 2-3-5 to fall back on,
I never really understand what's going on.
There are fifty blokes with a view I could ask from anywhere around me
But they each seem to be commentating on a different match.
And I live five hours from Bristol so it's hard to stay in touch.
And, however you market it, the match atmosphere is just like you get in a men-only garage -
Oily, reductive, ferociously competitive about everything and nothing-
Aggravated by six pints of booze and ten thousand men-brains,
The kind of thing I went to University to get away from.
If it weren't for the tightening in the stomach every match day,
The inferno of baying noise - purged by love and loyalty
(And comradeship and chantorion and cheer,)
The shiver of the perfectly pitched pass,
The tantalising tactical one twos, the toothsome tingling tackles,
The faith-affirming final ball through the box,
The frantic flash of foot through frenzied ball
The fluent flight of ball through air into flapping net,
The fabulous tapestry of red against blue over green,
The red knights tilting at perfection,
The pavilions of banners, pennants and scarves,
The child’s red and white Christmas of the goal consummations -
Then I probably wouldn't bother.
December Poem Of The Month (Part III)
Advent Calendar Selection Box
In The Bleak Midwinter (post Dec 7)
watched
by the rich guarded
silence
of cotswold
farms
and a blinding sun
through bare trees
and the jagged saw
of a dog at the gate,
i wonder
what my pilgrimage
to an indian summer
half a world distant
taught me
about this old track
of unchanged england
wrapped up in compliments,
temporary as tinsel,
a feast that goes cold,
a santa that never
really delivers
as i slide
down my frozen hill
of ignorance
on slight city shoes
made in ahmednagar
towards
a painful wisdom.
Cranham, Glos. Christmas ’94
In The Bleak Midwinter (post Dec 7)
watched
by the rich guarded
silence
of cotswold
farms
and a blinding sun
through bare trees
and the jagged saw
of a dog at the gate,
i wonder
what my pilgrimage
to an indian summer
half a world distant
taught me
about this old track
of unchanged england
wrapped up in compliments,
temporary as tinsel,
a feast that goes cold,
a santa that never
really delivers
as i slide
down my frozen hill
of ignorance
on slight city shoes
made in ahmednagar
towards
a painful wisdom.
Cranham, Glos. Christmas ’94
Forward To Adelaide
Listen out for it on the World Service!
The Second Test (with apologies to Tennyson)
'Forward to Adelaide!'
Was England’s team dismay'd ?
Not tho' the Aussies knew
Fletcher had blunder'd:,
Freddy the heart of the side
Made head, its head belied
Monty again denied
Back to the valley of Death
The bruised and bashed lumbered.
S. Clarke to right of them,
McGrath to left of them,
Brett Lee in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with seamers’ spell
Boldly, they batted well,
Left-hooked the jaw of Death,
Right-jabbed the mouth of Hell,
Boundaries plundered.
Flash'd all their willows bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the seamers there,
Charging the bullies while
All the world wonder'd:
Spun by that portly bloke
Right thro' his line they broke;
Colly and Pietersen
Dealt him the boundary stroke,
Blocked him and bludgeoned
Knocked off a fifty – then
Knocked off a hundred….
S. Clarke to right of them,
McGrath to left of them,
Brett Lee in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Shane warned and cast his spell,
But all to no avail
They that fought back so well
Came back from cricket death
While ancient records fell
Knocked off a century,
Knocked off two hundred….
(to be concluded, hopefully with something along the lines of “When can their glory fade…?”)
When can their glory fade?
Oh, in a couple of days.
What COULDN'T be blundered
They managed it just the same.
Collapsing at Adelaide
The almost-six hundred!
The Second Test (with apologies to Tennyson)
'Forward to Adelaide!'
Was England’s team dismay'd ?
Not tho' the Aussies knew
Fletcher had blunder'd:,
Freddy the heart of the side
Made head, its head belied
Monty again denied
Back to the valley of Death
The bruised and bashed lumbered.
S. Clarke to right of them,
McGrath to left of them,
Brett Lee in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with seamers’ spell
Boldly, they batted well,
Left-hooked the jaw of Death,
Right-jabbed the mouth of Hell,
Boundaries plundered.
Flash'd all their willows bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the seamers there,
Charging the bullies while
All the world wonder'd:
Spun by that portly bloke
Right thro' his line they broke;
Colly and Pietersen
Dealt him the boundary stroke,
Blocked him and bludgeoned
Knocked off a fifty – then
Knocked off a hundred….
S. Clarke to right of them,
McGrath to left of them,
Brett Lee in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Shane warned and cast his spell,
But all to no avail
They that fought back so well
Came back from cricket death
While ancient records fell
Knocked off a century,
Knocked off two hundred….
(to be concluded, hopefully with something along the lines of “When can their glory fade…?”)
When can their glory fade?
Oh, in a couple of days.
What COULDN'T be blundered
They managed it just the same.
Collapsing at Adelaide
The almost-six hundred!
December 02, 2006
December Poem Of The Month (Part II)
Advent Calendar Selection Box
Kings Of The Forest
The Robins went back to the Forest
And did what they didn't before.
The robbers got two goals and two pens
The Robins the same and two more.
To go to the top-of-the-tree club
And sing out our victory song
Is brave and adventurous and merry
And shows us both plucky and strong.
This may be the day that the Robins
Proved to themselves they can be
The kings of the forest come April
And end it atop of the tree!
Kings Of The Forest
The Robins went back to the Forest
And did what they didn't before.
The robbers got two goals and two pens
The Robins the same and two more.
To go to the top-of-the-tree club
And sing out our victory song
Is brave and adventurous and merry
And shows us both plucky and strong.
This may be the day that the Robins
Proved to themselves they can be
The kings of the forest come April
And end it atop of the tree!
Forward to Adelaide!
This one was written on Friday and Saturday Dec 1-2 after long nights half awake to the progress of the Adelaide test. I posted it to Sportsworld and for the second week running, they broadcast it to the world shortly afterwards in the middle of interviews with proper grown up Australian cricketers, the nearest I've got to facing some of the bowling my heroes are currently dispatching...
Forward to Adelaide!'
Was England’s team dismay'd ?
Not tho' the Aussies knew
Fletcher had blunder'd:,
Freddy the heart of the side
Made head, its head (Strauss) belied
Monty again denied
But into the valley of Death
The bruised and bashed lumbered
M. Clarke to right of them,
McGrath to left of them,
Brett Lee in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with seamers’ spell
Boldly they batted well,
Back from the jaws of Death,
Out of the mouth of Hell
The once-losers clambered.
Flash'd all their willows bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the seamers there,
Charging the bullies while
All the world wonder'd:
Spun by that portly bloke
Right thro' his line they broke;
Colly and Pietersen
Dealt him him a boundary stroke,
Blocked him and bludgeoned
Knocked off a fifty - then
Knocked off a hundred….
Forward to Adelaide!'
Was England’s team dismay'd ?
Not tho' the Aussies knew
Fletcher had blunder'd:,
Freddy the heart of the side
Made head, its head (Strauss) belied
Monty again denied
But into the valley of Death
The bruised and bashed lumbered
M. Clarke to right of them,
McGrath to left of them,
Brett Lee in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with seamers’ spell
Boldly they batted well,
Back from the jaws of Death,
Out of the mouth of Hell
The once-losers clambered.
Flash'd all their willows bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the seamers there,
Charging the bullies while
All the world wonder'd:
Spun by that portly bloke
Right thro' his line they broke;
Colly and Pietersen
Dealt him him a boundary stroke,
Blocked him and bludgeoned
Knocked off a fifty - then
Knocked off a hundred….
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)