WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE

Related poetry:

1. THE SINGING SCHOOL The Poetry School, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Business: So much poetry about you’d think I’d want to shout, “Hurray, hurray, Every day’s Poetry Day!” but I don’t and you don’t either- You know its flim-flam on the ether, grants for Jack-the-lads Of both sexes, poets who’ve never been seen in a little magazine […]...
2. POEM TO BE PLACED IN A BOTTLE AND CAST OUT TO SEA for Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters in a bus called ‘Further…’ Dear and here’s where the problem begins For who shall I address this letter to? Friends are few and very special, muses in the main I must confess, the first I lost just fifty years ago. Perhaps the best. I searched for years […]...
3. A HOPE FOR POETRY: REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES There was a hope for poetry in the sixties And for education and society, teachers free To do as they wanted: I could and did teach Poetry and art all day and little else – That was my way. I threw rainbows against the classroom walls, Gold and silver dragons in the corridors and Halls; […]...
4. LETTER FROM LEEDS Would ‘any woman’ find me difficult to live with? My tastes are simple: space for several thousand books, The smoke from my pipe stuffed with aromatic Balkan Sobranie, A leftover from the Sixties, frequent brief absences to fulfil My duties as a carer, unending phone calls And the unenviable reputation as England’s worst or best […]...
5. April 19 We have too much exhibitionism And not enough voyeurism In poetry we have plenty of bass And not enough treble, more amber Beer than the frat boys can drink but Less red wine than meets the lip In this beaker of the best Bordeaux, Too much thesis, too little antithesis And way too much New […]...
6. HUDDERSFIELD – THE SECOND POETRY CAPITAL OF ENGLAND It brings to mind Swift leaving a fortune to Dublin ВЂ˜For the founding of a lunatic asylum – no place needs it more’. The breathing beauty of the moors and cheap accommodation Drew me but the total barbarity of the town stopped me from Writing a single line: from the hideous facade of its railway […]...
7. Robert Burns Immortal Robert Burns of Ayr, There’s but few poets can with you compare; Some of your poems and songs are very fine: To “Mary in Heaven” is most sublime; And then again in your “Cottar’s Saturday Night,” Your genius there does shine most bright, As pure as the dewdrops of the night. Your “Tam O’Shanter” […]...
8. PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the sixties Who had all the coldness of Himmler So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti. I want a history responsive To […]...
9. A monument in words And so I had a glaring revelation, I couldn’t find the poet in the man although I read his life composed by writers true disposed To tell it with veracity. They built a monument in words And deeds, a shrine of writers’ reeds inlaid with refined And proper quotes. Those motes were hardly real; I […]...
10. LEEDS 2002 What ghosts haunt These streets of perpetual night? Riverbanks fractured with splinters of glass condominiums For nouveam riche merchant bankers Black-tied bouncers man clubland glitz casinos Novotel, Valley Park Motel, the Hilton: Hot tubs, saunas, swim spas, en suite Satellite TV, conference rooms, disco dinners. I knew Len, the tubby taxi man With his retirement […]...
11. Among School Children I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way – the children’s eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling […]...
12. First Day at School A millionbillionwillion miles from home Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?) Why are they all so big, other children? So noisy? So much at home they Must have been born in uniform Lived all their lives in playgrounds Spent the years inventing games That don’t let me in. Games That are rough, […]...
13. THE DEATH OF ART “Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” -critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry “the death of art.” I am not a poet. I want to be rich and buy things for my family. Besides, I am sort of popular and can honestly say I’ve had a great […]...
14. Coole Park And Ballylee, 1931 Under my window-ledge the waters race, Otters below and moor-hens on the top, Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven’s face Then darkening through ‘dark’ Raftery’s ‘cellar’ drop, Run underground, rise in a rocky place In Coole demesne, and there to finish up Spread to a lake and drop into a hole. What’s water but […]...
15. The Little Park Planted The little park planted in memory of a boy Who fell in the war begins To resemble him As he was twenty eight years ago. Year by year they look more alike. His old parents come almost daily To sit on a bench And look at him. And every night the memory in the garden […]...
16. SCHOOL SMELL Composed of chalk dust, Pencil shavings and The sharp odour Of stale urine; It meets me now and then Creeping down a creosoted corridor Or waiting to be banged With the dust from piles of books On top of a cupboard. The double desks heeled with iron Having long been replaced; The steel-nibbed pens and […]...
17. The Swan At Edgewater Park Isn’t one of your prissy richpeoples’ swans Wouldn’t be at home on some pristine pond Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms in its tidal fringe Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck into the body of a Great Lake, Swilling whatever it is swans swill, Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud, […]...
18. LEEDS O my beloved city, How many times have I deserted you For the sights and sounds of Babylon? How often and from how far Have I conjured your broad boulevards O Quartier Latin, crowded street cafйs With white and scarlet awnings, gold Adornings on stone cupolas, Byzantine domes And plinths of equine statuary before The […]...
19. The Poet The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry His power is his left hand It is idle weak and precious His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience And this he may be destroyed by the gold […]...
20. Coole Park, 1929 I meditate upon a swallow’s flight, Upon a aged woman and her house, A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night Although that western cloud is luminous, Great works constructed there in nature’s spite For scholars and for poets after us, Thoughts long knitted into a single thought, A dance-like glory that those walls begot. There […]...
21. September, The First Day Of School I My child and I hold hands on the way to school, And when I leave him at the first-grade door He cries a little but is brave; he does Let go. My selfish tears remind me how I cried before that door a life ago. I may have had a hard time letting go. […]...
22. TO LEEDS BIG ISSUE SELLERS When I come from the Smoke to visit my son on the ward I see you everywhere: by the station, by the neon sign of ‘Squares’ By every shopping mall. Leeds seems to have more of you than anywhere: How do you stand there for so many hours in freezing winds When most you solicit […]...
23. In the Park You have forty-nine days between Death and rebirth if you’re a Buddhist. Even the smallest soul could swim The English Channel in that time Or climb, like a ten-month-old child, Every step of the Washington Monument To travel across, up, down, over or through you won’t know till you get there which to do. He […]...
24. FOR JAMES SIMMONS Sitting in outpatients With my own minor ills Dawn’s depression lifts To the lilt of amitryptilene, A double dose for a day’s journey To a distant ward. The word was out that Simmons Had died eighteen months after An aneurism at sixty seven. The meeting he proposed in his second letter Could never happen: a […]...
25. Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying Poetry is a kind of lying, Necessarily. To profit the poet Or beauty. But also in That truth may be told only so. Those who, admirably, refuse To falsify (as those who will not Risk pretensions) are excluded From saying even so much. Degas said he didn’t paint What he saw, but what Would enable […]...
26. A School Song “Let us now praise famous men” Men of little showing For their work continueth, And their work continueth, Broad and deep continues, Greater then their knowing! Western wind and open surge Took us from our mothers Flung us on a naked shore (Twelve bleak houses by the shore. Seven summers by the shore! ) ‘Mid […]...
27. Epistle to Neruda Superb, Like a seasoned lion, Neruda buys bread in the shop. He asks for it to be wrapped in paper And solemly puts it under his arm: “Let someone at least think That at some time I bought a book…” Waving his hand in farewell, Like a Roman rather dreamily royal, In the air scented […]...
28. The School Boy I love to rise in a summer morn, When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the sky-lark sings with me. O! what sweet company. But to go to school in a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn. The little ones spend […]...
29. The Old Bark School It was built of bark and poles, and the floor was full of holes Where each leak in rainy weather made a pool; And the walls were mostly cracks lined with calico and sacks – There was little need for windows in the school. Then we rode to school and back by the rugged gully-track, […]...
30. The Park The prosperous and beautiful To me seem not to wear The yoke of conscience masterful, Which galls me everywhere. I cannot shake off the god; On my neck he makes his seat; I look at my face in the glass, My eyes his eye-balls meet. Enchanters! enchantresses! Your gold makes you seem wise: The morning […]...
31. Presences This night has been so strange that it seemed As if the hair stood up on my head. From going-down of the sun I have dreamed That women laughing, or timid or wild, In rustle of lace or silken stuff, Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read All I had rhymed of that monstrous […]...
32. Genius Genius, like gold and precious stones, Is chiefly prized because of its rarity. Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild, Incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, And get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter. Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres Far above the vulgar world and fills his soul With regal contempt for […]...
33. The School of Night What did I study in your School of Night? When your mouth’s first unfathomable yes Opened your body to be my book, I read My answers there and learned the spell aright, Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess What spirits it raised nor where their questions led. Those others, familiar tenants of […]...
34. A Ramble in St. James's Park Much wine had passed, with grave discourse Of who fucks who, and who does worse (Such as you usually do hear From those that diet at the Bear), When I, who still take care to see Drunkenness relieved by lechery, Went out into St. James’s Park To cool my head and fire my heart. But […]...
35. Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Muses Nothing is given which is not taken. Little or nothing is taken which is not freely desired, freely, truly and fully. “You would not seek me if you had not found me”: this is true of all that is supremely desired and admired… “An enigma is an animal,” said the hurried, harried schoolboy: And a […]...
36. Preface This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, dominion or power, except War. Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry […]...
37. Orphan School Full fifty merry maids I heard One summer morn a-singing; And each was like a joyous bird With spring-clear not a-ringing. It was an old-time soldier song That held their happy voices: Oh how it’s good to swing along When youth rejoices! Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone, They passed again ungladly. Their […]...
38. Poetry And Religion Religions are poems. They concert Our daylight and dreaming mind, our Emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture Into the only whole thinking: poetry. Nothing’s said till it’s dreamed out in words And nothing’s true that figures in words only. A poem, compared with an arrayed religion, May be like a soldier’s one short marriage night […]...
39. At a Poetry Party I Am Given the Rhyme Chih Although I’ve studied poetry for thirty years I try to keep my mouth shut and avoid reputation. Now who is this nosy gentleman talking about my poetry Like Yang Ching-chih Who spoke of Hsiang Ssu everywhere he went....
40. The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me Snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting You were beautiful; goodbye, Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain Brown envelopes for the return of your very Clinical Sonnet; goodbye, manufacturer Of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues Give the fullest treatment in literature yet To the sagging-breast motif; goodbye, you […]...