Me and poetry 1974 to 1977
The first poem of mine published in a magazine was ‘A soiled relationship’ 1974. It was published in the spirit duplicated magazine Bogg, issue 26. In the following issue, American John Elsberg wrote in the magazine – he liked the poem and understood what I was trying to do with it (all is in the breath, all is in the line, like drama, like an event).
In1974 I joined The Haverhill Poetry Group (a group of four, run by Joe Sheerin). We held readings at Great Dunmow High School in Essex and at the Haverhill Folk Club. Via my Stable Press, in 1975, we published ‘Four,’ a selection of our poetry.
Joe Sheerin was a teacher and an excellent poet, who said something curious which, said all those years ago, still gets me thinking: “There’s no such thing as good and bad writing. There’s just writing.” Though I felt part of a counter-culture, expressed through the growing network of little magazines, not even the most experimental of Underground poets ever challenged the notion of “good” writing which Joe challenged. I believe he meant that every voice counts, not just those on high or born to it.
In 1975 my poetry was published in a Hilltop Press anthology, and Contac, Doris, Sandwiches, Radix and Strath magazines. I also read with the Suffolk Poetry Society at the old Tower Street theatre, in Ipswich.
I also published ‘Foot on the beach,’ a hand-set letterpress booklet, which consisted of twenty poems. I sold all 100 copies! Not enough to make up what I had spent out on materials and equipment, but an incentive to carry on. It received some praise but the tag of “juvenile poetry” stuck.
Undaunted, my next task was to set up my own duplicated magazine, to properly feel part of the network. The first issue of Stable magazine came out in the Autumn of 1975. There was poetry from Colin Nixon, Andrew Darlington, George Cairncross, Zoe Tucker, Steve Sneyd, Aidan Semmens, Hugh McKinley, Nicki Jackowska, Robin Maunsell, Max Noiprix, Wendy J Evans, Margaret May and others. There were also articles and short reviews.
I also included work by Sudbury friends Steve Buckledee and Richard Dunning.
1975 was one of my toughest years. My friend Lynne was killed in a car crash. She was nineteen. This event left a life-long shadow. For most of the summer I suffered panic attacks and I struggled to walk sometimes. Antidepressants didn’t really help.
Though all my print and duplicating equipment was in Clare, I now really wanted to be elsewhere. I had no car, so travelling was a bus. Once, I suffered a really bad panic attack on an Eastern Counties sprinter or such, and had to get the driver to let me out a couple of miles short of Sudbury.
I’d kept up contact with some of the Ipswich School of Art students from my failed course, so Ipswich was my obvious destination. There were a number of failed attempts to move. I ended up at the YMCA for several weeks – and even took part in drama classes run by these Christian folk but ultimately failed to find a bedsit of my own. Then the money ran out.
It wasn’t until spring 1976 that I properly moved to Ipswich with a quite central bedsit off Portman Road.
Once in town, I knew I wanted to be part of a poetry group. Set it up myself, perhaps? I made my intent known to Eastern Arts (Irene MacDonald) and the local Evening News that I wanted to set up a poetry workshop. Also, I’d gathered a few names together via the little magazines of those who might be interested – John Row, Frank Wood, Robin Maunsell and Keith Dersley among them. I met up with a few. Keith Dersley was then working at the central Post Office. I waited in the queue with a letter until his counter was free. Perhaps not enthused in the instant, Keith said he would come along to a ‘founding’ first meeting.
Frank Wood and I had a couple of early meetings and then we set a weekly date for meetings at the Gatacre Road Drama Centre, which is now the St. John Mill’s Theatre. Fixed as a Thursday evening, 7pm to 9pm, the idea was to have a formal/critical style workshop one week, and an experimental/performance session the next. So, the Ipswich Poetry Workshop was born.
From the outset, Frank adopted the chairman’s role, while I was some kind of secretary. Frank had some excellent links to poets up north and, before even the first workshop took place, Eastern Arts promised to support IPW in staging a reading by Jim Burns in The Swan pub.
After a dirty, sweaty day in the sweet factory, I remember meeting Irene from Eastern Arts in that very pub at 5.15pm one weekday evening and the event was organised.
Ipswich was ripe for such a workshop in 1975. From small numbers, IPW grew rapidly and as many as twenty gathered at the Drama Centre each week.
I produced the first worksheet of members’ poems on October 6, 1976 – poems from Frank Wood, John Rooney, Keith Dersley, Stephen K Smy, Mary Nobbs, Berthram Bay, Jan Auton, Mark Jarman, Brendon Pearson, Richard Rhimes, John Row and myself.
It was a labour of love typing up the poems and duplicating them every other weekend but I was dedicated. Oh for a photocopier!
Through 1976 I had fourteen poems published in little magazines, including Iron and Pick mags.
The Ipswich Poetry Workshop wasn’t just a place to read and pick over poems, or read and perform to the group – like some religious incantation – we were keen to hold public readings and performances of our work. Our debut was at the Gardener’s Arms, Felixstowe Road, 6th December 1976.
I had reached my immediate goal. So, finally, in the second half of 1976 I had set up a press, started a magazine, helped to forge a poetry group and had begun to read my poetry to an audience… however small!
So, it was going to be a good Christmas, except, as the four of us gathered in Clare my dad announced, at the age of 49, he had bowel cancer and faced a ten hour operation in the new year to stand any chance of survival.
In the next podcast I will chat about the poetry workshop, The Cambridge Poetry Festival and my first paid gig in London, set against provincial life at the time of the Jubilee, 1977. Here’s a taste of it:
Corn dolly dole queue blues
Today I’ve been living off chestnuts
Gathered last Sunday week,
Thick sliced Sunblest and Vegemix
Instead of meat.
I’d have scoffed the lot real quick
But there’s only tuppence
On the mantle piece
And I’m living off unpressurized gas.
The half pint of Charrington Bass
The social security official saw me with
Was bought by a friend – the cigarettes as well.
I go up there to get money
And they give me
bloody hell.
Stef and I in the Corn Dolly
Discuss the National Front, (spit)
The state of the cups of tea in here
And the tycoons who spin the punk.
Then off to the Mason’s Arms
To turn on our charms
With women who tempt our dreams.
So we failed again this week.
Our poverty is a commodity
Too difficult to sell.
I go up there to get money
And they give me
bloody hell.