Happy bank holiday. I’m sure everyone is gathered around a BBQ waiting for this, or are you gathered round a radio listening to the last knockings of the football season? NB this post is being brought to you with half an eye on Arseblog live and the football coverage at the Grauniad. Also NB…other ways of amusing yourself/passing the time are available.
I can’t exactly remember why, but I think it may have something to do with a Mouthful of Air or The Verb podcast a while back where someone (possibly Paul Farley in the latter) mentioned John Clare, but it set me off thinking about how little I know about Clare or of his work. I’ve been wondering about him ever since I first read Brian Patten’s ‘A Fallible Lecture‘ from his collection, ‘Storm Damage‘
Wordsworth felt paranoic every time his
friend Coleridge came to visit him Coleridge
was famous for standing outside churches
bothering wedding guests by waving dead
albatrosses in their faces He also invented
marvellous excuses for not finishing his
poems Though Wordsworth cornered the
market in nature nothing he wrote had the
authenticity of John Clare, a Norfolk
peasant who was incarcerated in lunatic
asylums for 28 years after a doctor decided
he was insane through years addicted to
poetic prosings’ After his death it was
rumoured that a group of doctors wanted to
procure his corpse in order to open his brain
and find out where the poetry came from
Clare already knew where it came from:
from clods of earth and from watching
raindrops glittering on the backs of frogs.
We can spend a while pulling apart the above…For a start, John Clare isn’t a Norfolk lad, I think some of the line breaks aren’t great, and you can have your own opinions about Patten (He was one of the poets that got me into poetry so I will always love him. NB His last book was awful in my opinion, and I hope we see another proper collection from him as it has been too long since ‘Armada‘.), but the last three lines have always captivated me. I first read this about 20 years ago, so it’s taken me a long while to do anything about it, but after the podcast mentioned above I bought a copy of John Clare’s work. I think I’m going to love it. But the book has been sat on the TBR pile…it’s a relatively new addition, so other earlier purchases take precedence.
However, ole JC has sprung to mind several times this week, so I may have to make a start on that book sooner than planned.
Firstly, Jeremy Wikeley has written another of his Reithian (eg informative, educating and entertaining) posts. I urge you to read it here as its discussion of the welcomed-alignment between two movements within Judaism is as of much interest as its discussion of how the work of Robert Frost and one John Clare found their way into the Siddur.
That email arrived in my inbox at the start of the week. Chalk up one reference to John Clare (NB Arsenal have just chalked up their 4th goal…Now the bloody goals come, FFS).
Then, as is my wont, I grabbed a book off the TBR pile to take to work with me on Tuesday morning. The book I chose was perhaps subconsciously influenced by the email, but I chose ‘After Clare’ by William Thompson. William is another relatively new voice to me. I’d ordered his pamphlet within seconds of reading a few poems by him over at Wild Court. Two of these Wild Court poems have a home in the pamphlet. The last one I hope finds a home in a full collection from William at some point soon.
William is not a prolific user of the socials, but he was very kind enough to respond to my request for permission to post a poem from the pamphlet. I wasn’t sure which to choose as I had two in mind, but I decided to go with the poem below for the following very tenuous reasons.
In the last two weeks, I’ve been tagged into posts on Facebook by my friends Janet and Peter. It’s very clear that they have both been hacked. Janet and Peter are the parents of my friend Andrew. I have known Andrew since I was 11. Peter was my French teacher at high school. One summer, I think when we were somewhere between the ages of 14 -16, I filled in for Andrew at his summer job. His summer job was working at a butcher’s in our nearest town, North Walsham.
Two weeks of cycling to Walsham, donning the white coat and hat of a butcher, the smell of hot water and freshly minced beef together and the near constant making of tea for the butcher nearly put me off eating meat ever again, but I got over that.
(NB Arsenal has made minced meat of Wolves – it’s 5-0.)
Shall we have the poem?
Butchery
The sound of cleavers
is a judge’s gavel.
If you slide ten joints
into their vat-pack sleaves
your hands will sting.
Another twenty,
they’ll be raw. Thirty,
and at the touch
off polythene
your blood will burn.
You wear a fleece
under an apron
like Byzantine sheet mail.
To slice bacon,
the joints are only half-
thawed. Think
severed limbs defrosting
in Arctic snow.
+++++++++++++++++
Taken from After Clare, New Walk Editions, 2022. Published with the author’s permission. Had e a review from The Friday Poem too.
My thanks to William for his permission. There’s a level of constant violence or threat in this poem, and I love the way this poem stands out a little from the rest of the excellent pamphlet, the way it’s another way of viewing the natural world, the things we do to it and the things we go through to be able to do that. What would Clare make of this? What do you make of this? It also plays nicely into the thinking about poems written about work as discussed in previous posts passim.
It was then wonderful to be reading the last (that bit’s sad) issue Raceme on Wednesday and find a review of a book and then two poems by Jesse Bertron. I recall asking where are the plumber poets in a previous post and the universe has delivered. Bertron is a plumber’s mate (Not Plumbers Mait) and a poet. Ask and you shall receive. I won’t include the poem from Raceme here as I’d rather you buy the last issue from them, but you can find one of the poems here at Jesse’s own site too. Jesse’s pamphlet, A Plumber’s Guide To Light; doesn’t appear to be available in the UK at present, but I’ve written to him to see if that can be overcome. His work seems to me to sit neatly alongside that of BH Fairchild, also mentioned here recently.
I can’t say I have been a plumber anymore than I was a butcher (and have you seen my plumbing work – many would say that is butchery), but I can see a loose connection between Jesse’s work and that of William too.
We’ll stop there, but I will add a final weird connection. I was supposed to attend a poetry reading/mag launch on Friday evening—it was for Butcher’s Dog. Various dad taxi-ing jobs and the accidental consumption of too many pints put paid to that (NB pints after the taxi-ing), but if I’d bumped into Mark Butcher this weekend I would not have been surprised.
A Song that is in some vague way linked to something
THE LAST WEEK IN STATS
HEALTH STATS
20K running. Better, inc another 9K
2 days without cigarettes…
0 days since drinking.
LIFE STATS
1 more team entry for Dino Dash. Hope head doesn’t explode this time.
More paint-stripping
POET STATS
1 loose ideas/articles gathered (this allows me to kid myself I am writing all the time)
0 poems finished:
0 poems worked on:
0 poems committed to the reject pile
0 submissions:
0 withdrawal:
0 acceptances:
0 Longlisting:
0 readings:
0 rejections:
18 poems are currently out for submission. No simultaneous subs
83 Published poems
1 review finished:
0 reviews started:
1 review submitted:
2 reviews to write:
1 more week that I’m not having an affair with Eva Green
* To date, not this week. Christ!!
READ/SEEN/HEARD/ETC
Music r= Radio, A = Audiobook, P=Podcast. The rest is music
Monday
The Twilight Sad: No One Can Ever Know, Forget The Night Ahead, Nobody Wants To Be Here…
The National: Alligator, Boxer
Tuesday
The Archers (P)Foxhole Companion; The FCowboy Junkies Podcast (Eps 33-36)Cowboy Junkies: Black Eyed ManThe National: Cherry Tree, High Violet
Weds
The National: ST, Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers
Cowboy Junkies Podcast : ep 39-43 (p)
The Archers (P)
Thurs
The National: Trouble Will Find Me, Sleep Well Beast, I Am Easy To Find, The Last Two Pages of Frankenstein
VA: J-Jazz Deep Modern Jazz from Japan 1969-1984
BBC3 : Ligeti
Friday
Mogwai: Come On Die Young
Fridge: Happiness
Portastatic: Some Small History
Saturday
The Archers (P)
Cowboy Junkies Podcast 43-46 (P)
Mouthful of air: Luke Samuel Yates (P)
Planet Poetry: Greta Stoddart (P)
Flowers of Hell: Keshakhteran
The National: The Last Two Pages of Frankenstein, Sonic Juicy Magic
Sun
Dropsonde Playlist
The National: Sonic Juicy Magic
The Orielles: The Goyt Method
Butcher Boy: Profit In Your Poetry
Read
William Thompson: After Clare
Rebecca Farmer: A Separate Appointment
Rosalind Easton: Man Overboard
Charlotte Schevchenko Knight: Ways of Healing
Stephen Payne: The Wax Argument
Vasiliki Albedo : Fire In The Oubliette
Watched
Masterchef
Ted Lasso
Succession
Scandal (Watching R&F watching it)
Barry
Selling Sunset (guilty relapse)
Ordered/Bought
Paul Stephenson: Hard Drive
Rebecca Goss: Latch
Car insurance
Entrance to Crystal Palace Dino Dash run
A replacement cutlery basket for our dishwasher
Butcher’s Dog #18
Arrived
Paul Stephenson: Hard Drive
Rebecca Goss: Latch
Wear The Fox Hat 
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