Poem Of The Week - It Is Time To Return To The source

 THE RIVER SEVERN POEMS

A series of poems commissioned by BBC Radio 4 in the voice of the River Severn, voiced by Jane Lapotaire for three plays called - Plays Of The Severn, including - A magnificent Prospect Of The Works by Peter, Roberts, Just Another Tunnel by Christopher Denys, and A Little Bit o' Bacon Fat by Martyn Read in December 2000. 

The plays charted the course of Britain's longest river through history and landscape; the voice of the river ran through each play.  The poems were also added to with a journey I later undertook to trace the course of the river from its source to the sea.  So this poem, It Is Time To Return To the Source wasn’t written for any of the plays, but was my personal reflection on walking the length of the Severn, understanding the purpose of a river; and I suppose it could also be seen as a metaphor for how seemingly small insignificant moments in our lives can also be important, and touch others without us even realising it as we all walk inevitably to our journey’s end.

IT IS TIME TO RETURN TO THE SOURCE

It is time to return to the source of the river

To go back to the beginning

Where muddy water bubbles up

through the soggy earth

And trickles its way over stones

worn smooth with the sculptor's soft caress

It is time to trace my way back

To find the meaning of a river

And see how a tiny cut

Bleeds a puddle into a stream,

into a river, into a sea

Here is a journey of patience

The earth has opened a tiny vein

To feed an artery

To fill the heart of an estuary

And breathe life along its way

And I can feel time

calling me back to the source

To see how simple things

can become grand and important

To see how a muddy puddle

can become an ocean

and make a whole planet live.

Poem of the week

I have written a great deal of poetry over the years; some was commissioned for various plays and projects, some were in the form of  poetic text in the body of a play, and some I just wrote because I wanted to.  I’ve kind of given up trying to get them published, and so I thought I may as well just put them out there and see what people think.  So I’ve decided to post a poem every week, and where appropriate include a short paragraph explaining the idea or inspiration, and from then on simply list the collection name.  So here’s the first one from a play called Tango Apocalypso - a book of poetry, commissioned for The Shysters Theatre Company for their play, Tango Apocalypso.  The poetry was there to inspire the action and plot, which was a mixture of mime and dance, and was about 'love' - the poems ranged from romantic to loss, from comic to tragic and everything in-between.  The audience were handed copies of the poetry at each performance.

YOU'VE GONE

You've gone

But you've left your print on my life,

I can hear you laugh through the roar of the traffic

And feel the touch of your hand

In the middle of the night.

I turn over, wandering how you can still touch me

Even though you're gone...

It makes me smile.

Clive Horrobin's Arse

Ain't blogged for a while, but loads has been happening.  I was fortunate enough to get selected from 1600 scripts for the channel 4 screenwriting scheme, and have spent months being mentored together with eleven other writers, and worked with a couple of brilliant script editors, and have spent a while writing and developing a six part drama series called Caring, inspired by work in children's homes.  I also wrote a play called Kidz for an Irish youth theatre, but unfortunately didn't have the funds to go and see it.  But below is the copy for the play...

"We're kids, and kids can be cruel.  We're all competing so much we forget how much harm we do to each other; there's all these rules about who you can be friends with and who's cool and who isn't and how you dress and what music you like and if you're good at sports, and a million other things...  It's tough being a kid, but one day we'll wake up and we'll be older and maybe then we can start getting on with our lives... I hope so anyway, because I've pretty much given up trying to fit in - it's fucking exhausting."

'Tackling weighty issues, including homophobia in schools, risky sexual relationships and bullying, Kidz takes an honest look at the exhausting rituals of growing up:  Painful, poignant, funny and sometimes tragic; a community of young people discover truthes about each other that will change their lives forever.'

I'm working hard at trying to get my work out there still, and pushing my script from channel 4, and I do actually have a meeting coming up with a company that may be interested, but it seems it's tougher than ever at the moment to get produced.  Recently my play, Canned Peaches In Syrup had a reading at the Joint Stock venue in Birmingham and the response was great - loads of laughter throughout and the feedback after was all really very positive.  Tessa Walker was there from Birmingham Rep and asked for a copy of the script; I've been sending stuff there for ages though and never get a response, but maybe this time something might happen?

            I did however, have to return to hospital again recently following quite worrying blood tests, and was subjected to yet more uncomfortable invasive investigations under local aenesthetic.  The consultant who was administering the endoscopy though was hilarious; he and the nurse were trying their best to distract me through the difficult and rather embarassing procedure, and so he asked me what I did for a living.  I told him I had a variety of jobs - a carer in children's homes, writer and actor.  It turned out he was a massive Archers fan, and when he discovered I played the infamous Clive Horrobin he grew quite animated, and so we discussed various Archers storylines and characters while stuck his probe up my bum and took what seemed like endless biopsies.  When he finished, the nurse quipped that he was always on about The Archers, and would probably be talking about this for weeks.  And I could just imagine him at a dinner party: "You'll never guess who's arse I was up last week?"  It doesn't bear thinking about!

            But seriously, the tests were unbearably worrying, given what I had been through, and the wait for results was excrutiating.  All was well in the end, and I was so relieved I went straight out and booked a holiday to Kephalonia; our first holiday abroad for many years, and it was just what we all needed: a restored Venetian house in a little harbour, great snorkelling, swimming, great food, and all with my two most favourite people in the world - my wife and daughter.

            I'm feeling great at the moment, and even helped get the hay in for a local farmer; really strenuous, back-breaking work, lugging bales onto a tractor and loading barns.  But the tests I'm afraid will continue, and I have another hospital appointment looming in the not too distant future.

            So as you can see, my life at the moment is complicated and bloody stressful; my work as a carer is not easy either; they're challenging kids, and sometimes things can kick off; I've found myself for instance running down a dual-carriageway into oncoming traffic, chasing after a girl who wanted to throw herself under a car.  I have also stood in the middle of the same road, stepping out in front of a speeding car that one of our girls had flagged down, and then had to face an angry kid with a steel bar in her hand and talk her down, while getting her to safety at the side of the road.  I've been kicked, punched and swore at, but sometimes I feel I've made a connection with a kid, and that just keeps me turning up for work.  But Christ, it's emotionally draining work, and after a difficult day with a kid with challenging behaviour I do wonder just how long I can keep turning up for shifts.  Be great if the phone would ring soon though, and someone would say - "Just read your script; you're a genius; we want to put your play on and pay you shitloads of dosh!"  Please?

Society won't be mourning.

My brother has been quite ill and so I decided to drive over to Wednesbury, my home town in the Black Country and treat him to lunch.  It was great to catch up, particularly as my younger brother also joined us later for a pint.  While we were catching up though a cheer suddenly went up in the pub, which I discovered was a reaction to a newsflash on a nearby TV screen announcing the death of Baroness Thatcher.  A bit later on, an old lady, a bit unsteady on her feet came in and ordered some food at a table opposite; when her fish and chips arrived, she leaned over and said - "Can you get me the salt and vinegar please, young man?"  When I took the condiments to her table she grinned at me and asked, "Have you heard the good news?"  Thatcher was pretty much detested in the Black Country for systematically destroying the steel industry.  Myself, my dad and my brother all at some time worked in the steel mills, and I can still remember the devastating impact it had on the community when following long months of strikes she destroyed the unions and the very livelihood of a town with a long proud history of manual labour in an industry that had defined the whole area.  My dad was a furnace bricklayer at the nearby Patent Shaft Steelworks, and was a broken man when his trade was deemed no longer useful.  He eventually found alternative employment, but the pride he and others like him had in their work was cruelly taken away by a woman whose 'market economy' policies took no account of the traditions of the working class man, and I can affirm that the town has never really recovered from the closures to this day.  Thatcher recklessly announced that there was no such thing as society; but there was and still is in spite of all the damage she did in her time as Prime Minister.  Her policies were indeed radical, and were so far reaching they even inspired a Labour Prime Minister named Tony Blair to continue the assault on the welfare state and the ordinary working man and woman.  Let's not forget it was his labour government for example that introduced tuition fees.  And now we have a truly radical right-wing coalition that is doing all it can to privatise the NHS, as well as denying the poor and dispossessed the right to legal aid and taxing them for having an extra bedroom - all Thatcher's legacy...  Like everyone else in that Black Country pub, I shan't be mourning her passing.

Kids In Care

There was a news story today that made me furious; which states that police are no longer prioritising searches for children who go missing from children's homes.  I have been working for some time now as a care worker in children's homes around Hereford and Worcester and only this week at a home I where I was doing a late shift, a fifteen-year-old girl ran off, and was later found by police with an older man in a hotel in Birmingham.  If she hadn't been found heaven knows what might have happened as this particular girl has a history of being exploited, particularly by an Asian gang of seven men, who it is believed are still at large; it's a sad fact that kids like this can fall into the hands of potential abusers very quickly.  Once again it's the poor and dispossessed who are paying the price for austerity cut backs - the bed tax is appalling enough, but this is surely one step too far.  The kids I work with sometimes present difficult and challenging behaviour, but this is because they are vulnerable and need our protection; it's not their fault they're in care; in most cases it's because of their parents, so why should they be treated like they're a problem?  But in future the definition of 'missing people' will be changed to 'absent' or missing after a risk assessment has been carried out, so police do not have to respond to every call out.  I am passionate about my work with these kids, and the carers who have been doing it a lot longer than me are to my eyes saints; they take abuse both physical and verbal from them and still battle for the souls of these neglected and abandoned young people.  We need every law at our disposal to help them, but now a vital service is being limited and I think the consequences could be disastrous.  The girl who ran away later asked me if anyone really cared that she had gone.  I assured her we all did; I had driven to the local station train station and had searched around town myself.  However it seems to me with this new definition of missing persons, that their safety isn't such big a priority any more as far as our government are concerned.  Whoever came up with this proposal - shame on your head.

River's Up

When the Larsen B ice shelf (an area the size of Wales) broke away from the Antarctic continent before the last millennium I knew the game was up as far as the environment was concerned, so I wrote River's Up commissioned by Alan Ayckbourn for the Stephen Joseph Theatre, about a middle-aged couple who lived by the River Severn in Worcester, who suddenly find themselves caught up in a cataclysmic global event when the flood waters don't recede.   It has since been produced by the Swan Theatre, Worcester, had a critically acclaimed BBC Radio production, two sell-out productions in Rome, where it is called Effetto Serra, and a rural tour with Oxfordshire Theatre Company, 2009.  It is sobering to think I wrote this play back in 2000, before the recent dreadful flooding in Worcester, when I found myself stuck in my home town of Malvern completely surrounded by water and cut off from the outside world.  Following the recent floods over the last couple of weeks (which are now becoming an annual occurrence), I thought I might try and plug the play again and try and get another production; but it is notoriously difficult for lesser known playwrights to get second productions, for some reason theatres like to have world premieres of plays.  But the play has proved itself and the subject matter is current, and as far as I am concerned really important.  I have been an environmental campaigner for as long as I can remember; more especially involved with Greenpeace, and therefore the state of the planet is something I have been writing about for some time, it's is an issue I feel passionately about and have been addressing dramatically for many years.  The first play I wrote touching on this subject was Canned Peaches In Syrup, a Romeo And Juliet story concerning a cannibal and vegetarian tribe set in a world fractured by global warming, which I wrote in the dressing room of the Birmingham Rep. This play has had many readings in this country, but no production here yet; a couple of near misses though, including the offer of a production at Nottingham Playhouse following a week of workshopping, but my agent at the time turned it down for a (supposedly) better opportunity which sadly never came off.  But the play had its world premier in America some years ago with fantastic reviews and was published there too; there was also a great production of the play in Italy.  I've been pushing this play for a while and more particularly River's Up, and always have great feedback; a few years ago though the literary manager of a major theatre contacted me after reading River's Up to tell me how much he'd enjoyed it, but couldn't offer a production as they had just been offered a script that was similar; "Actually," he said, sounding a little confused, "It's really very similar, amazingly similar in fact."  He then asked me about the history of the play and was suddenly very guarded about their upcoming production and steadfastly refused to reveal the name of the writer.  The production never happened, but alarm bells were ringing for me.  It's tough when things like this happen, and the possibility that someone out there might be simply ripping off your work is something that is so upsetting it can ruin you as a writer; make you depressed and question the point of writing anything at all.  So I'm still forging ahead with that play, and hope that I can get its message out there again, because as I said, the issues are really heartfelt.  Below is the synopsis:

'Tom and Sally Millington’s house is about to be flooded yet again!  Sally is worried and blames the icebergs, though Tom seems more concerned about the drunken Brummie revellers he has to sail up the Severn every weekend on his disco-boat.  But this time the water level shows no sign of retreating, and before long they’re drifting around a watery Worcester searching for the Malvern Hills.  Perhaps their resourceful son-in-law, Darren has made it to France with Caroline and little Sean and Jessica - it's a long way, but what choice do they have?  The irrepressible Millington's begin to realise they are witnessing the results of a global cock-up.  Join them on their poignant journey in a dilemma that pits them against cataclysmic odds in a comic/tragedy of epic proportions...'

You've got to laugh

I bumped into a local guy yesterday whom I hadn't seen for some time.  He asked how I was, so I told him 'I was doing fine now thanks.'  He hadn't heard that I'd been in hospital and had surgery, so I explained that I was recovering from cancer.  He asked me what kind and when I told him, he looked shocked and said, "Christ, you poor sod, it's incurable, that one!"  Since my diagnosis there's been many an occasion when someone has unintentionally 'put their foot in it' when I told them about my condition: my neighbour for instance noticed that I was looking a bit peaky and when I explained my diagnosis, she blurted out, "No, my dad died of that!" and then quickly added, "Oh, but you won't!"  I later had a card from her with the cheery message - "Let's hope they've got it in time!"  The night before I was admitted, my brother rang, "Well," he asked thoughtfully, "how do you think the operation will go?"  "Well Steve," I answered, "I'm hoping that it goes well."  When I finally got home following surgery and many complications, my sister rang to see how I was settling in, informing me that a cousin of ours we hadn't seen for many years had exactly the same cancer.  "How did it go?" I asked, totally sympathising with anyone who had to go through what I had suffered for many long weeks, "They got it," she told me, "but it came back again," she continued with dead pan seriousness.  Obviously it wasn't something I wanted to hear at that particular moment, and so I ended the call rather quickly.  Realising it probably wasn't a very good idea to break such uncomfortable news while I was still recovering, she rang back to tell me that - "They got it the second time, though... and er, I think he's all right now... but I haven't heard from him for ages so I can't be absolutely sure, but I think he's in the clear."  And when a mate of mine from Birmingham heard I was going to hospital, she rang to wish me luck, while assuring me that she wouldn't be praying for me because God doesn't exist.  I have to say the best reaction to my illness was the night I told my fellow band members.  After rehearsal, the night before my hospital admission I informed them I wouldn't be hanging out with them for a while and that I had colon cancer.  The room fell silent, no one knew quite what to say, but eventually our drummer announced, "I'm not surprised, you've had this coming is all I can say - I've told you about shoving bottles up your arse!"  Brilliant!  The one quip that literally made me laugh out loud, irreverent and totally what I needed at that moment...  By the way, the bottle thing - it's not true.