Monday 21 October 2013

Poem of the week - Signing Love

This poem is from my Tango Apocalypso collection.  It’s called Signing Love.  I have worked for many years with people with learning and physical disabilities, and have sometimes (rather clumsily) had to use sign language myself to communicate, and have always been inspired by the beauty of signing; the movement of the hands when deaf people communicate, the expressive contact of their eyes and face.  As a few of the actors I was working with were deaf, it made me want to write a love poem about two deaf people declaring their love for each other through their own language of signing… I hope you like it.

SIGNING LOVE


Your fingers are lips

Your arms a ripple of passion

Your mouth moves

And I can hear your silence whisper to me

Your hands are moving so delicately

Like butterflies

Like birds in a bell-jar

You are signing your love for me

And it's beautiful!

Thursday 12 September 2013

Tough

My daughter recently graduated as a textile designer with a first class honours degree and I am so proud of her.  She has since exhibited twice in London and has been invited to a prestigious event in Paris this weekend as one of the top graduates in her field to exhibit there too, plus she has a fantastic opportunity interning for a company in London.  I am really excited for her, and I desperately need to be earning a decent wage to help with the rent of her flat.  However, work at the moment is in short supply, and a troublesome persistent cough has also sent me back to hospital for a chest x-ray.  I’ve lost about a stone in weight in a very short time, but of course it could also be down to stress (I hope so).  So, more hospital appointments, blood tests and so forth.  Life keeps throwing things at me; I get up ready to have another crack at earning a crust, but then something else comes along and kicks me in the face, and I somehow have to struggle to my feet and carry on again.  But I have to admit I feel weary at the moment, weary and tired, and just hope like my friend in hospital for a chink of light.  I so want to be positive for Lucy and be there for her, but in spite of me trying hard to fake it, I’m not great company at the moment.  Life is so bloody tough sometimes. 

Wednesday 11 September 2013

Poem Of The Week - Autumn Is Coming

I guess everyone remembers where they were when they heard the terrible news of when two aeroplanes crashed into the world trade centre.  Today of course is the anniversary of that tragic and needless event that made the world a different place and lit the fuse for unimaginable conflict in the Middle East too.  I heard the news from my wife who called me on my mobile while I was walking through Wales with a friend and his dog, tracing the path of the River Severn.  We had to make a diversion for a while, and join the river at a different point, and I can remember clearly how beautiful and breath taking it looked as we suddenly walked through a coppice and began to descend into the valley below, where the sun sparkled on the river and made one feel grateful just to be there and see it.  Sarah rang me from the school where she taught, and said that parents were arriving to pick up their kids telling horrendous stories of a tower or something in America that had been hit by an aeroplane.  Sure enough when we eventually reached a small town and stopped at a pub for some refreshment, the bar was crowded with people staring disbelievingly as those now iconic images of the two planes crashing into the towers were played over and over again.  This is the poem I wrote that night when we arrived at our guest house.


AUTUMN IS COMING


The wind is keen
And the sky is bright and clear
The fields around are as green as Eden
The leaves on the trees in the nearby coppice
Tinkle a dry song
Apprehensive of the coming autumn fall

As I turn the bend over the hill
The river suddenly comes into sight
And it’s beautiful

The sun has dropped diamonds on the surface
And the river dazzles
Takes my breath away
Makes me stop and gaze
And be thankful that I am here
Feeling the wind blow around my head
Hearing the trees whispering their autumn song
Feeling the damp grass
Carpet my way down to the valley floor
To the banks of the flowing river

And I say to myself
Remember this moment
Remember where you are and how you feel
Remember how the wind blows around your head
How the trees sound as they sway slowly in the distance
How the grass feels like a carpet beneath your feet
Remember how normal and unique this moment is
How nature still endures
And surprises us with its magical paint box
Studding a river with jewels
Stopping a man in his tracks
Making him gaze with wonder and gratitude

Remember

For moments like these are as rich and rare
As a pearl rescued from the bottom of a cold, deep sea

Because the world is a different place now
And will never be the same again

Two aeroplanes
Two towers
And the world has changed

From across the sea
Thousands of miles from here
Where the trees whisper
And the wind makes the grass dance
Thousands of miles from here
Where a river in a valley shines like a rope of light
Far from here
Where the landscape breathes peace into the air
Far from here
A City is bleeding
Children are crying
Dust is falling
Their parents are dying

Autumn is coming

Sunday 8 September 2013

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.

Thursday 22 August 2013

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.

Tuesday 20 August 2013

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?

Wednesday 10 April 2013

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.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

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.