Autobiography

There were of course both mandatory and optional courses at University. The pure maths course and the applied maths course were compulsory as were a number of others not mentioned in this poem. We also had to choose a course taught outside the maths department from a list provided. I chose, because I'd done it at A-level, a physics course but almost immediately regreted it. Almost anything would have been better.

That's because the one thing that all our courses had in common was that they were all delivered by lecturers who, let's be generous, had their distinctive styles.

Lecturers

The pure maths lecturer
Entered the room barefoot
And wearing a Kaftan
As if it were still nineteen-sixty,
And flower-power and peace and love
Held sway on campus.
But it was nineteen-seventy-seven
And punk was in the ascendant.
He sat cross-legged on the desk
And asked a question,
"Why is the set of all left socks
Poorly defined?"
No one answered him.
He seemed disappointed.

The applied maths lecturer
Entered the room in a tweed jacket
With leather elbow-patches
As if he were a geography teacher,
And we were uniformed schoolchildren
In a secondary class.
But we had left all that behind.
He handed out sheets of notes
And lectured with his back to the room
In a droning mumble.
Thankful for the photocopied sheets,
From that day on,
We took turns to collect them.
He seemed not to notice.

The physics lecturer
Was always there before the start
Impatiently waiting for us to sit
Expecting us to listen attentively,
As we all wished we'd chosen differently
From the optional courses.
And he went on past the end,
Frowning at our impatience,
Expecting us to stay through lunch,
Not once, but always,
As we all packed our bags,
Put on our coats,
Drummed fingers on empty desks.
He seemed to be angry.

I entered every room
With diminishing eagerness
As the terms crept slowly past me
And my knowledge edged upwards
In inverse ratio to my enthusiasm
For my chosen subject.
I slowly narrowed my options
As surely as they slowly narrowed me,
Restricted myself to computer courses
Not one, but all of them
Looking for something
That might be useful
From the from the fairground lucky-dip
Of mathematics.

Autobiography

Well, just as I had passed my eleven plus at primary school, I passed my A-levels at secondary school sufficiently well to progress to University. At the time I was still something of a homebody, reflected in the fact that I applied to the five closest Universities and ended up at the closest  of all - which, in those days before the Government decided to rename half the educational establishments in the country as Universities, was The University of Birmingham.

In the first year I had a room on the eleventh floor of High Hall, in the back corner looking down at the bus stop and along the road. Unlike many I didn't find University an especially marvellous experience and I didn't make many friends. I haven't seen, heard from or spoken to a single person I was there with since the day I walked out of the place. That may be partly due to moving away to work in London but frankly if there had been a will there would have been a way. There just wasn't that much of a will.

Anyway, this is a poem called Eleventh Floor Solitary Blues. It's a new(ish) poem but I've tried to put myself into the frame of mind I was in while I was there to give an accurate flavour of the experience. It also reflects the fact that I had by then had the "wintertime" and the "party in another town" mentioned in a previous poem in this sequence but never managed, in three years to find anyone else.

Eleventh Floor Solitary Blues

There is music playing softly in another room
A wailing blues guitar
I'm staring through my window at a gibbous moon
And wishing on a star
I wonder where you are
I wonder who you are

I can hear the sound of laughter that's down in the street
Eleven floors below
I've got nowhere to go and I've got no one to meet
And I'm feeling rather low
I really ought to go
But there is nowhere to go

There is a poster of a pyramid hanging on the wall
From an album by Pink Floyd
I make a cup of coffee and I wonder why it all
Gets me so annoyed
That it all seems such a void
A bleak and endless void

And waiting on my desk's a lot of work I ought to do
But I just don't have the will
I take a walk out in the dark and I try to think it through
The lake looks black and chill
As I stroll on down the hill
Just once more down the hill

And in the student houses there are parties going strong
It's what I thought this time would be
But no matter what I thought it seems that I was wrong
I guess that's only me
It's everything I see
It's all the things I see

It's getting rather late and the night is turning cold
So I turn myself around
As I head back to my room I'm feeling much too old
And much too tightly wound
And on unstable ground
On ever-shifting ground

I lie down on my bed and keep on listening to the night
And wonder why I'm here
By the time I fall asleep again it's already getting light
And now that dreams are near
All my troubles disappear
See my worries disappear

Autobiography

I pondered whether to put this in "Autobiography" or elsewhere but it is autobiographical so, although it's back at the time of my infant school days again, that's where I've put it.

Today, on a whim, instead of turning left and going to the supermarket I turned right and went down by my old primary school. I had my camera with me and I intended to take a picture of my infant school. Sadly, since last time I went that way, it has been demolished. It was damaged some years ago in an accident and has been closed ever since but I hadn't realised that they had actually demolished it.  I continued down the short walk that I used to have to my home, no more than two or three minutes away. 

When I got back home I decided to put down the experience as a poem. Here it is.

I close my eyes and overlay the past upon the present
trying to be the child who once stood here;
but he is gone, as is the world whose ghost
paints shadow pictures in my head of how it was.

There is an empty lot, surrounded by boards;
signs that say, "Danger", "Keep Out", "No Trespassing"
and a chain link fence to reinforce the message
that this ground is forbidden now to everyone.

But this was where my first school stood
where in my mind the old brick building's standing yet
where I am letting go of my mother's hand
and entering a world of strangeness and strangers.

This was where I was promoted from bystander to king
in the Christmas nativity, when the king got measles;
and where I was the Knave of Hearts in cardboard chains
with two lines of dialogue I remember to this day.

I shake my head and walk away, cross the old railway bridge
and turn into a cul-de-sac where memory tricks me
and the overlay is scarcely altered from the present
and I pause a moment, startled by the lack of change.

There, at the closed end,  is the entrance to the alley
that led me back home each day from school;
that was the limit of my infant explorations
and the very edge of the world in which I lived.

The alley leads me out into a world of change.
The houses standing here are in the world but not my head
and overlain upon the scene is just one house
that filled the whole ground where now a dozen stand.

In that house, with its gas mantle lights,
with its long thin garden and separate wash house,
with its high walls and fences and its guardian trees;
in that house I breathed my first breath, cried my first tears.

I close my eyes and overlay the past upon the present
trying to be the child who once stood here;
but he is gone, as is the world whose ghost
paints shadow pictures in my head of how it was.

Autobiography

Before we actually move my autobiographical series on to my University days let's stay briefly with my Secondary School but step out of the schoolyard and into the real world. Teen years are when we first discover the pleasures and pains of relationships. This poem will fit nicely in here as it's title might indicate but also, nicely in many years later when I was actually at a Garden Festival where there was an art exhibition. Beyond those details it's quite self-explanatory.
(And for the one single person reading this who may possibly recall the actual events of at least one of the verses, there is a little poetic license involved in the retelling.)

"First Love- In Flashback"

I saw her years later,
At an art exhibition:
Saw her drawings first
And knew the style,
Read the signature,
Remembered that she'd married,
Walked away before she returned;
Before she saw me.

I watched from the doorway
As she adjusted the position
Of the display,
And all the while,
From half a lifetime gone,
Inside my head I carried
Her, aged seventeen, and yearned
To alter history

I remembered the party
Where she'd appeared in front of me,
Repeatedly,
Waiting for my conversation
Where at last I'd spoken
Overcome my silent heart
And we'd had two years
To be together.

I remembered the riverbank
And the afternoon with three
Of her school friends
And three of mine, all on vacation,
Where with trivial tokens
We lied that we would never part,
As clouds drew slowly nearer
To change the weather.

I remembered the wintertime,
When she'd not returned my calls
And I'd not seen her,
And remembered the final meeting -
Another party in another town -
Where conversation that was bile
Disguised as banter;
Was all we'd had to say.

And I saw her all those years later,
Within the gallery walls,
And I watched for just a moment
A nostalgic glance, however fleeting,
Of a different life that might have been.
And for that brief while
Let fantasy supplant
Reality on a rainy day:
And I turned and walked away.

Autobiogrpahy

There ought to be a lot to say about my schooldays but there isn't. Which is kind of half the point of this very slight bit of exposition. The other half  of the point is to explain how I ended up studying maths at University. It's not very good. It just moves things on.

Long Division: Reprise

Though school days were not heaven
Neither were they hell,
And seven years slipped by
With little there to tell.
There were lessons I enjoyed
And lessons I did not
When examinations came
I took, and passed, the lot.
And everyone assumed
The course my life would take
And I walked along their path
As if I'd had no stake
In any of the choices
And as if each new transition
Had been decided years ago
By that simple long division.
So schooldays came and went
And I moved up and on
To study for my BSc
As if all choice had gone.
Mathematics, they decided
Was where my future lay
And so it was, for I behaved
As if I had no say.

Autobiography

Another poem that slots in earlier, slots in in fact very specifically to the day that I started at secondary school. On that day I was due to catch the 8:20 bus to school with a friend from the next street. As I was getting ready his older brother knocked on my door and said that he was getting the 8:05 instead. I ran as fast as could. It wasn't fast enough so I ended up going on my own on the 8:20 and though I wasn't late I wasn't happy.

First Day

I remember being late
My first day at big school
Or more accurately
I remember not being early
Which felt as bad.

I'd run for the bus,
The five passed eight
But I'd missed it
I'd thought my lungs
Would burst, I really had

And trailing,
Failing so soon
I'd had to catch the eight twenty
Which still got me there
Before the bell

But all my friends had preceded me
And I'd sat alone
On the later empty bus
And I hadn't thought
"Oh, well!",
I'd thought
"Oh, hell!".

Autobiography

And finally I'm getting back to my autobiography in verse. This return to an apparently abandoned project has been prompted because in May I will be having my farewell performance at Bilston Voices and I want to prepare something a little different, a little special, for it and have decided that the ideal thing would be an amble through my life in verse.

When we left it last I had just written about how bad I was at games lessons. There are, however, a couple of poems that need to slot in earlier. This is one of them. It's called "Freedom" and refers to an incident before I start primary school.



Freedom

In the marketplace a child slips from his mother's grasp,
And, for a moment, is free:
Free to dodge between adult legs:
Free to clamber over pallets of goods:
Free to be chased from the wrong side of stalls:
Free.
But then he looks around, suddenly alone
In a world full of people:
Alone to wonder where mother's gone:
Alone to stare up at distant faces:
Alone in desperation, needing familiarity:
Alone.
He begins to run, races from the market
Along the busy pavements:
Races on in purest, blindest instinct:
Races and retraces the route they'd come:
Races with racing heart and streaming eyes:
Races.
Home again he sits halfway up the stairs
And, energy spent, he weakly cries:
Sits in the narrow angled stairwell:
Sits with the door open, wanting his mother:
Sits until she finds him and, also crying,
Sits.

Autobiography

It's been quite some time since I posted to my autobiography in verse. When last we left it I had just started secondary school.
At secondary school I was just about as useless at sports and games as it's humanly possible to be without actually being dead. And that, as you will see, is what this poem is all about.

Games Lessons

Part 1: Three Pitches

On the first pitch all the players
Were the ones who knew the game;
Could kick a ball about and show some skill.
On the second pitch the players
Still had little cause for shame.
Though lesser in ability, they had the heart and will.

On the small pitch in the corner,
Were the ones who thought it dumb;
Who'd rather eat a worm than kick a ball:
And hiding in the library
With a letter from my mum,
I sat and read a book, ignored it all.

Part 2: X-Country

The route had been explained.
He'd drawn it up in chalk.
We looked out through the doorway, at the rain.
"It should take about an hour,"
He'd told us in his talk,
"To get from here to there and back again."

"Why's it called cross-country,
When it's all through an estate?"
Asked Steven, as we set off down the street.
We jogged just past the houses
To the corner shop, to wait.
We couldn't see the use of wearing out our feet.

Part 3: Athletic Support

I was useless with a discus.
I was useless with a shot.
I was useless at the long jump and the high.
I was too slow for the track,
But worst of all the lot -
With a javelin I could kill the passers-by.

I couldn't throw them far,
The things I had to throw.
The direction that they'd go no one could guess.
I might just achieve a zero,
If I dropped them on my toe,
Or throw them behind my back and score much less.

Autobiography

It's been a couple of months since I added a new autobiographical poem. This one may require some explanation for those unfamiliar with the British education system as it stood in the 1960s. Children moved from primary education to secondary education at the age of eleven. Exactly where they moved to was determined by an exam, called the eleven plus, that all children took at about that age. Passing it meant that you got to go to what was called a "Grammar School", failing it got you sent down the road to the "Secondary Modern" school and what was perceived (probably wrongly) as being an inferior education.

I passed my eleven plus and went on to Bilston Boys' Grammar School.

Long Division

Now, and now alone,
We will set your life in stone.
If you want to be the best
Then you have to pass the test.

As you walk out through the door,
We'll already have the score
And fifty years away
You'll be marked still by this day.

The friends you've had till now
Will be divided too, that's how
You will find that through the years
That your past just disappears.

*

It's the first day on the bus
Now you're either "them" or "us"
As the test has made the sides
So the uniform divides.

And you'll lose some more control
As you grow into the roll
In the school that was decided
By the answers you provided.

This moment of decision
Is a lifelong, long division
For the path that you're now on
Has now become the only one.

Autobiography

Random Scenes from Childhood

a wedding in the pub
.....windows lit green
..........barrels in the yard
...............mountaineers
lost in the market place
.....slip away unseen
..........pulse pounding hard
...............race home in tears
having tonsils out
.....gulping ice-cream
..........printing on sheets
...............trampoline bed
building a sandpit crocodile
.....mom’s pretended scream
...........“killing” it with feet
...............castle walls instead
visiting my gran
.....sunday afternoon
..........cakes and jelly
...............unfamiliar street
hiding in the alley
.....distant as the moon
..........butterfly belly
...............homeward retreat

Autobiography

Another poem written quite a long time ago, telling the true story of an incident in my first year at school.

The Naughty Chair

Apparently, aged five,
I cried,
And, unmoved by bribes
Or sighs,
Would not be denied.
The other children all
had had
A chance to sit where
Only bad
Children sat,
In the naughty chair
In the corner where
The class could stare
And glare.
But a goody two-shoes
From the start
I'd played no part
To put me there -
In the naughty chair
And so I cried
And cried and cried
And cried and cried
And made the teacher
At last decide
To let me sit
-At least for a bit -
In it.

Autobiography

Following on from the previous poem in this autobiographical sequence, this one is about that swing in the secret, forgotten part of the neighbour's garden. I wrote it quite a long time ago and am pleased to say that I see no pressing need to edit it now.


The Child on the Swing

Eyes closed, backward, forward,
backward ,forward
Sun warmed face and hands
Hypnotic rhythm

Traffic noises turn to surf
Breaking on golden sand
Mother's washing machine
A circling aircraft

Creaking chains, the crack
Of salt stained timbers,
As quicksilver waves
Propel the boat shorewards,

Towards the land,
Where it beaches,
And he wakes,
And rubs his eyes,
And runs indoors
For lemonade.

Autobiography

Continuing my autobiography in poetry.

I was by nature a solitary child. There was an alley at the end of the cul-de-sac that I lived on which led out to where the other kids played. I was far too timid to go and join them. Instead I had my own place, a completely enclosed area at the rear of our neighbours house that nobody went into. You could only get into it by climbing our tree and jumping over the fence.

Safe and Secret Places: Part 1 – Dream a life

Close your eyes and feel the heat
Of the sunlight on your face.
Nobody can find you here
In your safe and secret place.
Mother doesn’t know you're gone.
Father hasn’t missed you yet.
Every second in this place
Is a time you won’t forget.

In the corner of the garden
Behind a long forgotten fence
You found your safe and secret place
Without an adult audience.
The grass is overgrown and wild.
The swing stands patiently and waits
For the coming of a child
Who scales the rusty, padlocked gates.

Close your eyes and dream a life
In your safe and secret place
The world may seem too big and fast
But here, it’s you who sets the pace.
Outside you may be scared to run,
To turn the corner, join the game
But this place is yours and yours alone
Unquestioned by a counterclaim.

Dreaming A Life

I'm starting yet another ongoing project. Actually when I say starting, it isn't precisely true. I've been tinkering with this project on and off for quite a few years now: an autobiography entirely done in poetry.
Here's the plan.
I'll post a poem and, though I'm aware that the poems should stand by themselves, a couple of brief explanatory notes. The intention is to start from the 9th April 1957 (when I was born) and work forwards. Some of these poems already exist, others will be entirely new. And doubtless the project will come and go as my interest waxes and wanes but that's a problem for the future. Here then is the first poem, which mentions my birth and also provides an introduction. This isn't an existing poem. It's brand new, finished about ten minutes ago. I hope you like it.

Introduction: Synthesis

All things begin,
And this begins here
In a house divided
By walls and time.
A child cries out.
Then cries again
With a similar sound,
A wordless rhyme.
Unseen ripples
Fill the corners
And spread forwards
From then, to now
Through every second
Of every hour and day
And come to rest
Upon my brow.
I am the sum
Of all I have been
From that moment
Onward, to this
Of an ever
Widening
Ever spreading
Synthesis.

The only note that you might need to help with this is the reference in lines three and four to "divided by walls and time". This is a reference to the fact that I was born in a very old house that had been divided into two dwellings by building a wall down the middle of it -and a fence down the middle of the garden. The owners lived in the other half and we rented our half from them.