Compliments at Spotlight for Dust Bunnies

I have had several people say how much they are enjoying the presentation of my work at the Spotlight for Dust Bunnies open mic night, and my sincere thanks for those remarks.

It seems that I have also stirred some controversy, especially with my reading of "Bare Door Calling" and "Conversations with Mary" and Bill was obviously put on the spot (by whom, I'm not sure) to speak to me about this. After he spoke to me, I was going to stay and read some of Dennis' work as I had planned, but the incident upset me a little.

Now, of course, I'm not naive and I am fully aware that my work has an edge - it is meant to provoke deep feeling, this is the nature of poetry. If you are not shaken by it, you are dead ... and so is the poet. The greatest compliment of all is that people are not only sufficiently moved to comment positively, but are also moved to object. Poets live for such objections.

I think what actually upset me most was Bill's observation that the venue is not a bar, as though my work belonged in one. I'm sure he didn't mean to offend, but after I thought about it, I was offended.

Right or wrong, I consider my work to be literature. It should also be very clear that my artistic integrity will rebel against any attempt to censor it.

I'll read Den's work another time.

Poetry Collaboration: Introducing Dennis

Dennis and I first met in the late 1970s, 1977 perhaps. We were both hanging out in the beach towns of Perranporth and St. Agnes in Cornwall, England. Beach gods, we were.

We were also part of the great unwashed of our generation, both pursuing the path of the impoverished poet. We had great ambitions and great expectations for our writing. We were the socialist aristocracy - which simply means we were supported by the confused socialist state which kept part of our generation idle. We were that part of the 12% or so that were mostly unemployed at the time, putting tax theft to the good and productive cause of art and study. At least there was work and beautiful women to be had in the summer, cheap accommodation and inspiring seascapes in winter.

Dennis (aka "Audi Maserati") and I worked together for several years in the early 1980s - an artistic collaboration that was born of our mutual respect and the contrast in our individual style. I note in retrospect that we both have strong and, perhaps, unconventional lyrical tones - something that is clearer when we perform because Dennis has a Northern accent (from Manchester) and I have clear London roots.

We performed a few times together as "Cas Et" with a notable performance at the St. Ives poetry festival - and collaborated thereafter on a variety of projects. I got distracted by family and a now necessary career, and Dennis left Cornwall for the London poetry scene in the mid-1980s.

Twenty years later, out of the blue, I get email ... watch this space.

Commentary on Commentary

It used to be the case that I believed that all art should stand alone without commentary. But in recent times I have reviewed this position and have started to post one or two contextual comments related to my poetry.

When performing I don't do this. I just perform the work and the audience is simply asked to accept it on its face value. That may be demanding of me. It may even be considered arrogant.

I have always rather admired Andy Warhol's approach to presenting art, but I have personally benefited from hearing Robert Rauschenberg discuss his work. So to compromise I am adding more commentary here.

Gone in a Second Commentary

When Sally was pregnant with Zen, Margaret Thatcher had ensured her station by declaring war on Argentina. It sounds as ridiculous now as it did then.

I was furious. The act was transparently political, but what distressed me most was the barrage of blood-lust and patriotism from the media. The BBC, in particular, were guilty of patent state propaganda and the unthinking population was falling for it, hook line and sinker. What outraged me as much as the clear manipulation by the state media, was this sad fact. Most people fell for it, they wanted a fight.

The poem "Gone in a second" was written while the whole thing was going on. The line "I felt sick, but I knew it had to be done" is a reference to the comments of the air force pilot that fired the first shot and brought down an Argentine plane, killing the pilot. This was a war with staging, it took time to prepare and weeks for the fleet to sail to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands, and vessels were subsequently sunk with the loss of many lives.

The child that was born the very next day was my son Zen - and this became his favorite poem when I performed - he used to call it "Blood."

The "Churchian folly" refers to the fact that it was Easter when the whole thing started and the Archbishop of Canterbury condoned the whole irrational mess. How's that for moral leadership?

Now you might not like to believe that elected leaders establish their position and rally the nation by going to war, but you really should know better.

Dear Sis Commentary

The "Dear Sis" poems published over the past few days were written in the early 1980s in response to the extremism in feminism at the time. Initially I was prompted by our regular poetry meetings in Cornwall. Dennis Robinson (aka Audi Maserati, whom you will hear more of later) and I used to travel across the Cornish country side to meetings in Falmouth in very scary car rides with his then SO Gloria - who was the inspiration of a number of poems, for different reasons, by both of us.

Sylvia Kantaris held court at these meetings and her attitude to Dennis and I prompted the first of these poems "Dear Sis, Tar Can." I became very good friends with - and a business partner of - of Sylvia's husband Noel, who is someone I greatly admire. Noel wrote to me recently objecting to the poem - calling it an "attack" - but since it has been on the Web for over a decade now, it would be dishonest in my opinion to delete it.

I wrote in response to his objection:

I wrote this poem in the very early 1980s, and it has been on the web for many years. It is a criticism, a comment, but I would not characterize it as strongly as an "attack." I remember very well the poetry meetings in Cornwall that inspired the poem. And this poem was the first in a "Dear Sis" series that addressed feminism. I recall that Bob [Devereux] also thought it a little harsh. But, it is a poem, it is what it is, it is a free and honest expression of mine, and of the time, by an uneducated working-class poet.

Noel, you are one of the people in my past for whom I have the highest regard and respect. I would not wish to do anything to dishonor you or our time together. I do not believe that this poem does that. I harbor no negative feelings toward Sylvia. Please accept the poem for what it is, naive.

Perhaps I would not have written the poem as I am today, but I think it right that I stand by the sentiment of the time, no matter how naive.

My favorite of these, and the poem that was always a crowd pleaser when performed, is "Dear Sis, I Can't Sleep For The Sound Of Your Head Banging." I feel this poem most captures my feelings of the extremism at the time. And let's face it, it's funny.

It was not until some years later that I realized that feminism was mostly a middle-class phenomenon and had left working-class women untouched. I felt guilty, as did most young men of the time under the onslaught. I then discovered that in fact the working-class man had also been denied the right to vote and had not widely achieved that right in the UK - along with working-class women - until a year after the landed women of the suffrage - in 1921!

One oppression does not justify or diminish another, of course, but the cause of the working-class, male and female alike, is surely as great an injustice - and all the oppressed have equal and common cause in my view, regardless of gender.

This is not to condone the social treatment by many working-class men of their women, but that really is a different issue and remains to be addressed - there has been some trickle down effect but the truth is that the working-class models its own attitudes upon those images it holds in regard. Especially in England, there is little innovative thinking coming from the initiative of the working-class itself. That said, the assholes aside, social collaboration between many working-class men and women, despite the stereotypes, is of necessity more equitable.

Today, I am the father of two daughters. They are individuals in their own right, equal in all respects to my sons. Clearly, the cause of feminism is just. It is simply not the only cause, and single-minded middle-class feminists in the early 1980s were insensitive to other causes, especially the cause of the working-class in general, and in particular, to the cause of the working-class woman whose rights were equally denied and whose predicament was and remains dire. Education was and still is needed on all sides.