
Feeling under the weather. Again. Not up to doing justice to a guest poet who I admire greatly. In the meantime, more stocking fillers. Sometimes in a workshop someone may ask you to write a poem about an imaginary event. Invent a bit of history, but, if possible, treat it with great seriousness. When I think about it, a great deal of the ‘history’ I was taught in school was actually of this sort. Kings burning cakes. Noblemen drowned in butts of malmsey. England being ‘founded’ by descendants of Aeneas. Richard the Second being a monster. That sort of thing. Who knows, if you’re deadpan enough, it might just get some leverage, like urban myths. This one was triggered by a starter poem by Billy Collins.
.
.
1470. Annus mirabilis
(after Billy Collins: ‘Nostalgia’)
1470. We’ll not forget that in a hurry;
the year they invented Jam.
.
We’d hear rumours,
folk passing on the turnpike,
a shout on the wind
from the back of a lathered horse.
‘Jam’ they’d shout. ‘Jam’.
.
We’d sit in the Tarred Pheasant
at the end of a day’s slurry-shifting,
or fettling capons, or stooking hares,
and speculate.
.
Change was never good.
The moon had been a funny colour
all through Martinmas,
the vicar’s wife had lost her arm to croup,
mice took to midnight swimming in the dewpond
by the mandrake patch in Cotton’s Bog.
.
All sorts of tales were rife.
Jam would bring back sight to the goitred.
Jam would take off a murrain,
make a slack-twisted pigman smell sweet.
.
It was more than that.
Fruit that didn’t roll off tables.
Fruit you could stick your hair down with..
No good would come of it. Devils’ work
.
Alternatively, you could make up your own historical figures. Lord knows, ‘history’ has edited out 99% of the people who actually made it. By a pleasing synergy, jam features in this one , too.

.
Unsung Heroes
.
Let us remember them.
.
St. John Chatsworth Grace:
inventor of the reversible umbrella,
serviceable in jungle and in desert
to deflect, or conserve, rain
.
Enoch Waterman of Burslem
who patented a fruitless jam
and a device for getting blood from stones
.
Frederick Jagger, the Pennine Penitent
Who, daily, walked barefoot to his work in Rochdale
from Todmorden to mortify the flesh
and save on cobblers’ bills
and once walked backwards for a week
to see the future unfurl in his wake
.
Remember Benjamin Hardwick of Haworth
who patiently engraved the Book of Genesis
on the obverse of a halfpenny
that he accidentally put,
with a handful of loose change,
in a collection tin for
the Overseas and Colonial Society
for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge,
and who shortly after died,
consumed by irony .
.
Next week, I promise, there will be a proper post with proper poetry. And who knows, the country might have accidentally stumbled into sanity by then. Go well. Wear a mask. Keep a safe distance.
Never underestimate the value of jam. And thanks for the frivolity. We don’t even talk about Freedom Day here in Wee Ulster
– that nonsense is for Westminster and we have our own nonsense. XX
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Those poems are a tonic, John 🙂 And I wish you well, that is keeping more well than you are. Take care. I shall be too.
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