Boris Johnson’s term as UK Prime Minister ends tomorrow. Has he been the worst leader the UK has ever known (partly by doing so very little leading)? There has been some tough competition but he’s definitely in the running.
I haven’t written many poems this year and of the ones I have written a couple are here on the blog and the rest are mainly wee ones on Twitter (seen by very few). There are so many crises that poetry feels a bit pathetic (the loudest crises this week being Pakistan/climate, Ukraine/war and the UK/cost of living). Still, I post the poem here as some kind of record. We stumble on, for now. We keep fighting.
The Port of Dundee for Pauline – a one-woman scene and a Dundee queen
In the port of Dundee we had Pauline who sang
Of the dreams of a world that she so longed to see,
In the port of Dundee she was a true rebel queen,
While the river just whirled and lapped at the quay.
In the port of Dundee Pauline shone as she danced,
Her bursting blue eyes with their carnival light.
She lived on the fringe, had the devil’s own grin,
We think of her days - what a dame, what a knight.
In the port of Dundee with its fast-changing beat,
She readied a ship, gave so many their sails,
She took to the Woodlands to carve out a tune,
To open up doors, to bite off the moon.
And her strong angel wings were full and so wide
That she wrapped us, like children, all neat there inside,
And she learned the right words and she soared way up high,
Because the best kind of queens, they know how to fly.
In the port of Dundee she cooked up a spell,
Made chances, took turns, dressed up and played well.
And the rains of her life may at times have been hard,
But this queen was full flesh, not a dry royal card.
And today we’ll remember and pass round her crown,
We'll tell all her tales, maybe write a few down.
We’ve pride and we’ve joy, that we all know her name,
We clapped for her, cheered for her, moths to her flame.
In the port of Dundee taste our fat onion tears,
Pint after pint for the toasts that we raise,
We'll cry and then laugh at this strange cabaret,
For this world can break hearts but also amaze.
Her reign was bright red and dripping with fun,
She's somewhere backstage, she's not really gone.
Let's look to the sky, see our queens up above,
And raise all our glasses, and sing them our love.
For this queen of Dundee,
For this queen of Dundee.
RF 2022
(audio of the poem here, video from the event at the end of the post)
Today there is an event in Dundee and Arbroath to celebrate the life of Pauline Meikleham (also known as Pauline M. Hynd, and Dubiety Brown of The Onion Club). Pauline died last summer at the age of 57 and her death was a shock for many reasons, partly because she was so full of life and ideas and creativity. She was an amazing singer, a powerful presence, a kind of beacon for the weird and wonderful. In the last decade or so she had mostly appeared as part of the duo The Onion Club with fellow Dundonian musician Stephen Lee (there’s a good 2018 interview with her about that project here). She was also a tireless and generous promoter. I mainly knew her through gigs and performances and I wrote a little about that side of her life back in January of this year (in amongst a piece about another musician here). It was a few years ago now but she played at an event I organised in Edinburgh in 2008 and also I read poems (and even sang, with help) at a couple of events that she organised (in Dundee 2008 and 2009 and in Arbroath 2013). We met again here and there over the years and she was always up to something interesting. She had many, many friends and admirers and was also a much loved mother, daughter and sister. She was a mighty big force in the “mighty little old town*” of Dundee (and beyond).
For the event today I thought I’d try to write a poem for Pauline. I started working on it a few months ago and as I watched videos of her performances I was struck in particular by The Onion Club’s version of Port of Amsterdam.
This song was first written in French by Jacques Brel, translated later for a show by Mort Shuman, and performed in English by David Bowie. Pauline and Stephen were both huge Bowie and Brel fans and so this was a perfect song for them. Dundee, of course, is also a port so I started reworking the words, using Port of Amsterdam as a template. I’ve always liked reworking songs, it gives you a place to start and in this case it means the finished piece has strong links to its subject. Pauline was a musical wonder and a cabaret queen in the widest sense of both of those words. There has been a lot of talk of queens this summer but I have no time for the tired old sovereigns, rolling about in their palaces whilst folk can’t afford to heat up their humbler homes or even boil their kettles. Real queens like Pauline, on the other hand, are people who deserve our love and admiration and I’m happy be their poet laureate any day of the week.
And in that spirit please accept and enjoy my poem for Pauline (at the top of this post, video below). She is much missed. She made a magnificent mark.
* With thanks to Michael Marra and General Ulysses S. Grant for these words about Dundee. I think most people reading this will know about Michael Marra but for anyone who doesn’t I wrote about him, his work and, in particular, his song General Grant’s Visit to Dundee, in January (here).
I have posted pictures of this painting on social media this week but those places all move quickly, and blogs a little less so, so I’m posting it here too. This is a painting of our daughter and my mum from a photo taken in 2006 (when we lived at the address I wrote about back here). The painting is called ‘Heather and Margaret’ and is the work of our very talented artist friend Scott Henriksen.
The positive reactions to this painting so far online have been exactly what it deserves – it is an amazing piece. It totally captures the relationship between these two people and how relaxed they were with each other – the simple, uncluttered love of people who are either too young or too old to give a damn about the nonsense that fills up so much of our lives. Living in a multi-generational home has its challenges (my mum lived with the three of us for last six years of her life, 2004-2010) but the benefits for everyone can be huge too.
Next week there will be new photos because that little girl (now 22) graduates from university (and ‘university’, as anyone who knew her would recognise, was possibly my mum’s favourite word, well up there with ‘sherry’ and ‘cake’ – she’d had a tough start and took no prisoners regarding the odd bit of snobbery and unadulterated enjoyment in her old age). Also, just as Margaret would have been, we are very proud of Heather, marvellous young woman that she is, even if the complications of life and parenting sometimes make that hard for her to feel or believe. The past few years have been a weird time to be a student, it’s affected a lot of her favourite things and given her far too much time with her tiresome parents, but she’s made it through to the other side and who knows what’s next? Whatever it is, big grandma-style hugs to you, best girl, and much cluttered and uncluttered love xxx
I did think I might do more on the blog this year but since my last post (a poem just after the start of Russia’s attack on Ukraine) I’ve had nothing to offer here (though I’ve had a couple of false starts). I’ve been posting pics and things on Instagram (where I have some good interactions) and Twitter (where I have very little) but a blog post (for me) is more of an undertaking. What have you got to say that needs this space? What needs more than the 280 characters for Twitter or the tiny Insta slots (that many people won’t read anyway – it being more about the images)? In the past couple of months the answer to that has been nothing special. I follow the news. I follow lots of campaigners and other writers and musicians and artists and see what they are doing and saying. I get on with my own day jobs and family responsibilities and float about like a pretty useless, dirty old feather in the wind. I have absolutely not been writing any poems; I’m barely writing my diary just now. Instead, like most of us with our ever-present cameras (via phones), I take photos, grab memories, look at them again and again to remind myself of good things and good times (even just that cup of tea in the sunshine, that feisty flower growing out of the pavement). I’m not a person who talks about things like ‘being grounded’ but I suppose that’s what they do for me. It’s something like that.
Also it’s a difficult contrast that, with wars and struggles still ongoing in so many places, it has turned to spring here and that’s very welcome. There are colours and new life all around and that feels so mighty. I’ve been reading some great books, listening to some lovely music (some old, some new, see above). I have been lucky enough to get out a bit and been to a couple of exhibitions and shows with our daughter. It’s a small life – but what else would it be?
What to say about Ukraine? Should we say anything? Should we just listen? Ukraine is not a country I know (though of course we’re all getting to know it pretty well just now – its leader, its fighters, right down to the young child singing Let it go in the bomb shelter). Even if we sit fairly far away, this feels like a pretty instant war as it streams right to us, many tweets at a time. I’ve been doing the same as many of you – giving goods and funds and then trying to remember that other places and causes still need support too (and get forgotten when a major event like this happens and fills our news and minds). It’s still important to keep supporting work elsewhere, and to support work happening nearer to home too. So much to do, to think about.
I've never been to Ukraine but, in this particular conflict, the aggressor is a country I do know a little about and therefore it is Russia that I have found myself thinking and writing about in recent days. I studied Russian (with very little dedication) in the 1980s (language, history and literature). I also went to the USSR (Moscow and, what was then, Leningrad) a couple of times at around the same time. For the first trip I went to study Russian for a couple of weeks in 1987 (I was 20). The second time I was working as a tour ‘guide’, accompanying a group of North American teenagers and their teachers for a week or so in 1989. The ‘guide’ is in quotes because really my dashing Soviet colleague (a Natasha, I think, lots of blue eye shadow) did most of the guiding whilst I answered questions about hairdryers, translated the food, listened to complaints about the food. All the photos in this post are from my 1987 USSR visit. I had no time for photography the second time (and obviously no camera phone back then). My memory of the second trip is just running all the time (it was a cheapskate company, Swedish I think, so everything was late or badly organised and this led to situations like all fifty of us running through an airport in Paris from our bus drop-off to the plane).
In 1988 I had the chance to spend more time in the USSR (a few months studying in the chosen Soviet town of Voronezh, I think it was) but the couple of weeks in ’87 had been enough and I declined. It was so grim and the people were so sad and bored and hopeless (and my other language was Spanish – some much more inviting locations). I am currently reading Cal Flynn’s Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-HumanLandscape and one of the places visited in this book is modern-day Chernobyl. This led me to reread a 2019 article in The New Yorker by Masha Gessen about the difference between the TV show Chernobyl and the reality. In the NY piece the line “Resignation was the defining condition of Soviet life” jumped right out. I had seen bleak before (the North East of England in the ’80s wasn’t exactly the golden age of anything) but still, there was so little joy in the air in the USSR. I remember the public toilets were brilliant – plentiful and clean. It’s not exactly the stuff of dreams.
Over the years I followed changes in the USSR and then Russia from afar. To be honest, I haven’t wanted to rush back (and my Russian is very faint) but I’ve watched news and features, and documentaries where Scottish comedians or English actresses go out there and try to see what on earth Russia is all about. I’ve read long articles and threads about Putin and Pussy Riot and Russian influence and Russian money, about Syria and Russia, Facebook and Russia, Trump and Russia, Westminster and Russia. In particular I’ve read everything I’ve seen lately about Russians protesting this war on Ukraine. I know protesting there (like in so many places) is very difficult but I hope protests continue and grow and have some effect. I know the Russian authorities have long been good at keeping things from their people (many governments do this of course, if not all) but I’ve read that younger Russians are VPN-ready and seeing media from elsewhere too. I know most poems right now will be written about Ukraine – about loss and bravery, about hardship and pride – and many of them will be brilliant poems that will fill anthologies in the years to come. Still, I send this one out to Russia, to ordinary Russian people. Most of us have so little power but we have to do something. To better times.
No music today, just a poem, mainly because that poem (the one in the video above) is in a new book. The book is called All Becomes Art – Part One and it is published by Speculative Books. All the writing in it is inspired or in some way connected with the work of the brilliant visual artist Joan Eardley (1921-1963). There are more than 50 other contributors (and I think a Part Two still to come) so there’s plenty to explore. There was due to be a launch for this book in Glasgow today but it has been postponed till late March so I thought I’d tell you about it here (it’s available now from Speculative Books).
My poem in the book is She’s not there – something I wrote back in 2007 after seeing Joan Eardley’s 1943 self-portrait a couple of times in Edinburgh (you can see that self-portrait on the National Galleries page I linked to already). I already knew about her because we lived on the Angus coast in Scotland from 2002 (in Auchmithie, then Montrose) and she lived for years just up the coast in Catterline. Although she died in the 1960s she is very much still a presence in that part of the world and she painted its landscapes over and over. Her studio in Catterline (‘the Watchie’) is still a working studio and the current resident is the hugely talented Stuart Buchanan (we are the proud owners of a couple of his paintings).
Joan Eardley’s life story caught my attention for various reasons but, as often happens, it was something we shared that dug into my brain and is certainly part of the background to this poem. Her father had mental health issues and killed himself when she was a young girl (as mine did). Also, like me, “the details of his death were not explained” to her until years later (I actually found out about mine from a girl I met at secondary school, something I wrote about on Day 5 of my Fun A Day project last year). Joan Eardley’s father had fought in World War One and died in 1929. Mine was a village GP in the very early days of the NHS (he qualified during WW2) and died in 1973. I keep a kind of mental list of well-known people who talk or write about the fact that their fathers killed themselves (I don’t really want to, but I do). The lovely poet/writer Salena Godden, for example, is another person on the list. Every now and then I wonder how much it affects a person’s work to have that particular event in their background. I suppose it must (Salena’s most recent book is Mrs Death Misses Death). I don’t think it is the worst thing that can happen to a person (for many of us in this situation these weren’t fathers we knew very well, often they were already absent in many ways) but it is still a significant thing and it stays with you more than you want it to maybe. It makes you more aware of death than the average child, perhaps, makes you less trusting of the stories people tell you.
This poem has always done well for me (it was named, of course, after the song by the Zombies, though I first knew the Santana version as my next brother up was a Santana fan). I am grateful to the publishers for still accepting it for this lovely wee book even though it has appeared both online and in my own first book in 2008. I’ve never been a big fan of the whole “we can’t accept it if even your cat has read it” approach taken by so much of the poetry industry (I understand it but I find it tiresome all the same) so big cheers to Speculative Books for being a bit more flexible. We can get too tied up in the admin of our art at times I think and that can be counter-productive. Joan Eardley stood out in all the elements and did her fabulous paintings – she made the art – and that’s the most important thing. Plus I enjoy this kind of detail: poet Andrew McMillan recently tweeted (regarding a poem of his that “people often seem to return to”):“it was rejected from tons of magazines, disappeared into competitions- always just write what you want to write.” Sounds good to me.
I’m nearly done here but did I say “no music”? It seems I (almost) lied as Kris Drever (the songwriter I wrote about on Day 19 of this year’s Fun a Day series) has a song about Joan Eardley and Catterline (it’s called Catterline). Along with songs by lots of other Scottish songwriters, it’s on an album put together by Stonehaven Folk Club called Sense of Place that you can get here. I just ordered a copy.
It’s been a week or so since I finished my Fun A Day Dundee writing project for this year. If you missed it, it was a post a day in January, each one about a different song (and you can see the full list of the 31 songs back here). Every day I wrote about how I got to know the song, about the songwriter/s and about the artists that had performed or recorded the songs too. In many cases I had responses from the songwriters about their song (and in a couple of cases quite long interviews). In one instance (for the song Piece of Clay on Day 5) I had a response from Carleen Anderson who recorded that song in the 1990s. I met many of the songs in the project via the folk club in Montrose but there were a few tangents too. The oldest song was from the 1930s, the newest from last year.
I would like to say a big thank you to every songwriter and artist who contributed to the series of posts in some way and also to all those who shared, retweeted, commented and/or liked any of the posts. Please remember to support all those artists (and others) when you can – I think I’ve doubled my Bandcamp library in the last couple of months! The recent Spotify saga does seem to mean a lot of people are reconsidering how they access their music and hopefully that will lead to better times for musicians.
One of the things I asked of the songwriters last month was to name a song by someone else that they wished they had written. Obviously, it’s a bit of a daft question – most of us love so many songs that it’s hard to pick one – but these things are always just ways in to new (and old) music. I know it’s the kind of question you might give a different answer to on any given day, and what it’s brought up is by no means a definitive list of all the great songs in the world, but it is a list of good songs (no more, no less). Because there was so much else in each of the 31 posts, I thought these recommendations might get a bit lost so below is a list of the songs that were mentioned (and there’s a YouTube playlist of them here). I’m not going to say who suggested which song so if you want to know that you’ll have to read all the posts (and if you’ve read them once and forgotten you’ll just have to read them all again). Most of the versions in the YouTube playlist are by the songwriters in question but for one, where there are two songwriters and each has a separate version, I picked a version by someone else, so as not to pick a favourite.
God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind) written by Randy Newman.
The Freedom Come-All-Ye written by Hamish Henderson
I’m Looking for My Own Lone Ranger written by Charlie Dore and Ricky Ross
I’m Still Here written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Winter Wonderland written by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith.
Man on a String written by Jason Feddy
On a Sea of Fleur de Lis written by Richard Shindell
One Foot in the Grave written by Rayna Gellert & Kieran Kane
Tonya’s Twirls written by Loudon Wainwright III
Making Pies written by Patty Griffin
Who Knows Where the Time Goes writtenby Sandy Denny
Diamonds and Rust written by Joan Baez
Samson written by Regina Spektor
If I Stayed written by Kristina Olsen
Torn Screen Door written by David Francey
Shepherd written by Anaïs Mitchell
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin
Goodbye Joe written by Bid (of The Monochrome Set)
Blackbird written by Paul McCartney
Anarchy in the UK written by Paul Cook, Steve Jones, John Lydon, Glen Matlock
A Case of You written by Joni Mitchell
Blue written by Joni Mitchell
I Think It Is Going to Rain Today written by Randy Newman
Blues Run the Game written by Jackson C. Frank
I really enjoyed the varied responses to this (and indeed to all the questions). At least one of the songwriters in the list above (Anaïs Mitchell) has been all over the radio here in the past couple of weeks, thanks to a brilliant new album. There were some lovely details in other parts of the interviews last month too (for starters, Kim Edgar’s save-the-day art teacher and Rhona Macfarlane’s lyrics written on a till receipt). As I wrote in some of the posts, research included listening to lots of songwriter interviews and especially the Mastertapes radio series. A detail I loved in one of those was from the Suzanne VegaMastertapes from 2012 where she talked about playing whole albums (instead of just single tracks) and the reaction of her daughter to listening to a full Bob Dylan album (‘why are we sitting here listening to a whole bunch of songs by the same guy?’). I almost mentioned Suzanne Vega in the Rachel Sermanni post on Day 30 as I felt they had something in common but it felt forced and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I wanted to say so I dropped that idea.
After finishing the January posting frenzy, it was a dash down to a family funeral in Leeds, England for us last week. The photo at the top of the post is the Angel of the North in Gateshead that we passed on the way south (and in fact a song of the same name was mentioned in one of the posts last month too). Funerals (and traveling in general) heighten emotions and responses, I think, and it was flash after flash (roads, big art, first snowdrops of the year at the crematorium, music, even a poem, music, back on roads again). Some of the music I encountered last week was watching an online concert last Friday evening by one of January’s featured artists (Day 26’s Blue Rose Code – this time as a duo, Ross Wilson and Paul Harrison). In the concert Ross talked about Elton John (interesting as one of his songs is in the list in this post – can you remember which songwriter picked that in January?). Then for their cover version Ross and Paul did a song I absolutely loved in my teens (Sunshine after the Rain by Elkie Brooks, hear it here). That single by Elkie came out in 1977 but hung around on commercial radio a lot longer (certainly I heard it on Radio Tees in the 1980s and cried along with it every time my teenage heart felt broken, i.e., quite a lot). I didn’t know it back then but it was written in 1968 by Ellie Greenwich, who I should have heard of, she was a big Brill building writer, but in honesty I never have done until now, even though a quick peek at her Wikipedia page will tell you “she wrote or co-wrote Da Doo Ron Ron, Be My Baby, Then He Kissed Me, Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Hanky Panky, Chapel of Love, Leader of the Pack, and River Deep – Mountain High, among others”. Sunshine after the Rain was on Ellie Greenwich’s 1968 album Ellie Greenwich Composes, Produces & Sings and there was another version of the song by Berri in 1994/1995.
Back at home in Dundee this Sunday I was listening to one of my favourite radio shows (Cerys Matthews on BBC 6 Music) and she was interviewing the poet Roger Robinson who picked one of my all-time favourite songs to play (I Think I’ll Call It Morning by Gil Scott-Heron, written by Gil and Brian Jackson, the song is on the 1971 album Pieces of a Man and the quote at the top of the post is from this song). Regular readers will know I am a huge fan of Gil Scott-Heron (and I did mention him in one of this January’s posts too). I saw him live only once (at the Leeds Irish Centre, maybe in 1992, he was brilliant) and I wrote a poem about him too (it’s on this post back in 2012). I’ve always thought I Think I’ll Call It Morning would make a perfect funeral song (I Think I’ll Call It Mourning?) and it’s certainly high on my list for that. Like many great songs this one has joy and sadness mixed up so thoroughly that you don’t know what you’re feeling as you listen (but whatever it is, it’s amazing).
I’m not sure where else this blog will go in 2022. I suppose that’s kind of exciting. See you there.
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