That's how the light gets in

This came up on my Facebook feed today; an FB-manufactured 'memory' from this day last year, when my partner shared it with me. I was glad to be reminded of it, however. It's been a black ten days, but there have been moments of light.

On Sunday we went to see Blackbeard's Tea Party at the Bristol Folk House - an annual event, as I am Band Auntie. 

Earlier, up the pub, I'd talked with my nephew and niece-in-law about how to write the political songs the times demand without descending into rant.  The answer, of course, is to find a historical parallel and use that. The same stories love to repeat themselves, and giving the listener the chance to make the connections makes the message more powerful. This was borne out at the gig when they played 'The Diggers' Song' - 'Stand up now, Diggers all!' - which felt positive and apposite. 

Just down the road on College Green 19,240 small wrapped figures were laid out in straight lines in an installation called 'Shrouds of the Somme' - one for each man killed on the first day of the battle a century ago. A reminder of where intolerance and war-mongering leads us. 

On Wednesday we had tickets to see Jonathan Pie, whose political rants I find funny, though I'm not sure how well they translate to a longer show. Or maybe it was just that with the election of Trump, reality has far outstripped satire. 

Yesterday, I was on parental chauffeur duty which required me to drive Chew Magna in Somerset - somewhere I've driven through many times but never actually visited. I bunked off for an hour or two and visited the Church of St Andrew. 

 

There was a striking play of sunlight and shadow in there. 

On one of the pillars, some impressive graffiti with serifs

There are also some interesting tombs. These are the cherubs on the tomb to Edward Baber and his wife, Anne, who died in 1578 and 1601 respectively. 

And this is a detail of the tomb of Sir John St Lo (died 1447) and, probably, his wife Agnes. Sir John - and his effigy - are 0ver seven feet tall. For some reason he looks a bit perplexed ...

... unlike this fine fellow. Wooden effigies are quite rare - we saw one at the Church of St Bartholomew in Much Marcle back in the summer - and this one is strangely vital. 

The Victorian inscription proclaims him to be Sir John Hauteville (1216-1272) but the style of armour sported by this knight is 200 years later than the last of the de Hautevilles. 

Whoever he is, the inscrutably smiling knight isn't letting on. 

Finally, today I met up with Dru who's currently moored near Limpley Stoke in Wiltshire and we travelled to Westbury to pick up a picture I've bought from the lovely artist, Kat Otterbee. On  the way we stopped off to buy some potato sacks of logs, Kat's currency of choice. It feels good to buy unique Christmas presents direct from artists, rather than chain stores and multinationals - a small protest against capitalism and exploitation. 

The Leonard Cohen Songbook

I asked my sister for 'Songs of Leonard Cohen' for my 15th birthday. I know because this songbook tells me. 

I bought New Skin For The Old Ceremony nine days later, probably with my birthday money. Virgin Records at that time was a tiny shop off the Bearpit (we called it the Haymarket) in Bristol, by the entrance to Bus Station. It smelt strongly of joss sticks and was full of blokes flicking earnestly through boxes of LPs in alphabetical order. I found it quite intimidating going in there. Tried to look cool. Failed. 

Around this time I got a Saturday job in the office of a department store called Maggs & Co on Queens Road, Bristol - the old-fashioned sort with counters and uniformed lift operatives that don't exist any more. I also used to walk the three and a half miles to school and back every day to save my bus fare - 10p each way.

It took me till 11th December to save up for 'Songs of Love and Hate'. What a dark, scary album that is ... yet I must have preferred it over 'Songs from a Room', because I didn't buy that till February 22nd 1977. How many hundreds of miles must I have walked by then?  

And did I nearly wear my single of 'Do I Have To Dance All Night?' out, to transcribe the lyrics in my best handwriting without a single crossing out? 


I think it was love. And no callow, clammy-handed youth of my acquaintance ever came close. 

Love's the only engine of survival

I'm going to have to ban early morning phone calls from my younger son; they never bring good tidings. In January it was the death of David Bowie, his voice tender because he knew how upset I'd be. Our shared desolation at the outcome of the EU referendum in June was mirrored this Wednesday last by horror at Donald Trump's ascent to power.  This morning he was too upset himself to get the words out, but I guessed straightaway.  There was no one else left.

I was 14 when I first encountered Leonard Cohen in 1976. I was on an exchange visit to Bordeaux; he was singing in French and called Graeme Allwright.  I soon tracked down the originals of these cover versions and Leonard took over the soundtrack of my life, a conglomerate father/older brother/lover/husband/ mentor figure who addressed my needs in a way the actual men in my life couldn't or wouldn't. (Though to be fair, my older brother never existed.)  And unlike real-life Leonard - or, indeed, my later, eventual ex-husband - my personal Leonard was constant, always there. If anyone in that particular relationship ever drifted off for too long, it was me.

I've never found him depressing (though I do avoid listening to some of his songs when things aren't good - notably, Dress Rehearsal Rag). In fact, I'd say it was the other way around - when I've been at my lowest and turned to him, his songs and poems have lifted me. I think it's because although his great theme is endings - the loss, mess, despair and emotional exhaustion of them - he shows us their beauty too. 

But now - with the exception of Alan Garner - my heroes are gone, all within the space of three years - first, Seamus Heaney, then Terry Pratchett and David Bowie, and now Leonard Cohen. White, English-speaking men - I know - and flawed too, at least in the case of the singers. But as Leonard himself put it 'Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in'. And between them, they've taught me the importance of recognising beauty in the moment and celebrating it, that being good and being nice are not the same thing, that being yourself and pushing beyond your comfort zone is vital to creativity, and how to pick yourself up again and again and carry on with grace to the end.  

Finally, that I'm not alone. 

Recently, some of Leonard's darker, prophetic songs from the 80s have taken on a new insistency as our island turns in on itself, quoting the John of Gaunt death-bed speech out of context as usual, and a quasi-fascistic mindset takes hold in the country formerly known as the land of the free.  And, as a friend observed earlier, without the certainty that somewhere far to the west Leonard is writing and sleeping and eating and fiddling about on that Casio keyboard of his makes this lurch to the far right even harder to bear. But from the same song that contains such catastrophic images of war - 'The Future' - one line stands out today. It is 'love's the only engine of survival', and this is the route map he left us. 

So I Picked On You

I was still sitting in bed, drinking tea, when Son the Younger phoned. 

'I've just got into work,' he said. 'Mum, have you seen the news?'

'No. What's up? Has someone died?'

'Yes.' He paused. 'You're not going to like it.'

'Oh no,' I wailed, 'not Leonard!'

'No. Leonard's OK.'  

And then I knew. I phoned Liz, my friend of 51 years' standing, and got her voicemail. 

'Have you heard the news? God, I can't believe it. I just - I had to phone someone - '

The next words, unthought-of until that moment, came out in a croaky lump.

' - soIpickedonyou.'

Thank you, David Bowie.  Thank you so very much.

Round for Six Bells

This photograph of women waiting at the pit head for news of their loved ones following an underground explosion at Six Bells Colliery near Abertillery in June 1960 has haunted me ever since I first spotted it in the National Coal Mining Museum at Big Pit, getting on for a decade ago.  I knew as soon as I saw the stoicism of those women that I had to come up with a response. 

It took years of waiting to be in the right place in my own life, a subsequent visit to Big Pit last year and a trip to the moving memorial at Six Bells itself before I finally set about writing my poem.  

It seemed to me that a form poem would best suit my purpose - one in which lines are repeated in a set order, to mimic the circling of thoughts that go through your head while waiting for news that could go either way, each time worse than before. I was also very aware that the news at Six Bells turned out to be as tragic as it could be, for only three of the 48 men working in the district of the mine where the explosion happened survived.  This meant whatever I wrote had to be unsentimental yet empathetic, and as good as I could make it.  
Eventually I wrote a pantoum and called it 'Round for Six Bells', the idea being each of the six stanzas would toll a litany of loss.  Well, that was the idea, anyway, and this is what I came up with.

Round for Six Bells

Above ground the women are waiting.                                      

Stretchers are piled against the wall.                                           

All that they know is sliding away.                                                         

Their hands grip the railings to steady their fear.   

                                                                  

The stretchers are piled against the wall.                                               

The sound of the hooter is like a wail.

Their hands grip the railings to steady their fear,                                 

to keep worry out of the shadows and small.

                                                           

The sound of the hooter will be their wail

as long as they cling to iron and rust,                                          

to keep worry out of the shadows and small                             

like the bacon left boiling on the stove.                                      

As long as they cling to iron and rust,                                         

they won’t imagine the flesh of the dead            

like bacon left burning on the stove,                   

no point turning worrying into dread                 

                       

so they don’t imagine the flesh of the dead        

their husbands’ skin is blackened with dust                  

it might not be as bad as they dread                    

it was just the faintest of shudders felt    

                       

and their sons’ skin is black, yes, but only with dust               

and all that they know is sliding away               

in that faintest of shudders felt                 

above ground. The women are waiting.             

  

© Deborah Harvey 2014

Once written, the poem lay around for a bit.  I read it at Bristol Poetry Festival in the autumn of 2013 and earmarked it for inclusion in my second poetry collection, Map Reading for Beginners, which is due out this September.  Then I remembered something I had read years ago: an observation Leonard Cohen had made about being duped out of the rights for 'Suzanne' and how he had once heard some people singing it on a ship on the Caspian Sea, concluding that maybe it was appropriate that such a well-loved song didn't belong just to him. 

I'm not deluded enough to compare 'Round for Six Bells' with 'Suzanne' or to think that I will ever make any money out of my poetry, but I do believe that poems are like songs in that once they are take their place, however modest, in the world, they don't really belong to the poet any more.  In the narrowest sense, that hopeful little © above can easily be ignored, as recent notorious acts of plagiarism have shown.  But what I'm really talking about is the way they contain enough space for the listener or reader to interpret them in the light of their own emotional truths, which means that each time it is read, a poem takes on a new existence. 

At any rate, I wanted to give something back to the community that inspired me so I contacted the curator at the National Coal Museum and asked if they would display it or maybe just keep it in their archive.  Almost immediately I had a response to the effect that they would 'frame it and hang it where people could read it'.  What's more, it will also be on display at the Visitor Centre of the Mining Memorial in the village of Six Bells itself. I'm honoured beyond imagining. My poem's going home.  

William Morris and his Red House

I suppose breaking a 147 mile journey home at the 17 mile point is a little premature but how much more enticing is the prospect of breakfasting outside the coach house of William Morris's Red House in Bexleyheath than in a cheap hotel in Dagenham?

I'm a bit of a William Morris groupie and I'd already visited Red House twice before we turned off the M25 on the way home from seeing Leonard Cohen at the O2.  It is a special place, however, and as the National Trust are in the process of uncovering more and more art dating from the short time Morris, Janey and their friends spent there, there's always something new to see.  And this time someone congenial to share it with. 

After a wander around the garden, now considerably larger than in Morris' day, we joined the guided tour to see the how the house is looking these days. 

Still enchanting are Red House architect Philip Webb's stained glass birds which look as if they are about to flap off at any moment.  I'd like to have a go at reinterpreting some of them when I get my glass kiln up and running.  

The iconic staircase, forerunner of a million Tudorbethan imitations.

The newly restored blue and gold landing ceiling.

Although he manufactured wallpaper for others to buy, Morris preferred to hang his own walls with tapestries and embroideries. In the absence of any suitable candidates, this papered wall with its door leading into the dining room with its oxblood red dresser looks well enough. 

 What other Pre-Raphaelite works of art lie behind the brown paint job on the hall dresser?

 Always a favourite of mine, the fireplace in the dining room with its Delft tiles ... 

... and the single M for Morris carved into the hearth ... or is it a W for William?

While at Red House, Morris conceived a series of 12 embroidered hangings for the dining room based on women in Chaucer's poem 'The Legend of the Good Women', to be embroidered by his wife, Jane, sister-in-law Bessie, and anyone else in the vicinity who was handy with a needle.   Only seven were ever completed, and this one - of Aphrodite - returned to Red House in 2008 after an absence of 142 years.   The rest, plus two of the planned dozen fruit trees to accompany them, are scattered across the world. 

Morris's motto - here in French - sings from a round upstairs window.  On an early hanging now at Kelmscott Manor, it is also embroidered in English - 'If I can' - harking back to the inscription 'Als Ich Kan' inscribed on the frame of Jan Van Eyck's 'Man in Red Turban'.  

Discovered behind a cupboard in William and Jane's surprisingly small bedroom, this mural is a representation of the Book of Genesis, featuring Adam and Eve on either side of a tree complete with serpent, Noah and Rachel amonst others.  It is designed to look like a tapestry hanging in folds and is believed to have been painted by Lizzie Siddal, who died before it could be completed.  

Another mural has been uncovered in the drawing room, painted by Burne Jones and illustrating the Romance of  Sir Degravaunt, with Morris the model for the knight and Jane his bride, Melydor, seen being married on the far left of this photo, and then forming part of the wedding procession in the adjacent panel.  

    
In this picture, Morris and Jane are seen in the background at the wedding feast. Unlike Sir Degravant and Melydor, their marriage was an unhappy one and within five years of its being built, they had left the Red House, with all its hopes and dreams, behind them.  

Leonard Cohen at the O2, 21st June 2013

The only thing better than a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one's entire-life idol is a second once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  

I know because I was at the O2 eleven days ago for what I'm sure this time will be my last chance to see Leonard Cohen play live - as the man himself said, 'our tour is winding down and I don't know when we'll meet again'.

Highlights for me were the fabulous flamenco guitar solo at the beginning of 'Who By Fire' by Javier Mas ...

... and Sharon Robertson's rendition of the beautiful 'Alexandra Leaving', which she co-wrote with Cohen. 

And then there was the giant himself, who skipped and sang and played guitar and the funny keyboard bit in 'Tower of Song' ('You think this is all I can do, don't you?') and as that song points out 'you'll be hearing from me, baby, long after I'm gone. I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song'.

'I taught him how to dress' said Leonard of his friend, the poet Irving Layton. 'He taught me how to live forever.'  

Here's hoping.