A Good Time E-Book

Gerard Benson

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 42

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Gerard Benson was born in London and lives in Bradford, where he was made the city's poet laureate in 2008. His children's books have won the Signal Award and been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. A Good Time is his fourth collection for grownups, along with a number of anthologies, including the Poems on the Underground series, of which he is a founding editor. He was the first ever poet-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust, and is a popular reader and tutor.

Leseprobe

A Good Time

Gerard Benson

for Cathy

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the editors of the following, in which some of these poems first appeared:Acumen, In the Company of Poets, New Statesman, Pennine Platform, Poetry Wales, Smiths Knoll, Staple, The Friend, The Interpreter's House, The North, The Spectator, The Stony Thursday Book, TVTimes and 14 Magazine. Some have been published in the Beehive Poets anthologies: Praesepe, Swarm and Through, and to these editors also, grateful thanks. 'Lost Gloves' was written for and appeared in Michael Rosen's A-Z. Some of the poems appeared in the collections To Catch an Elephant and Omba Bolomba (Smith/Doorstop Books) 'In a Young Time' is recorded on the Barrow Poets LP Outpatients (ARGO).

Also by Gerard Benson:

Name Game (Oyster Press, 1971)Gorgon (Paranomasia, 1984)The Magnificent Callisto (Blackie/Puffin, 1992)>br /> Evidence of Elephants (Viking /Puffin, 1995)In Wordsworth's Chair (Flambard Press, 1995)Bradford & Beyond (Flambard Press, 1997)Hlep! (Yellow Fox Press, 2000)To Catch an Elephant (Smith/Doorstop, 2002)Omba Bolomba (Smith/Doorstop, 2005).

Contents

DedicationAcknowledgementsContents

BeginningEileenAlphabetsUrsulaFebruary 5th 1940Village ClassroomLost GlovesGhostsA Green StinkMyrtleA HauntingKittyMy Extravagant AuntDannie Doyle, My UncleSheetsYes But SometimesAir Raids 1942Cherne SpinneyThe ClockA Cup of WaterLancaster DriveIn a Young TimeBob Grady’s AppleThe BomberReversible HaikuThe Artes AdmynystratoureShakespeare and St GeorgeIfA & ERiddleSkillMellifontBetween AnthemsBoathousesBut There’s This Other OneGatecrasherLife ClassPoetSo SnowMoonIn HospitalMuzzleA Good TimeThe Old TrackThe Heath MadrigalAfter BeethovenGalleryBionicWhere the Heart IsLike the Back of My HandLeaving the OrchardBar Sketches

1. The Player

2. The Artist

3. The Surgeon

4. The Photographer

5. The Traveller

BreathingCapusA Very Good UpholstererCheckmate

Biography

Beginning

At last, after an almost endless wait,

the call came, and I set out as I was.

I was well-prepared, and from

the drumming darkness I began to beat

a way through my soft tunnel to the sweet

bewildering universe beyond.

Believe me, I hadn't asked to be born,

but still I pressed head-first toward the light.

I shan't say much about the attendant nun.

Nothing distracted me. I knew what I had to do.

I eased my greasy shoulders through a narrow

almost impassable fissure. Adventure, sorrow,

puzzlement, delight were waiting. I pushed on through,

breathed air, then wailed - and so again began.

Eileen

Last night she went to see Josephine Baker.

But that was a long time ago, and she wrote

it up in her diary. Today she is knitting

little boots for me to wear - all duly recorded.

I remember nothing of this. My first trip to Paris

is obstinately hazy. Her eyes are blue.

She's bunking off her job, hiding in a foreign city,

hiding behind a musical laugh (she could laugh in French),

and eyes she could widen at will. Strap-over shoes,

a beret, red probably - you can't tell from the snaps.

She kept accounts: pommes-de-terre cinquante centimes, choux,

pencilled in a small notebook. Waiting for the earth to open.

But it didn't. And French law was tougher than the English

so she made the trip home - still carrying her secret -

to Irish London and the priests and her mother. The world turned.

She slowly became her portrait photograph,

black and white (no greys), framed, charming, remote.

Later the earth did open; a friend made her up in her coffin.

Alphabets

Next to the King there was a Lighthouse.

It was spring and I galloped over the playground,

a cowboy toting a two-fingered gun.

A Bell rang. We lined up and went in.

I rolled plasticine on a board with my palm

making sausages. I wore short trousers and braces

but I wanted a belt with a snake buckle;

for girls it was frocks with stripes or flowers

and there were flowers on the tables too, in jam jars.

Slates rattled in their wooden frames

and with a stick of yellow chalk I wrote Bs,

the big one was like a sideways Bum

but B was for Boat and Bat and Baby;

and the whole story began with Apple.

Ursula

A firework explodes and without warning

I'm crouching by an iron railing

with a tartan scarf over my nose, when a car

backfires, and a big boy whose name I've forgotten

slumps, sprawling, then sits up and gasps,

'They got me, pard,' and we can't stop laughing.

Today a girl with a strange name has joined;

her face a full moon. When we have to be birds

in the Hall in bare feet and our various underwear

Donald May and I are swifts, but she goes tiptoe

very slowly, waving graceful wings,

her fat bottom wobbling as she flies.

Somewhere in my contempt for such

soppy girly stuff is a stirred-up admiration;

I still remember Ursula, her swan (was it?)

and her name, the gravity of her imagination