I've just discovered what may well be my oldest possession, namely a slim volume of poetry by a Geordie, Barry MacSweeney. I bought this for 10s (a massive 16% of my weekly wage) back in 1968/69 after seeing him do some readings at The City Hall along with some rock bands. It's entitled "The Boy from the Green Cabaret tells of his Mother". It's got some outstanding stuff in it. Just checking on the web to see what he's doing these days, I learn he died last year just short of his 52nd birthday. A lifelong alcoholic apparently. I also learn that this 10/- volume is now worth $35 but I reckon I'll keep it.

In the intro Barry writes :-

In 1966/67 newspaper packed me off to Harlow Tech Essex, on a journalist course. An opposite life altogether. Synthetic new town, a dormitory to London. It's population, commuters with a vengeance. And the land was flat, that was a shock. An utter antithesis to Newcastle. Everything was so clean and clear-cut, and the people, they didn't belong, and had no roots in the town. Oasis. It was impossible to get involved ... It was here I really woke up. Poems were fast and often, but it was bitter and solitary too. Spent days looking for some natural spot in the whole synthesis: Found it, a small duck pond with sluice and lily-pads and foot-bridge. Told later it was one of the town planner's landscaping tricks.

That piece of prose is almost a poem in itself. The poems in this book were mostly written during this southern sojourn and I especially like this one, the title of which has come back into my head thousands of times over the intervening 30-odd years. It's called, magnificently, in my view :-

To Me Mam, Somewhere To The North Of This Shit

1

Even dark North Sea fish are
caught in the net of the absentee landlord
whose province is not land but total
possession of the soul
(butterflies & princesses
lie deflowered in the snow) I mutter a cold prayer



2

Women stem their blood flow for love &
cry about their children at night in
the lonely lovers bed
which I taste & you taste & we all taste
which is beyond the holiness of their
position & possessions me mam is a
stooping figure shovelling coal from
the path into the cellar & she
worries, not like a hound worrying a rat, but
like a star worries
the ocean,
who fears no reflection

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2001

Answers

Just dug out my copy of the same book Jonno. Thanks for reminding me. Saw him give a lecture on Marlow at the university many years ago. He was brilliant. My favourite line is from "Walk" "Tynemouth priory stands, sepia walled" Those two last words create so much accurate imagery.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2001

Wow. He was up for election as Oxford Professor of Poetry in about 1969 and I went to support him at the Union on no better grounds than that he was a fellow Geordie. I remember that despite a terrible cold and the effects of much whisky, he was brilliant. From what you say, the whisky was a sign of things to come.

I also remember that he didn't get elected - I have a feeling that Richard Burton did for some bizarre reason. There certainly was a classic Private Eye clip taken from the well-known newspaper that used to be known as the Grauniad on account of its numerous typos: 'Burton elected Professor at Oforxd'.

Sorry to hear he died. I used to have the book too, but lost it somewhere along the way.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2001

Great to know others have heard of him. I always thought he would follow in the wake of the Liverpool poets who were becoming very big at the time but he just seemed to disappear.

I am surprised that rereading this stuff more than 30 years later, I notice that several of his phrases have burned themselves into my memory and I still use them or think about them today. He really was brilliant. Phrases like the title ("To me mam ...") above, "The sun always goes down like this between the staithes of the High Level Bridge", "we plodge in eddies of love", "I kissed you for the first time in the middle of the Swing Bridge in between two counties in order to spread the loveliness over as much ground as possible".

If only there'd been a few more Geordies at Oxford Dr Bill, perhaps things would have been different.

Here's another little gem :-

When Van Gogh

When Van Gogh
the brilliant mad
painter tramped through Paris
(Sunflowers, O sunflowers!)
after quarrelling
with Gaugin,

and heard starlings
above Sacre Coeur,

it went in one ear and
stayed there.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2001

This is taken from the University Press releases (May 22nd 2001) if anyone is interested. "Extraordinary" works of famous poet given to Newcastle University

THE FAMILY of the late poet, Barry MacSweeney, has donated his archive and memorabilia to Newcastle University.

The Robinson Library houses some of the collection, including draft and published poetry, letters, and examples of his journalism, and the Department of English has re-created his writing room in the Percy Building, housing his desk, library of books and journals, records, photographs and various other personal effects.

Poetry professor Desmond Graham describes the gift as an "extraordinary collection of materials" from a poet whose work gained major national and international recognition before his death last year.

Born in Newcastle in 1948, Barry MacSweeney started writing at a very early age. He published his first collection of poems aged 19, entitled The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of His Mother, which led to a nomination for Oxford University's chair of poetry.

Various other works followed, many influenced by his beloved native North East, but his final work, The Book of Demons, published in 1997, told of his fight against alcoholism.

Barry combined his poetry writing with a successful career as a journalist, starting work aged 16 as a cub reporter with the Evening Chronicle, Newcastle, and progressing to write for a variety of publications.

He led a full and active social life, being stimulated by a multitude of interests which are reflected in the contents of his unique archive. Hobbies included fishing and shooting, and collecting books on cookery, wildlife and crime, amongst others, and listening to music by great composers such as Vivaldi and Debussy.

His poetry is currently studied as part of the English literature degree course at the University, and the archive in the Department and in the Robinson Library will be made available for students, researchers and other scholars and readers interested in the poet's work.

A collection of Barry's work, Wolf Tongue: Selected Poems 1965-2000, will be published posthumously by Bloodaxe in 2002.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

Thanks for that Cliff. I'll try and check that out soon.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

We once urinated together companionably under some bridge on the A1, separatedly hitch-hiking to London. All I remember is that he warned against pissing into the wind. This advice I have since heeded.

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001

Valerie is delectable Valerie is descrete Valerie rides a silver cloud Where once she walked the street.

There's a load more I can't remember

-- Anonymous, August 18, 2001