The (other) Trent Vale poet takes early retirement

To round off my fairly short series of posts demonstrating how I can string together something equating to a poem in a matter of minutes; below are my two earliest attempts.

At the bottom of this post are the links to my two previous entries on this theme, the first one gives a little more background as to who/what these poems were written for. And this is the link for the actual Trent Vale Poet.

The first one was themed around Coventry and Warwickshire, all I simply did was hijack a William Blake poem, the second theme was Weather. For the record Bob Brolly is a presenter on the station I was writing it for.

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
No
Until then, Stratford, Warwick, Leamington and Cov.
Will be the closest taste of Heaven here on earth
Us mere mortals will ever get to taste of the above
I wish I could say that it's filled my heart with mirth

An Indian summer, that's what my friend said she was hoping for last week
Her optimism was radiant but the sun wasn't, hiding instead behind thick dark clouds of peril
Watch out for surface water on the M6, I'm already sick of saying it
And yet there's still more to come.
Bob Brolly's namesake has been used extensively this week, the weatherman has not been good to him.
But however overcast we might feel we've got it pretty good here on this little island
Not lying on a faultline and not even the sniff of a tropical storm
Grin and bear it, it's the British way

http://gregsammons.blogspot.com/2009/04/trent-vale-poet-has-no-clear.html

http://gregsammons.blogspot.com/2009/03/other-trent-vale-poet.html

The Trent Vale Poet has no clear competition

Despite currently living in Trent Vale (Stoke on Trent) I really don't think the Trent Vale Poet has anything to worry about in terms of competition.

You can read the background to why I wrote these poems and where they were broadcast here. The photo is of John Butler, the presenter of the show I wrote them for. It should be fairly clear (but I'll say it anyway) that the two themes I had to write about this time round were Winter and Bonfire Night.

In the bleak midwinter
There's a fifty percent chance of snow on my birthday
There was a fifty percent chance of my fifth being the best
Aged five my dad proudly showed my present that year
Two yellow plastic sledges ideal for the nearby hills
The odds fell in our favour and it snowed all weekend
Allowing me and he to slide down those frosted slopes

But those blissful childhood birthdays are long gone
So has my love for those cold, dank, grim, short days
Worse still is that it's just begun, early days for winter
It's great to sit warm inside and watch the cold outside
But you've gotta go out sometime and taste that bitter air
It freshens my lungs as I wait for that next birthday sledge

Bonfire Night
As the firewood crackles around Guy Fawkes
My mind flies back to the days of the days of yore
The bang, the whizz and the smell of burnt meats
The gloves, the scarves and the wellies on my feet
It's been too long since my last fireworks night
I say I'm too old to have the same delight

That I had when I was ten and my fresh face went red
In the cold that felt so comforting like a warm winter bed

I know I want to go but I pretend I dont
So I imagine the night that wont
Be happening for real just in my head
I'm not outside having fun, I'm in bed

Dreaming that I'm ten again and not twenty four
So I won't be smelling that burnt wood anymore
Not til I have my own kids when I can be ten again
Standing in my scarf and wellies in the pouring rain

The other Trent Vale poet

At Trafficlink I have one of the least sociable work patterns you can imagine, earlies is 6am-2pm and lates on 2-10pm. Both shifts have their pros and cons however. On lates I used to do the travel for BBC Coventry and Warwickshire right up until 10pm, which is just plain daft as their stretch of roads are almost always silent by 7pm. One perk was the banter I got to have with the presenter, who would ask me such questions as “Greg, have you ever been in a shop?” or “Greg, what did you have for tea?”

On a Tuesday he had a poetry night and would challenge me to write a short poem on that week's subject, so at 8.20 he'd give me a topic and by 9.40 I'd have to read it out live to the adoring fans. Bear in mind, I had bulletins for other stations to prepare and present as well as for CovWar so these are far from polished masterpieces but for the next few Mondays I'll let you have a read of my unedited poems. The last two poems I wrote before the show was axed were just before Christmas and early on in the New Year. For some reason they asked me to write a haiku on the last show:

New Year Haiku
Another year gone
Another year to age more
Time moves too fast now

Christmas
I'd be happy if there was no mention of Christmas until the day itself
Although the world would be a much different place, it'd feel right eery
I take a positive view of life, but my enthusiasm seems to go on the shelf
When it gets closer to December and I'm reminded of those days dreary
When the days are short and weather gets colder, grimmer and wetter
As if some vision of yuletide festivities is going to make me feel better

But then, I'm rather missing the point of Christmas, as are most
Driven by commerciality is hardly how it all would have began
It's not to give presents, cards, to give those chestnuts a roast
It's to remember the birth of God on earth as a wee man
So when everyone else is enjoying their decadent pleases
I'll be singing my own song entitled Happy Birthday Jesus

Humour me

Goodness only knows what prompted me to start this but I guess it makes sense. Almost every day I'm inspired to write something but never know quite where to start. Well most days this is where I'm gonna start. Some days I might just write about something that inspired or tickled me, other days it could be the embryo of something I'd like to expand on some other time. In which case humour me.

As a rule I don't like blogs as they often bring out some worrying character traits: egotism, inflated-self worth, a filtering system that allows us to self-edit our lives to present it in the way you wished others would see you, introverted naval gazing and missives on topics that 101 other people would be better placed to comment ... and no doubt in a more eloquent way.

I'm sure I'll fall into each and every one of those pitfalls at some point. For starters 101 to the power of 101 people could have written the above paragraph far better than myself. Getting back on topic (not that there is a clear topic in this instance) I've felt the need to write for a decade or so now. I kept diaries during various parts of my life, I started writing sketches when I was 15 or 16 and still try to write them from time to time, I went though a poetry writing phase in 2001 and occasionally revisit it, I wrote a sitcom during a productive week in 2006 and keep meaning to rewrite it or start on a new idea, I wrote a short radio play a little while ago even but just ended up being a rather ham-fisted introverted way of getting a message across. My point is I keep writing bits and bobs and I doubt that desire will every go away.

I have a very strong faith and the temptation would be for me to try and convince you to believe the same as me. I have some Christian friends who see their blogs as a form of evangelism. I'll be frank: I wholeheartedly would love to see each and every one of you embrace the passion I have for my maker and have that same relationship with Him that I'm eternally thankful for but that is not the aim of my blog. There will be times when my faith is mentioned obviously, God is my biggest inspiration, but there will also be times when politics might inspire me or my love of comedy, my armchair rugby fan side might rear it's head or maybe one day I'll you about my subbuteo past...

Things interest and inspire me every day, it'd just be nice to write some of them down before I forget them. If they interest, inspire, encourage or tickle you then even better.