Fishing for Birds

I suppose if I had to choose the poem which I enjoy performing the most then it would have to be this one. … And, in this case, “The Tenth Life of Alice’s Cat” is based on a true story.

The “Alice” in question is a very good friend of mine who lives in the southern seaside resort of Brighton .. in a house that is home to a vertitable menagerie of animals plus, at times, a coterie of lodgers too. The lodgers have gone these days .. but it was one of the last, a post graduate chemistry student from the nearby university, who made the observation which inspired this piece of poetic fun.

A few months previously, Alice had buried her pet cat “Oscar” after the animal had passed away from old age (much to the relief of her dog I should add). Oscar had held court in Alice’s house for a feline lifetime, and I was among the many who missed him. It wasn’t because he was all that friendly towards me, mind you, for he was aloof to the point of rudeness. No, it was just something about his self confidence that inspired a sort of grudging admiration.

Anyway, to get to the point, it was about six months after Oscar’s death that the new lodger (who’d never seen him) described in perfect detail the apparition she’d just seen in the kitchen. In turn this emboldened the other lodgers to speak up and admit that they, too, had seen the ghost of Oscar .. always in the same place .. lurking near the fridge. We can only presume that he hadn’t yet found anyone naïve enough to feed him yet on the spirit side.

But, I ask you, is that greed or is that GREED ? Not content with eight more lives than the average human being, it struck me that Oscar was in danger of overstepping the mark just a little if he planned on a tenth performance, in the spirit world. There comes a point, surely, when cat and human alike have to make way for others.

So there was the titlle and the inspiration. The rest, of course, is poetry.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [1:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

This little ditty was written on the same day as “Walter De La Mere’s Cat”, whilst I was having a long email exchange with an American pen friend about her four Coon Cats. As with “Walter…” this one is unashamedly based on a rip off. In this case the victim is John Masefield’s poem Sea Fever “I must go down to the Sea again”, which I remember reading in English class at school. Our English teacher also taught us a “rip off” version, “I must go back to a vest again” and you’ll recognise that my version has more in common with the rip off than the original, which made me feel better! After all, it’s not quite the same to rip off a rip off.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [0:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

This is the first in a series of poems on a cat theme. Fans of Walter De La Mere will recognise at once that it is based on the opening lines of his poem, “The Traveller”. My Mum used to recite The Traveller from memory when I was very little, and then she patiently taught it to me as well, line by line. I’ve long since forgotten most of it, but I can still see the image which the opening lines conjoured up for me.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [0:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

The idea of this piece, written in the early 1990’s, was to try and sum up each of the seven decades of the traditional “three score years and ten” in as few simple words or phrases as possible, all connected with the last. It’s not intended to be serious, but I was feeling mischievous at the time.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [0:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

There is no connection between this and “Ticket the to Edge…”, other than the fact that they both deal with relationships and emotions. In this short poem, written in my early twenties, I was thinking about the contradiction that sometimes happens in relationships — that idea of being able to have really passionate and intense anger over the other partner’s behaviours whilst still (deep down) loving them all the same. I realise in older, educated, hindsight that you could also read this poem as a comment about the dynamics of domestic violence settings, although that certainly wasn’t intended at the time.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [0:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

For all the things that may happen to us in life, divorce is perhaps the worst .. certainly at the time. The death of somebody close involves a terrible loss and inevitable grief .. and in that sense the loss of a once-held dream and a one time friend means that death and divorce have much in common. Yet the end of a relationship has other emotions too. There is blame and sometimes hatred .. a sense of failure too. And then there is the unexpected secondary loss, as networks of friends take sides, or depart from your life altogether .. unsure suddenly of how to cope with a single person with painfully obvious needs, where once there was a couple supposedly reliant on each other.

Perhaps it’s little wonder then that the end of a relationship takes so long to get over.

This poem was written the night when .. several years after the event .. I realised that I had finally recovered. It started as I was getting ready for bed .. and took form so fast that to write it down was almost like taking dictation. In a sense I sometimes wonder, in fact, whether it was I who wrote it .. or whether the words came from somewhere else.

Whatever the case, it’s a piece which I now always pass on to people going through a loss .. and I’m told it helps. Those who’ve come through often go quiet and nod, too. So maybe it’s captured something essential about the experience.

If you think it’s depressing though, then consider the title .. and the form. It’s about a personal and very lonely descent into despair, yes… But there’s a turning point and a celebration of our ability to return from that brink too. And, in that sense, it’s ultimately a poem of hope.

If you should ever need to take the journey, then make sure that yours is a return ticket too.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [2:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

Contrary to what people sometime assume, this was one of the first poems I ever wrote, as a second year undergraduate student nearing the end of another year in hall, in the Summer of 1974. It does seem to have borne the test of time very well though. Nobody, of course, understood what was really between the lines at the time .. and that’s part of the magic of poetry. Indeed I’m not sure that I was able to acknowledge what I was saying at the time. It worked at several levels, and with different interpretations .. which is how we all choose our words when the truth gets uncomfortable.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [1:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player

I haven’t a lot to say about this poem, written back in 1975, except to say that it deals with that common experience of reflecting back on a relationship that wasn’t, and trying to figure it out.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [0:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player