Alive and Kicking: British Poets

foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] one of the games which literary critics play is called categories they've often played categories with today's poet Brian Patton because it comes from Liverpool he's been dumped into a sort of container marked the Liverpool poets but it is nothing like the other poets from Liverpool Adrian Henry Roger mcguffer any of them Brian's also been called a pop poet that's also an unhelpful label even though he certainly is the most popular of the younger poets in Britain I think the only category that's anywhere near the Mark is love poet his poems are about the birth life and death of love when I first heard him I didn't realize how good his poems were mainly because I was listening to his voice envying his ability to make music simply by speaking lines it was only later that I realized what the music was saying then I woke up to the fact that Brian is as far as I know the best British poet to be born since the war he was born in 1945 already he's published two collections of poems Little Johnny's confession and notes to the hurrying man and this Autumn his third book of poems the irrelevant song comes out you have to watch a pattern closely is something of a magician I once heard him read in a converted Barn in a university he was just towards the end of a reading and he was reading beautifully and it was his last poem and it was about singing and then there was a sudden Interruption a whole gang of sparrows and the rafters of the barn decided to burst into song so Brian stopped reading in the middle of his poem pointed upwards so we'd listen to The Sparrows and that was the end of the reading Brian Patton this first poem is called Little Johnny's confession and see the buried child growing goth pole shrinking I've never decided which Little Johnny's confession this morning being rather young and foolish I borrowed a machine gun my father had left hidden since the war went out and eliminated a number of small enemies since then I've not returned home this morning swarms of police would tracker dogs wander about the city with my description printed on their minds asking have you seen him is seven years old likes Pluto Mighty Mouse and Beth over bar have you seen him anywhere this morning sitting alone in a strange playground muttering you've blundered you've blundered over and over to myself I work out my next move but cannot move the tracker dogs will sniff me out they've got my lollipops this next poem is called party piece and events after an all-night party he said let's stay here now this place is emptied and make gentle pornography with one another while the party goers go out and the dawn Creeps in like a stranger let us not hesitate over what we know or over how cold this place has become but let them clip our minds and let tumble free the mangled crocodiles of love so they did right there among the wood Vines and the Guinness stains and later he caught a bus and she caught a train and all the walls between them then was rain um there's another poem called Odin Celestial music which is a kind of warning to poets and to painters and artists not to ignore certain things I mean the fact that the work must be like anchored in the ground Odin Celestial music it's not Celestial music it's the girl in the bathroom singing you can tell although it's winter the trees outside a window of grown leaves all manner of flowers push up through the floorboards I think what a filthy trick that is to play on me I snip them with my scissors shouting I want only Bonafide Celestial music hearing this she stopped singing out of a bath now the girl knocks on my door is my singing disturbing you she smiles entering did you say it was licentious or sensual and excuse me my bath towel slipping a warm and blonde creature I slammed the door on her breast shouting I want only Bonafide a Celestial music much later on in life I wear my hearing aid what have I done to my body ignoring it splitting things into so many pieces my hands can't mend anything the Stars the boogers remain silent down in the bathroom now her daughter is singing tanning my hearing aid full volume I bend close to the floorboards hoping for at least one song to come through I read a couple of love poems the first the first one is called into my mirror as well into my mirror has wore the woman who will not talk of love for rabbits subsidiaries but who stands there pleased by her own silence the weather is warning to her all seasons known to me in one breast she holds evidence of forests in the other of seas I will ask her nothing yet would ask so much if she gave some sign a shape is common enough shape to love but what keeps me here is what glows Beyond her sometimes I think a boy's body would be as easy to read light into sometimes I think my own might do another love poem evening and the sun warming the bird in echoed hands over the room Silence of her voices and sounds my love the world is a distant planet I'm bending here you are naked win from the half open Skylight hardens breasts your blonde hair falling is spread out across me let our touchings be open we do not belong to a race of pale children whose bodies are hardly born nor Among The Virgins hung still inside the sadness but waking in strange beds we are screwed and perfect littered about the room still are the clothes we wore for meeting in evening and the sun has moved across the room now we will even sleep lie still address again [Music] next poem is about imagination and it's a creature called Ryu and speaking the poems called rayon foreign I push up through the stems of flowers and step out onto lawns I am a star Swan I'm newly frozen rain cracking on the pores I am imagination rushing against railings they glow I leave light and trees no not whether it's a lawn or a universe I'm crossing so be quiet my friend do not talk too much of me some vision of this planet might come and go while you put into words my Wonder I am whatever wakes you from comfortable beds to come shivering nightgowns around you to press faces against freezing cloud and I am what you step towards and wonder rainbow found breathing and bushes the first creature seeing through miss new planets floating I follow the ant in its tree trunk world I am imagination when I enter your women they glow you would pull curtains back on them but Heaven might see its only rivals are you watching here with balloons in your noses whatever shape I take I will not call you I am most time silent in my immensity wander all your senses I am the paradise never lost only you must evaporate before reaching me um the next poem is a kind of black comedy I suppose this isn't your wish would actually happen called Interruption of the Opera House there's a sort of valuable as well at the very beginning of an important Symphony while a rich and famous was settling into the quietly expensive boxes a Man Came Crashing through the crowd carrying in his hand a cage in which for rightful owner of a music sat yellow and Tiny and very poor and taking onto the Rostrum was rather timid bad he turned up the microphone and it sang very original beginning to the evening said the crowds quietly glancing at the programs to find the significance of the intrusion meanwhile at the box office the organizers of the evening were arranging for small and uniformed attendance to evict even forcefully The Intruders but has the attendance poor and gathered from the nearby slums at little expense went rushing down the aisle to do their job they heard above a coughing and irritable rattle of jewels a sound that fill the heads with light and from somewhere inside them bubbled up a stream and there came a breeze on which the youth was carried how sweet leave a bird sang and though soon the pharah crowds were leaving their boxes and in confusion were winding the way home still the attendant sat in the Isles and some so delighted with what they had rushed out to call the families and friends in all the tenement blocks the lights were clicking on and the rightful owner of a music tiny but no longer timid sang for the rightful owners of the song yeah [Music] um the next poem again is a love poem [Music] it's a permacle through all your abstract reasoning and it's from the irrelevant song which is a book that's coming out soon for all your abstract reasoning coming back one evening through deserted fields when the birds drowsy with sleep of all but forgotten you you stop and for one moment Jack alive something has passed through you that alters and enlightens realization of what is gone and what was real oblique and uncoded message Whispers down all your nads you cared for her for love you card something has passed the finger through all your abstract reasoning from love you sheltered outside of love but still the human bit leaked in stunned enough balanced you unprepared struck so suddenly by another's identity how can you hold unto any revelation you've moved too carefully through your life always polite within you is hooded by your own protecting fingers film that's more or less in the same mood it's called the morning's got a sleepy head again it's a love poem the mornings are asleep he had it brings Parcels of mist dreams freshly woven bright mad gifts it's left on the pillow they move together slower even than the Sun but above the woods Rising learning not to hurry or bypass the smallest of Sensations they go to a lust and tenderness or words and words are meaningless we've reasoned for wanting to follow each other out across the morning out to where the Hazel opens and the grass is softest Flame forever is one light behind them but fill the summer spilled over into Autumn with aches that dropped when each had last the need to occur quite hard enough things go too quickly or else they dullen quick as they are to Marigold skates the borders of whitening grass things go and nothing seems replaced the Gap one makes and leaving is not filled the morning's got a sleepy head it brings Parcels of mist dreams newly Frozen bright mad gifts it's left on their pillow I read too short poems which I know people seem to like these for some reason they're popular um first one's called a projectionist nightmare this is the projectionist nightmare a bird Finds Its way into a cinema finds a beam flies down it smashes into a screen depicting a garden a Sunset and two people being nice to one another real blood real intestines sliver down the likeness of a tree this is no good screams the audience this is not what we came to see should phone call a small dragon I suppose in a way it's a love poem again I found a small dragon in the woodshed think it must have come from deep inside a forest because it's damp and green and leaves are still reflecting in its eyes I fed it on many things dried grass the roots of stars Hazelnut and dandelion but it stared up at me as if to say I need food you can't provide made a nest among the coal nothing like a birds but larger it is out of place here and is most time silent if you believed in it I would come hurrying to your house to let you share this Wonder but I want instead to see if you yourself will pass this way last poem it's a poem about belief about love whatever I mean you can translate the poems anywhere you want to run angel wings it's called in the morning I opened the cupboard and found inside it a pair of wings a pair of angels wings I was not naive enough to believe them real I wondered who'd left them there I took them out to cupboard brought them over to the light by the window and examined them you sat in the bed in the light by the window grinning they are mine you said you said that when we'd met you'd left them there I thought you were crazy your joke embarrassed me nowadays even the mention of the word Angel embarrasses me I looked to see how you stuck the wings together looking for glue I plucked out the feathers one by one I plucked them till the bed was littered they are real you insisted no longer smiling and on the pillow your face grew paler your hands reached to stuff me but for some time now I've been embarrassed by the word angel for some time in polite or conservative company I've checked myself from believing anything so real and yet so untouched at a chance of existing I plucked by until your face grew even paler intent on proving them false I plot and your body grew thinner I plucked till you all but vanish soon beside me in the light besides the bed in which you were lying was a massive tone feathers glueless unstitched brilliant reminiscent of some vague disaster in the evenings I go out alone now you say you can no longer join me you say without wings it's not possible you say ignorance has ruined us disbelief is slaughtered you stay at home listening on the radio to sad and peculiar music who fed unbelief who fed on the light I'd stolen next morning when I opened the cupboard outstepped the creature blank the lady Arctic into briefly sensual it brushed out the feathers gloating I must review my disbelief in angels when did you first get interested in poetry when did you first sort of think about it at all I suppose it was a feeling that that was very undefined and eventually it came out as poetry and poetry is a way of of expressing something but the actual essence of her is always that I suppose as listening on the radio because there's about 13 I was listening on the radio to a poem by by Yates I think and it was leader in the swan yeah and I remember my grandmother thinking it was like um well almost a pornographic poem and making them switch the radio up and that got me more and more interested but did anyone in your family write at all or read poetry anyway no it's really you know not really not at all not into it oh what was the first when you started writing poems which I suppose you did secretly like most people and me um when was the first time you showed one to anyone who who sort of liked her to talk how did that happen suppose um more or less when it left school going into into the city away from the lake the school environment going into town into clubs into various places I came I came across I thought I was a freak I didn't realize there was lots of people who did things like that you know and I found them eventually luckily lots of free well some good freaks okay well thanks a lot Brown Patton you go [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign