'Later With Jools Holland' is the only music programme of its kind on tv, as eclectic as possible. However, over the last two series there is an overall sense of the paucity of the music scene.
   Despite the recent and mostly good 'Best Of...', it has failed to reflect the incredibly exciting albums which have been released, preferring to plump for average white bands like Coldplay or monstrous combinations such as Lou Reed with Metallica ( what next, John Cale plus Megadeth?).
   I want to argue my choices for an alternative 'Not Jools' show. I would've included The Waterboys, but they recently appeared on it and I want to suggest those who haven't.
   I have avoided the idea of a headlining band and gone for three groups who'd have equal status : young Welsh rock band The Joy Formidable, Richard Thompson and band and Gilad Atzmon & the Orient House Ensemble.
   Two I was tempted to choose were Americans DeVotchKa, a unique combo whose music straddles the Mexican border and sounds like  soundtracks to unmade films and Welshmen Super Furry Animals, whose 'Dark Days/ Light Years' is one of their best albums and is so musically diverse it's hard to define.
   The Joy Formidable recently toured with the Manics and, by all accounts, outshone them.Their lyrics are often intriguing puzzles and the only time I took any note of one of my young daughter's fave programmes 'Waterloo Road', was when they played the whole of 'A Heavy Abacus'. They are intense and thrilling and one of the finest to emerge from Wales in a long time. The change of pace and tone in 'Llaw= Wall' and the quieter more reflective 'Maruyama' show they aren't afraid to experiment, which bodes well for their future. Like DeVotchKa, their passion is in every phrase and note.
   Richard Thompson may have brought out 'Dream Attic' last year, but it remains one of his best ever. His voice may be an acquired taste , but he's unquestionably one of the greatest songwriters around and the album takes you through so many emotions, from the gentle love songs like 'If Love Whispers Your Name', to dark murder ballads like 'Sidney Wells' and the cutting satire of 'The Money Shuffle'. He is also one of the most original and tuneful guitarists living, his style imbued with his distinct marrying of English folk and Eastern influences.
   Add to that, his band are brilliant musicians, with the likes of Joel Zifkin on violin and multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn ; their names alone onomatopeic!
   Atzmon deserves far wider recognition: a writer and activist as well as composer and jazz musician. He's an Israeli who has been ostracized by his homeland for views which are very sympathetic to the Palestinians ( an unapologetic peacenik).
   Two years back I read at Narberth and his pianist Frank Harrison was sharing the gig. I'd never heard at Atzmon then, I'm ashamed to say.  Atzmon is Robert Wyatt's favourite musician : what better recommendation!
   Here's jazz which, like Weather Report, crosses over into rock's territories without you knowing. It uses distortion, voices and street-sounds as background to Atzmon's extraordinary playing of saxes ( which place him in the West), clarinet ( bridging the oceans) and Shabbaabeh flute (rooting him in the Middle East).
   Yet the music transcends high barriers, barbed wire dividing and watchtowers overlooking, to a place as in 'Prayer For Peace' where you journey far, without and within.  
   Two other guests would be Thea Gilmore and Lleuwen.
   Astonishingly, Gilmore has never appeared on Jools, even though she's been recording marvellous music since the late 90s and has brought out a series of albums which represent some of the best songs written in the last decade : ''Songs From The Gutter',' Harpo's Ghost', 'Liejacker' and 'Recorded Delivery' are all classics and it's a crime she isn't HUGE.
   But Thea would be singing from her latest offering 'Don't Stop Singing', an album of songs by the late, great Sandy Denny. Gilmore's highly emotive voice together with her affinity for Denny has made these songs as much her own.
   She brings out all the pain and defiance of songs like 'London' and 'Long Time Gone' and, in contrast, the utter tenderness of 'Georgia'. Like Thompson, she has played with sensitive and subtle musicians for many years and none more so than her partner Nigel Stonier.
   Lleuwen's album 'Tan' is an indication of just how exciting these times are for Welsh music and , along with the likes of Huw M. and Gwilym Morus, there is a real revival of Welsh language singer-songwriters.
   'Tan' is more experimental than the other two, more jazz-tinged and much less clear on its influences ( though Meic Stevens must be one).She sings in Cymraeg and Brezhoneg (Breton), a voice of the sea and sometimes, the stones.
   For my legend; a real one!
  I was tempted to say Ry Cooder, whose latest 'Pull Up The Dust and Sit Down' is a revelation. He's been called a 'modern Woody Guthrie' but he's different, a man  of many persona. It's the only album I've heard which hilariously rails at war and bankers alike.
   No, it's .........Tom Waits!
   He would inevitably play from 'Bad As Me', his recently released cd. It combines most of the many strains of the man over the years and , for any Waits-virgin, is as good a place to begin as any.
   On it there are ballads like 'Last Leaf', the bluesy bawling humour of 'Satisfied' and one of the best anti-war songs ever 'Hell Broke Luce', a blackly-comic empathy with a soldier's plight. All this plus one of the greatest guitarists ever ( and I don't mean Keith Richards, who's on a couple of tracks), the incomparable Marc Ribot.
   Waits is the closest you get to poetry in music and closest you get to the alien offspring of Beefheart and Howlin' Wolf in vocals.
   So that's my line-up. Any other suggestions?


                   THE NOT JOOLS HOLLAND SHOW

Let's hear it for
the legendary!
magnificent !
wonderful!
amazing!
buy their new album
'Bestiality Blues'


making a comeback
for the first time on tv
all the way from
somewhere near Aberystwyth,
Llan- something or other

THE  SHEEP-SHAGGERS!

for the first and last time,
banned from every gig
thrown out of village halls,
once did a benefit
for the Free Wales Army

let's hear it
before they cut us off,
their latest song
'Carlo Rubs Himself On Trees'

the unknown!
the up-and-coming!
the world famous!
(well, Borth famous)

catch them here
before they appear
at the Cardigan Bay Stone Skimming Festival,
let's hear it for.......

bollocks! they've pulled the plugs on them
like Seeger once did to Dylan. 

   I will never wear a red poppy and doubt very much I could wear a white one either.
   For all the furore about the red poppy symbol not being political, it obviously is. It comemorates the dead of the British military only and is organised by the Royal British Legion, who support families of servicemen and women.
   Any act of remembrance on Remembrance Day or homage on Armistice Day is to the military alone, not the so-called enemies, the many innocents who have died or the freedom-fighters who have fought against the British Empire.
   With Armed Forces Day coming a week before, the whole week has been a show of British propaganda. There is the assumption throughout the media that British armed forces have fought for freedom. Many presenters and newsreaders used the phrase  'those who have given their lives for freedom', as if it couldn't be questioned.
   Yet, in the 1st World War many were conscripts and this war was singularly futile, as those great anti-war poets Owen, Sassoon, Rosenborg and Read showed us so vividly.
   In fact, Friday's Newsnight programme was particularly absurd as it introduced newly-found poems by Siefried Sassoon. An extract from one of these 1916 poems shows a triumphalist fervour more akin to Rupert Brooke, with lines like 'A host of swords in harmony.'
   Sassoon's biographer Dr. Moorcroft Wilson then went on to talk about him as if he were some kind of heroic soldier-poet. However, early poems from the trenches by Wilfred Owen also illustrate this gung-ho spirit ( the key word in the Sassoon extract is surely 'sword', when bombs and gas were all around them). Wilson failed to even mention Sassoon's scathingly bitter and satirical poems which influenced Owen so much.
   Sassoon received a Military Cross which he later threw in the river Mersey as a protest against the 'Great' War. He had a Soldier's Declaration read out in the House of Commons decrying the war and was then dispatched to Craiglockhart Hospital for psychiatric treatment.
   The idea that the British military could actually be a force used against freedom hasn't even been entertained, as platitudes abound. Of course , there have been numerous struggles against imperialism from Cyprus to Ireland, which depict this starkly,but it must be remembered, we in Cymru have suffered, at crucial times in our history, under British military oppression.
   When David Cameron argues that the red poppy is apolitical and then goes on to say ' it's about the pride of the nation-state', let us remember the working-classes of Wales killed by British troops, as they have fought for their rights.
   From the Merthyr Rising of 1831, when they opened fire on unarmed crowds fighting against poverty and cruel ironmasters, through the Newport Uprising of 1839 when the Chartists were struggling for fundamental rights such as suffrage and on to Llanelli and Tonypandy in 1910-11 when the army was sent in to destroy strikes; the army was an instrument of brutality by that very nation-state.
   I am reluctant to wear a white one, as much as I'd like to. The white poppy is associated with pacificism and the Peace Pledge Union, who in the 1920s requested that the British Legion add 'No More War' to their poppies and the request was refused. As I am not a pacifist, it would be hypocritical.
   Ideally, all conflicts should be resolved though talk, as the one in n. Ireland was eventually ( though some would say, it is still unresolved with the very existence of the six counties).
   In reality, however, I would certainly have joined the forces against Franco in the Spanish Civil War (as did George Orwell and many others) and fought alongside the Trotskyite POUM or the Anarchists. In apartheid S.Africa, there would have been no choice but to side with Mandela's ANC against the vicious, racist government there.
   In our relatively relaxed situation we can sit back and pontificate about conscience; however, under a dictatorial, oppressive regime such choices are ones of luxury. Neither Franco nor the S. African government left any room for negotiation at all and ruled with the kind of police state I have only witnessed in n.Ireland.
   Not the red poppies of the British military nor white of the pacifists.......not these, but others, as yet unplaced - maybe the yellow ones of my country - on the sites of the fallen who were killed at the Risings of Merthyr, Newport, Llanelli and Tonypandy.


                                 SPY   BIRD

Great night bird,
blade wings rotating,
a predator on human players
out on their missions.

I don't discriminate
between mice- and rat-men ;
I feed off their jittering,
their scurrying with packages.

My beam dominates,
seeks out suspicious movements;
I find a flash of flesh,
a couple tumbling down.

Great spy bird
with my eyes a screen,
claws belong to those patrolling,
hooked beak a pointed gun.

My call is not the rounded
vowel-echo of the owl,
but the staccato of the heart
of the dark's machine.

   Why do certain things surface in your consciousness and demand to be written about?   I'm pondering this because, during the last week, I've written a series of poems about northern Ireland.
   Now, this a subject you'd think I'd written about too much already. My first booklets of poetry and stories (both published by Tony Curtis' Edge Press) were based entirely on my time there in the 1970s. Seamus Heaney quickly became my favourite poet and I was delighted to be able to study his work with pupils in both Merthyr and Cardiff.
   So why now and to a place I haven't visited for quite a while? Of course, my wife's from Belfast, so it's never far away in her recollections and my anecdotes.
   But the truth is, I can't explain it precisely. Perhaps our 35th wedding anniversary had something to do with it, as my mind returned to priests on the Falls Road (and one in Barry before I left) who, on hearing of my staunch atheism, gave our marriage ' 6 months at the most'; also, to the priest Father Ruari who was so kind, giving me instructions (more like one than the required ten!) in a relaxed fashion and listening to my heresies. It was Ruari who conducted our marriage and told everyone to kiss the person next to them in the congregation. He was the exception to narrow-minded clergy I  generally encountered .
   It's not as if n. Ireland has been in the news either, though Martin McGuiness (former Provisional IRA leader) did stand in the Irish Presidential election recently. He was grilled and at times condemned for his past and this brought home to me the degree of ignorance which existed in the South about the 'Troubles', as the war was euphemistically dubbed.
   When I think about their lack of empathy on the whole for fellow Catholic/nationalist/ republicans it always seems symbolized by U2 and their song 'Sunday Bloody Sunday'. I recall Bono's words vividly -  'This is not a rebel song!', as if he couldn't possibly make a stance exposing the brutality of the British  military presence.
   I always identified closely with bands like Stiff Little Fingers who, even though they used the erroneous title 'Ulster' in one song, seemed part of what was happening and understood it so intimately. This was also true of a punk band called The Starjets, whose song 'War Stories' remains one of the best about that time. In my latest book of poems I even use it as a title for a series on n. Ireland.
   I wanted McGuiness to win, but knew he wouldn't. To me, he represents just how far politics in the north has moved on from bullet to ballot box, even though his party , Sinn Fein, have lost something of their idealism and socialism along the way.
   My desire to write about a time and events many decades ago undoubtedly had aesthetic motivations as well.
   Though I made no conscious choices, there was a restlessness inside me. I wanted to return to dramatic monologues; to try to approach that war with wit and, above all, to shift perspectives from people to inanimate objects. I wanted to address the religious implications as I had in those stories 'In Enemy Territory', but not from my own viewpoint.
   The intransigence of the clergy of both sects was evident the whole time I was there. I was sacked from my temporary post in a rural Catholic school because of pressure from the local priest. My crime was discussing abortion with a class of 15 year-olds : the fact I used an article taken from an Irish newspaper was ironic. I was accused of instigating a discussion on breach births as well ..........we were actually reading the story 'Indian Camp' by Hemingway!
   Shortly after this another clergyman, Rev. Ian Paisley, led the unsuccessful Ulster Workers' Strike (the previous one had brought down the power-sharing administration). He played a vital role in the occupation of our nearest town Ballymena, with lots of farmers taking over the place with tractors and trailers. The RUC (police force) ringed the town and ensured that nobody drove into it, so we couldn't do our shopping! The complicity between police, UDA (Loyalist paramilitaries.....then not banned!) and a powerful clergyman like Paisley was apparent that day. My wife had been stopped on her way to work (I was on the dole by then) by a UDA roadblock.
   N. Ireland was fascinating, frightening, fierce and fruitful all at the same time and I'm still haunted by images and words : I still use 'pockle' meaning an annoyance , for example. Still with a sudden loud sound my wife will react in a gesture of panic and alarm, arms flying upwards with a gasp of fear : all those years of street warfare and bomb scares have made their mark on her.
   As significant as anything else, my weather-vane brain has been turned westwards by The Waterboys' latest 'An Appointment with Mr Yeats'. I am besotted with it : from the Irish mythology of 'The Hosting of the Sidhe', the antipathy to Britain's war in 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death', Yeats' strong disillusionment with romantic nationalism in 'September 1913' and to that extraordinary pagan hymn of hope 'Let The Earth Bear Witness'. In fact, every track has been a road back to Ireland.


                                 ALL THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

Where do you live?
Where do you work?

What school did you go to?
What's your full name?

What foot do you kick with?
How would you cut turf?

Which side of the river
and which housing estate?

When you say West I'm not sure,
when you say East it's clearer.

You say 'Dead on!' for 'It's certain!',
but what's that 'Smile like a goat a-hanging'?

Tell me, are you really living
in Ulster, the six counties or N.Ireland?

Have you ever spoken Gaelic
or, indeed, played it?

When you pray, is it a direct line to God
or have you to get a connection?

Do you eat flesh and drink blood,
or prefer an Ulster fry on the Sabbath?

   How does childhood shape your later days? Why are certain traits and interests developed and kept and others jettisoned on the way?   In Penparcau, near Aberystwyth, I was left to roam the countryside and only once did my parents show signs of panic when it was getting very late and my brother , much older, was sent to find me.
   There was no set time to be back and no limits to how far I could wander. I'd climb trees, make dens, knock on doors, filch fruit and, above all, play war games and Cowboys and Indians. Films from America dictated our days and guns were the most vital toys.
   I had a few bows and arrows made for me, but my prize possession was a plastic machine-gun which even made the noise of shooting. Given this, I should've ended up in the SAS, though it was very common for boys to be honourable British soldiers killing off the nasty Jerries or Nazis.
   Films and the weight of recent history moved our fantasies and not all the hide 'n' seek or skimming stones or fishing with pieces of string could detract from our bellicose pastimes.
   When my family moved to England and I began to read the 'Jennings and Derbyshire' books set in an English Public School, these took over and I should've gone on to become a master at Eton! Even the huge impact of The Beatles and our singalongs brandishing racket-guitars couldn't deflect from this.
   Yet of all the games I played in those days it was football which grew and grew to dominate my life.
   It began on the streets of Penparcau and the park down the road; I borrowed my brother's old boots with nailed-in studs which cut into my soles so they bled. I loved tackling bigger boys and their annoyance when I beat them and scored.
   Rugby was virtually unknown there in west Wales, where you'd have expected it to be king. Only on a few occasions did we fling this odd torpedo to each other and it never became a game.
   I was let loose and my parents never discouraged me from pursuing any interest in things military ( strange, as my mother had been prominent in Aber CND!) and showed no interest in my footie fanaticism.
   Many years later I managed to press-gang both my mother and father to matches( on separate occasions, as they were divorced by then) and both ended up as extremely tedious 0-0 draws, as if their presences had jinxed the games.
   Coincidentally, the height of my own playing career was reached at the same point as my son many years after. I played for Cambridge City Schoolboys at 10 and 11 just as my son did for Merthyr and both of us on the left-wing........even though I am a right-footer.
   My passion for footie has been handed down to him. The only thing my parents gave me was perhaps my mother's great admiration for poetry, especially Dylan Thomas, who died the year I was born. None of my father's many crazes had any effect on me simply because they were for him alone ; he never tried to enthuse me in painting, yoga, sailing, horse-riding, judo, photography, motorbiking, gliding etc etc. Some I might have taken to, though I never got to meet the horse he kept in our garden at Barry!
   My dreams of becoming a professional footballer rapidly disppeared at Secondary School, as I began to realise that all the other boys were getting taller , tougher and hairier! My squeaky-voiced refusal to grow meant I was soon replaced as captain, though I did enjoy playing for a local factory team when I was 15, where many of the players were slower and balding! I relished the battle with pitches which turned into quagmires and recall one corner-flag which was downhill and couldn't be seen from the centre circle!
   Why did my endless enthusiasm for footie continue and develop, yet all those other games cease to matter?
   Perhaps it was just to do with finding a talent. If I'd joined a Shooting Club, my early love for guns could've found an outlet. More significantly, I believe it was the imaginary worlds we created which appealed to me.
   My brother was obsessed with aeroplanes and especially RAF ones and soon joined the ATC, where he thrived on its sense of order. He became a nascent engineer, making endless model planes and flying them. He went on to become an engineer in the RAF! My father loved planes and had always wanted to join the RAF in the 2nd World War ( he couldn't because of his involvement in agriculture) :he no doubt encouraged my brother.
   Those fantasy worlds of war and Public Schools later translated into football fields, where I saw myself as one of my heroes. After the World Cup of 1966 ( I still lived in England), Alan Ball was the all-action midfielder I wanted to emulate. I remember telling this to the top goal-scorer in our school team  who simply dismissed 'Bally' with - 'Yeah, he runs around everywhere, doing nothing!' I think the remark was aimed at me.
   As a teenager I created my own sport called 'Balloonball', initially an indoor variety and later transposed to our garden in Cambridgshire. It involved a lot of being tackled by trees and playing one-twos with the garage door. But I invented leagues and players and Bees were one of the top teams!
   I wrote about 'Balloonball' once for a school story and received much praise. I think the teacher thought I was making it up!



                           A ONE-BOY TEAM

This is the place I want to be
(to others it's just a park, a field),
but when I'm here
the crowds cheer :
I'm who I want to be,
Chops or Jay or Bellamy.

This is the place my head's a crowd
(to others only the birds sing loud),
but when I'm here
the fans are chanting :
I'm speeding down the wing,
I'm Whittingham, I'm Burkey.

This is the place where I'm scoring
(to others it's green and boring),
but when I'm here
it becomes a massive stadium:
every leaf is an eye watching
and I am a one-boy team.

   The man on the bus to Rhymney looked out the window disdainfully.
   ' It's a total waste o money!' he declared to a friend opposite, who nodded agreement.
   'Ow cun the Council spend all tha money on a ewseless thing like tha? It's problee funded by Ewrop!'
   He was commenting on a sculpture/memorial near Butetown, Rhymney, which I have interpreted in the poem below.
   Of course, the £180.000 spent on it could have been put towards hospitals or schools, but why not cut needless jobs like school inspectors or headmasters and save that way?
   Instead, councils of whatever hue - from Labour Brent busy closing most of its libraries, to Plaid Cymru Caerphilly which has recently got rid of the excellent Schools Library Service - are carrying out the ConDem cuts with little consideration for the longterm future of the arts.
   There's no name on that sculpture, nor does it say who created it; but google it and you'll find it's called 'Simnai Dirdo' (Twisted Chimney) and was made by famous New York sculptor Brian Tolle. Every time I pass it fires my imagination, changing its meaning according to the angle it's seen. Like the best of art, it can alter people's consciousness forever, if you really look closely.
   I'd like to have replied to that man - 'Look and you'll see........and if you don't see at first, keep looking!'

   This has been a week to focus on the arts in Merthyr. Over a week ago I appeared on the Radio Wales Arts Show presented by Nicola Heywood-Thomas and this was the topic. All three of us in the studio: novelist Des Barry. Prof. Dai Smith and myself agreed that not only is the future much brighter for the arts here, but that a great deal of talent exists.
   We were optimistic despite the inevitable vox pops which expressed views like - 'There's nothin t do yer!' and ' Ev'rythin appens in Cardiff!'
   How wrong they are! Theatr Soar offers a full and eclectic programme of events in both Welsh and English and the anticipated opening of the Old Town Hall in Spring 2013 will give the town another dimension. I would like to see a first class exhibition space there, a cinema giving alternatives to the Hollywood production-line and a bar (selling real ale, of course) with a performance area for local bands, singer-songwriters and poets.
   October 20th in Merthyr Tudful gave just one indication of the vitality of literature especially, in a town with such a strong literary tradition.
   It began with the first Young People's Literature Festival held at the Soar and adjacent Canolfan. As this was my brain-child some months ago, I was particularly pleased to see it come to fruition.
   This was down to the Committee and notably the really hard work of Louise Richards of LitWales. A much longer festival was envisaged with months of workshops culminating in a final performance and anthology of pupils' work. Indeed, this could still happen in future, though it may not be in Merthyr.
   The day began well when local AM and Assembly Minister Huw Lewis pulled out of his short introduction as one of his children was unwell. This was fortuitous, as I might have been tempted to heckle him with - 'Did you find your way up from Penarth?'
   Renowned writer and illustrator Jez Allborough kicked off the day ( after the usual stirring intro from Phil Carradice) with an entertaining session. His work is aimed at much younger children than those present and I felt that Welsh writing for that age-group ( Years 6 & 7) should've been spotlighted, especially as newly-appointed Children's Laureate Catherine Fisher was present.
   Six schools attended  (four English and two Welsh language) and pupils were very enthusiastic and responsive throughout. Most of the writers concentrated on their own work at workshops, while some got the children writing poetry. Many books were sold and signed and the entire day was undoubtedly a success.
   All this was not covered by the local paper, nor was the evening launch at The Imperial Hotel of Mike Williams's first poetry collection 'The Acolytes', a very good publication from Mulfran Press.
   Mike's  may be a Pontypool boy originally, but he is an adopted literary son of Merthyr, having appeared in anthologies produced by the Council's Arts Officer Gus Payne and become a regular at our Open Mic. session at The Imp.
   Mike's reading and explanations were fascinating. After a long and distinguished career as a scientist he began writing poetry in 1992, inspired by visits to Ty Newydd. It was fitting he should launch the book among friends and supporters.
   One day in Merthyr doesn't prove we have a cultural renaissance. However, it is a beginning and shows that despite the doom and gloom of cuts and unemployment, there are positive developments in the Valleys.


                                  THE CHIMNEY SNAKE

Thick twist of brick-look steel
close by the roadside,
no name defining
and nobody makes a claim.

The geometry of it,
sharp lines turning light!
It's a curved chimney
with a door never opened.

It's a snake, venom gone,
disappearing underground,
its head emerging
a plinth for anyone.

If you could enter,
if only you had the key :
full of soot and ash
from terraces, furnaces, collieries.   

   It has definitely been a year for commissioned poems and it began earlier in the year in Newcastle, where I met the PhD student organising my reading there and her fiancee.
   They happened to mention needing a poem for their wedding and on the slow cross-country train back home I duly obliged, writing one based only on a fleeting meeting with them ( the real ale pub may have swung it!).
   They liked it so much they said they'd use it at their wedding and I was 'wrth fy modd'. I had written before for the marriages of my neice and nephew, but never for comparative strangers, so this was pleasing.
   Following this, I responded to poet and lecturer Carrie Etter's challenge for US Poetry Month, to write a poem a day for April ( well, a haiku in my case). If there are such things as one-line poems, then I think I'll try them next year!
   A more direct commission was the one below, written for Merthyr Fairtrade Week. It was supposed to appear in the local Council-produced magazine 'Contact', but never did. However, I'm assured that 100s of copies were given out at Merthyr's Fairtrade stall down town. Just hope they weren't re-cycled into paper aeroplanes!
   I was later asked to write a piece to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Snowdonia National Park on October 18th, the title being '60 Wonders,60 Writers, 60 Words'.  I loved the challenge of a 60 word poem and chose a photograph of a woman swimming in Lake Mymbyr near Yr Wyddfa; only her head was exposed in the water.
   I think I could write about most things to order. This contrasts considerably with my notion of the organic development of a writer.
   While I like to respond directly to such challenges, I always feel my writing must not consist of a deliberate or conscious effort to forge new styles or approaches. I arrived at writing in Merthyr dialect through a convergence of times and influences : the language of my pupils on the Gurnos estate and the 'Swonzee' poetry of Dave Hughes, lyrics of Bob Marley and my close interest in  the works of James Berry and Derek Walcott.  I never thought to myself - ' Yer! I mus write about the way they do talk round yer!'
   Sometimes recently, I have even commissioned myself to write things. Despite being cynical about the Valleys' cliche of Male Voice Choirs, I still wrote about Dowlais Choir singing on the escalator in the precinct. I gave it to the accompanist of that choir. I tried to write a haiku in Welsh about the newly opened Theatr Soar and handed it to the organiser there.
   My most satisfying poem was written last week and handed in yesterday to the librarian at Rhymney. Every week I take a Creative Writing  class there and, as you enter the library, there is a cabinet of exhibits about the town's greatest son, poet Idris Davies.
   Right opposite the library is a plaque on the terraced house where he died in April 1953 and I did try to seek out his grave in the local cemetery, but the gates were padlocked. My poem's a tribute to one of the finest poets from the Valleys. Ironically, I've lived close to Rhymney for years ,yet never sought him out except in books.
   I have a confession to make. Not an easy one for a socialist : I watch 'Dragons' Den'!
   I happen to admire all those characters with their oddball, imaginative inventions, some very useful and others which seem designed purely to accomodate the whims of the inventor.
   I particularly liked the suit of chainmail armour for roasting chicken which appeared recently. I am a veggie, but still have to cook for the carnivores, so this seemed eminently practical. Needless to say, the woman received encouragement but not a ha'penny from the Dragons, due to her dodgy business plan.
   I envisage myself appearing in the Den with the idea of a website in which I respond to requests for poetry. One of the Dragons, probably Theo, will dismiss me with - ' What you're asking is for me to invest £100,000 in you and not a business as such. Also, I've read your blog and I wouldn't give you 2P for your 'Everyday Verse' website. I'm OUT!'
   Duncan has been writing down lots of sums - ' What's your net margin projections for the next two years?'
   ' Probably........ 20 sonnets, 43 haiku and , unfortunately, a couple of villanelles.'
   Duncan will declare himself 'OOT!'
   Despite my hopeless case for a slot on 'Dragons' Den', I do harbour some hopes. It would be nice to have my words on the front of a very large building, like Gwyneth Lewis's , in Welsh and English , on the Millennium Centre in Cardiff.
   In actual fact, when that was being commissioned my older daughter and I did try to come up with appropriate phrases for the competition. However, instead of twenty letters I thought it was twenty words required! My entry would have filled the entire roof and probably stretched to the Senedd building nearby!


                                    STORY OF THE LEAVES

If you do not believe me,
look closely at the leaves,
they tell a story.

They tell of trade
with no chwarae teg,
of children diseased and dying,

in a country of cities and industries
growing like plantations of buildings :
stalks of aerials, fronds of wiring.

Yet read the leaves of another cup :
a few pence more for the shine on skin
of toilers in the tea-gardens.

The shape that they make
is a full face fed and nurtured :
a story with plot and purpose. 
  
  

   It's happening! But it's not happening on television, except a by-the-way item on the News. It's like the late, great Gil Scott-Heron once sang - 'The Revolution will not be televised.'   It's happening! Yet you'd hardly know it from the newspapers. I search in vain 'The Observer' and the 'Sunday Times' (not mine) for one column even.
   You begin to question, begin to wonder. Yet Youtube and Facebook tell a different story and there you can read and witness the postings.
   At first, the pictures seem strangely dark and oppressive and it makes me think of times of the Depression.
   But no, this is New York City on Saturday and there's an occupation of Wall Street. It's a massive protest replicated in many other places across the USA, against the bankers, the share-gamblers who trade in people's lives; who shift money round the globe without caring about the consequences.
   Against the ones who caused this whole economic crisis in the first place,  given total freedom by Bush , Blair and then Brown, to play the markets with their 'Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed' to quote the folk band Show of Hands.
   700 protesters were arrested as they tried to stall traffic on Brooklyn Bridge, but you'd hardly know about it. And elsewhere, inspired by it, plans are afoot in Canada for similar occupations. They may well have
chanted ' The people united.....will never be defeated!' in the States  instead of 'Workers', but they have had enough like many others across Europe.
   And, like the students when they marched in London, the many public service Trade Unionists who rallied and even ( whatever their motives) the rioters in England over the summer........they have nothing to lose.
   Why has this been given so little coverage? If it were part of the Arab Uprisings things would be different. Is it a fear, under Government pressure, of all this spreading? Or is it just that it doesn't fit their formula, like the recent protests in Egypt against the military government there, who are acting just like Mubarak before them, with a ruthless totalitarianism? This too , has been given scant coverage.
   Yet the British media over-estimates its influence. They should know from the huge impact of Facebook and Twitter in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya that people will get to know things far quicker now than any of their cameras and presses can deliver. Already , a similar occupation is planned for London on Oct. 15th, with a call to occupy the Stock Exchange.
   Where will all this lead us? Cynics might say, I've seen it all before and it comes and goes away. In the 1960s we witnessed widespread rebellion, often based on student protests, anti-Vietnam War marches and Civil Rights movements. In N.Ireland and the USA, these have had lasting repercussions.
   Today , things are significantly different. Although the so-called 'underclasses' ,who are most seriously affected by the cuts and price rises,
have yet to take to the streets, there is a much wider force for change which comprises green activists, Trade Unionists and students. Once these rise together, they could prove the most potent force since the opposition to the war in Iraq.
   The ConDems responses are minimal, of course. They are committed to class warfare and their scathing attacks on the Welfare State, public services and pensions are just a part of this. Just as Thatcher used unemployment as a weapon to beat down the workers, so Cameron and Clegg are using the deficit to cover an onslaught on
those who struggle most.
   Labour cannot be trusted to take a lead. Ed Middlengland and his cronies fail to back the very Unions who placed him in power and , like Blair and Brown before him, he woos the 'squeezed middle' while completely ignoring those at the bottom whose poverty and daily grind is worsened every minute.
   Here in Wales, Plaid Cymru offer no solutions. They merely advocate private investment rather than the immediate nationalisation of Welsh water, railways and all energy suppliers at the very least. How else can we be expected to control the exorbitant prices now being charged? There isn't even any competition and share-holders and executives are the only ones to gain.
   I'd like to think that the uprising of the people will overtake the politicians and take them by surprise, as many reject the traditional notion of party politics and take history into their own hands. As someone posted on their Facebook wall -   'If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.' ( Desmond Tutu )


IT'S HAPPENING!

It's happening now
people
           in cities     in squares
sitting down to stand
occupying
               trespassing
chanting
            singing
                       in unison

facing the Feds       the cops
their helmets and truncheons
their water cannons
their CS canisters

mouths bandaged
with dollars    pounds -
showing their features
                                 unafraid
of secret cameras

it's happening
                    in the places
where it all began
the money markets
where the gamblers
with lives far and near
risk someone else's skin

shop-floor     sweat shop workers
thrown out
                 binned
not to be re-cycled,
flung onto landfills
of bodies
                  toxic troubles

almost incinerated,
they have risen
                        from piles of debris
waving the flags of new-found flesh

ripping the bills      the notes
from their lips
                     and uttering

'Yes! It's happening!
We are ourselves and one!'

    

   Love at first sound ; where, for days or weeks you totally inhabit an album or song and it lives in you. The music and words combining to fill full your days and dreams.
   It doesn't often happen to me. It did when I first listened to Captain Beefheart's 'Strictly Personal', the intense feeling of something unique, at  once a primitive voice of desert and swamp and then strangely, but  almost always, married to lyrics which come from dreams, nightmares or outer space. 
   It did another time when I heard Kevin Coyne's song 'Turpentine', so out of time with the many oh-so-sensitive whining hippies who appeared on the 'Old Grey Whistle Test'. Here was a punk before it even happened, a bluesman with Derby accent who sang his pained and angry cry from the view of a boy who was a total nihilist.
    Coyne was an outsider and revelation much like another singer-songwriter whose sounds I fell for at first hearing, Tom Waits. Living in W. Germany we'd go over the border to the Netherlands for music and tobacco (small cigars I smoked then). I also crossed the border imaginatively into the world of Waits, of bars and characters and the loneliness of being in a strange land : 'Tom Traubert's Blues' had all of these and more, with its remaking of 'Waltzing Matilda'.
   Others I've grown to love, especially Dylan and Cohen, whose voices grated initially. How could they claim to be singers? I was so wrong and made up for my poor judgement by soaking up all their work later, though I mostly sang Cohen to myself around the house and there was a particular pub in Aber where Saturday nights were singalong and 'Bird On The Wire' was my favourite. For Dylan, I had to stand as my wife played piano and follow his intricate words.
   Music has been so exciting of late. I have become intrigued by  the lyrics of Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys, at a time when few bands are not at all adventurous with words and likewise the peculiar phrasing and rhythmic impulses of Welsh band The Joy Formidable, whose lyrics sometimes remind me of the work of Peter Finch. I'm not sure if they'd count him as an influence though!
   However, real love at first sound came from one of the finest albums this century without any doubt. It's an album which has swum and flown in my brain from first listening: full of birds and foam, of nymphs and dolphins.
   I was uncertain about downloading The Waterboys'  'An Appointment With Mr Yeats' at first. The title seemed a bit awkward and Richard Curtis almost put me off. Yes, the Richard Curtis of all those famous romcoms which lacked the 'com' and had a lot of predictable 'rom'! It wasn't the fact that Curtis mildly criticised this album ( saying that he much preferred Mike Scott's own words) that made me wary; it was more the fact that if Curtis eulogized The Waterboys then maybe I should take stock of my great admiration.
    One listen on youtube to their version of 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' was enough to persuade though. Here was a bold, bluesy rendition of the poem, which should conventionally have been treated as a simple acoustic lament. This prepared me for the rest.
   So much of what Scott and his bassist do with the poems isn't what you'd expect, yet there are still echoes of the very best of their music through the years, even the resounding piano chords from that classic, 'The Whole of the Moon'.
   The music is taken to another level by their desire to do justice to Yeats' words and Scott's voice is even more passionate than on recent cds. He sings with such an emotional power throughout, that each word is given weight and I can only compare to early Cohen for anything like this. Thus the word 'mad' has such a quivering quality in 'Mad As The Mist and Snow',
while 'grave' in 'September 1913' is deep and doomy and 'copulate' at the end of 'News For The Delphic Oracle'  is intoned with such lasciviousness.
   In an age of endless singer-songwriters who moan in the inevitable First Person about the end of love affairs and little else, what price songs about the 'Four Ages of Man' or the myth of Niamh and Oisin? Interestingly, Scott chooses to alter the ending of the 'Four Ages of Man' and stop with 'at stroke of midnight'. There is no 'God wins' at all and it actually makes the poem more mysterious. I'm not sure if this is a later version of the manuscript or not.
   I have never cried so much over an album and different songs affected me the more I listened. The first  was 'Sweet Dancer', an example of the band's more folk-rock side, though Katie Kim's dueting vocals have more than a hint of alt. country style. Most of the album is definitely closer to the 'rock 'n' roll' Scott claimed on one tv interview.
    'Sweet Dancer' doesn't work so well on the page and reads as rather slight. However, Scott and the Boys bring it to another dimension altogether with Wickham's winged and wheeling violin, the subtle harmonies and , above all, the way the refrain of 'sweet dancer' is sung over and over. It's such a visual poem and the flute at the end leaves with a sense of the girl ( seen as 'mad' by men in the house) drawing pictures with her movements on the lawn.
   This album has so much variety of interpretation, from the chanting , leaping opening of 'The Hosting of the Shee' to the incantatory 'Let The Earth Bear Witness' with its musing on mortality.
   It make me want to revisit my Waterboys' cds and also to re-read the work of W.B. Yeats. I have never been a fan of all his poetry and the later tendency to 'gyres' left me cold, but individual poems moved me considerably. Some, like 'Leda and The Swan' aren't featured on the album; others, like 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death' are.
   If you've never listened to The Waterboys before ( apart from that single) , then lend this an ear.......or two! Rock on, Billy Yeats! It might just be that Scott & Yeats are the best songwriting combo since Becker and Fagen ( who are they?.........another story!).
   I make no excuses for digging up an old one for this occasion. The title refers to ' the autograph tree' in Coole Park and Yeats' house at Thor Ballylee. Yeats' friend, author and translator Douglas Hyde, signed his name ACA on the tree i.e. Gaelic for 'the most beautiful branch'.  


                              The tree & the tower

There's a wide spread of petticoat
August auburn on the outside,
green facing in, where we hide
in that 'sensuality of the shade'
Yeats marked so delicately.

The first to initial that smooth
parchment of the copper beech.
Augusta Gregory in autumn
widowed in buffed red-brown :
WBY losing its clarity to time.

Weathering and the admiring palms
have rubbed so many autographs,
obscuring Hyde, An Craoibhinn Aoibhinn
his Gaelic name of the knife
and others queried or forgotten.

The tower remains, its gyring stairs
up to the stars, the ghosts of Normans
who built to oversee, while Coole
has long been left to fester down,
for uneasy spirits we're waiting on.

Over the tower's roof a sword in the east,
under the laefy dome we trace
a constellation of friends made myth ;
under the bridge blown in rebellion
the stream translates script-reflections. 

   The tragic events at Gleision drift mine near Pontardawe have been  harrowing. The relatives of those dead miners must have suffered so much, waiting anxiously in Rhos Community Centre to find out about their loved-ones. And now they have to bear the grief.   There have been so many of these tragedies in the past that few in the Valleys do not know someone touched by them. There was the terrible accident at Six Bells Colliery near Abertileri in 1960 ( now marked by an large, outstanding sculpture) and only a few years later the Aberfan Disaster of October 1966, when 144 died because a huge waste-tip collapsed onto Pantglas School.
   Opencast coal-mining (much more like quarrying) looms over this town of Merthyr, with its constant threats of dust and diesel fumes and endless noise from diggers and trucks. A black hole in the lungs of the mountainside.
   The Red Poets (who launch issue 17 on Sept. 23rd) have always been associated with the Valleys and our hardcore performers for many years have been Jazz ( from Penywaun) who once worked as a miner, Tim Richards from Abertridwr (who was very active in  support groups during the last Miners' Strike) and John Davies from Maesycwmmer, an ex-Labour Councillor whose work is often influenced by the importance of mining to the Valleys.
   As to myself, it has pervaded my work from the first day I set foot in the Valleys, staying with a miner and his wife in Tredegar , while doing teaching practice there. It was impossible to ignore his hands, each line engrained with coal and his lungs, rasping and gravelling with all the dust he'd breathed in.
   When I moved to Merthyr, I couldn't fail to ignore the effect of the coal industry (especially from the 19th century) on the landscape of the Waun at the back of my house.
   There had been many drift mines (much like Gleision) and also small shaft-holes which had become overgrown or plugged in. No openings remained on the slopes yet the topography has been shaped by them and the numerous slag-heaps now reclaimed by heather and gorse, by grass , wild flowers and bracken.
   I have known men who worked at Tower Colliery , which was owned by the workers after the Strike and, for all their suspicion of the overbearing Tyrone O'Sullivan, they much preferred this pit to any run by the NCB. They knew that safety came first and would ensure that conditions were always as healthy as possible.
   If we have to have coal mines at all, then at least let them be controlled by the workers themselves, in co-operatives similar to Tower.
   Of course, it's difficult at present to be sure about health and safety matters at Gleision. Seeing pictures of the mine is like time-travel back to the 19th century, with wooden props and a mere two and a half foot high gallery to work in.
   From listening to mining engineers on tv, it seems likely the miners dug into an old working which was flooded. Water from the old gallery would have rushed rapidly into Gleision. But was there proper equipment to detect such workings?

   The solidarity and support of communities in the Swansea and Neath valleys for the miners' families shows clearly that caring and compassion haven't disappeared. 
   Mining is often only a few generations back for many of us here and my grandad's family  from Cilfynydd (near Pontypridd) were hauliers at the mine whose site is now occupied by Pontypridd High School.
   This sense of family history combined with the over-riding impact of coal on the geography itself means we cannot easily forget the past, nor should we.
   The Empire that coal, iron and copper helped create through its engines of trade left most of us stranded as it collapsed, and seemingly without a purpose.
   Yet, other people can give us  a direction and I can only admire the many who came to Gleision to fight and try to save those miners lives.  It is deeply ironic that Cameron ( featured uncritically on BBC Wales's 'Week In, Week Out' last night) is cutting the health and safety budget by 30% and attacking the pensions of the same fire-fighters he hails as heroes!
   It's impossible to bring much light to relatives of those who died; however, messages from across the world bring comfort and the cwtsh of communities helps with glimmers in a long, dark passageway.

                              
                                 Voice Remained

I could tell he was speaking about
the best and worst of times,
though his face had no glint of light
from lamp or end of the line.

There, in his warm taxi, the rain
tipping down outside, he looked back
into the dark gallery, couldn’t wipe
the wet away like his windscreen.

It was like ‘Coalhouse’ on telly, he explained,
that private mine on the slope above Tower;
production came first and safety after,
him and his dad looking out for each other.

With a mandrel at the face,
when it was dry the heat
would be like a furnace,
sweat like a plague of flies.

But in the damp was the worst,
days like today up to their thighs
hacking away……twice a collapse
and his dad dug him out of death.

Dust clogged like leaves in the drain
and notches in the rail like pot-holes ;
yet laughter was their second skin.
As he drove away, his voice remained.

   The death of ardent Wales and Bluebirds fan Mikey Dye outside Wembley was a tragedy for the family and many friends he left behind. As yet, it's difficult to ascertain the circumstances, but a man from Redditch in Worcestershire has been charged with manslaughter and others have been arrested.
   Violence at football matches is inexcusable. Sadly, some of those who have perpetrated it sell their books and gain notoriety and money by glorifying it. Having witnessed gratuitous and senseless attacks both by and on Cardiff City fans in the past, I can say that it is always shocking and painful.
   One time, away at Wrexham, I saw a so-called Cardiff supporter lay into a much slighter Wrexham fan , who was walking on his own. It made me ashamed to be associated with the club.
   My first memory of this kind of assault was when I used to follow Cambridge City and we were playing at Hendon in the Cup. My best mate Lart wore a black and white top hat which made him stand out. We were about thirteen and as slight as that Wrexham fan. Passing some Hendon fans, one very burly man just launched himself at Lart, who managed to struggle free, though he was bleeding profusely from his face. We were shaken and scared, but it didn't stop us going to see the sport we loved.
   Thankfully, football has generally changed for the better, despite the malevolent influences of the English and Welsh Defence Leagues, who try to use it to recruit ignorant people to their obnoxious brand of Islamophobia.
   Recently I attended the Huddersfield Carling Cup match and was delighted to see their fans drinking with ours outside the Ninian Park pub before the game. This was especially gratifying as two of my long-term friends are Terriers supporters.
   Some 20 years back there was a totally different scenario before our League game with them.  Walking on the pavement opposite to the same pub, I was there when a Huddersfield coach was pelted with bottles and glasses, shards flying and landing at our feet. The Town coach braked to a rapid halt and out piled loads of supporters who invaded the Ninian, where all hell broke loose.
   Nowadays, we have become much more of a family club and this kind of violence is something I haven't seen for many years. Yet, I've read many postings on Facebook and messageboards by rugby fans praising their own sport for its lack of violence. If there are psychos amongst footie fans (and the police, it must be stressed), then in rugby they tend to be on the pitch. Eyes gouged out, bits of ears chewed off..........you'd need to bite off an opponent's goolies and spit them out in the ref's face to actually get sent off!
   Moreover, three things brought home to me the violence which accompanies rugby. I have only ever been physically assaulted twice in my life for no reason and both times by rugby players (off the field).
   In my last teaching post we were regularly visited a policeman, who used to work as an undercover cop in sport. He always told the pupils that ,in fact, the number of arrests of rugby supporters ( mostly at internationals) far exceeded football ones. Alcohol, freely available during the games, played a major role in this.
   A friend and fellow poet Dave Hughes from Swansea, who worked for many years as a Social Worker, has written a vivid and disturbing poem called 'Grand Slam' about the domestic violence carried out by rugby fans, with their much more macho culture. He follows both sports , yet concedes that the influence of rugby - a sport which lauds physicality rather than skill in most instances - is appalling and the 'slam' itself becomes a metaphor for abuse of women in particular.
   While I can't deny that football still has problems, important aspects like racism have been tackled head on and dealt with in this country in most cases.
   It doesn't help anybody that the charging of an England supporter in relation to Mike Dye's death has been followed by threats of revenge in certain quarters. I'm sure his family and true friends would not want to tarnish memories in such a way.
   For me, football has always been about passionately following your team whatever ; about the sheer thrill of scoring and winning and, as a Bluebird of many, many years, about appreciating the good times because I've known some really awful ones.   It's about the hopes and possibilites that this season we will go one better, even though I'm cautiously optimistic.
   My great friend Mike J. Jenkins, from the same village of Heolgerrig, was like-minded. He loved to stand on the terraces and join in the chanting. He was a generous , gentle and very funny man. His last words to me from his hospital bed were when I was walking to the Reading game  ( second leg of the play-offs)  - 'If we get to Wembley, I'll be there!'
   Of course, we never made it. Neither did Mike.


                          COMRADE, BLUEBIRD,FRIEND
                            (i.m Mike J. Jenkins)

I was sitting close to the curtain,
I couldn't even mouth 'Amen!'

I'm waiting for you as ever
comrade, Bluebird, friend

in the chapel you once gave a sermon
the priest praised a faithful Christian

I'll raise a pint of ale you loved,
namesake, Bluebird, friend

white cross of flowers on your coffin,
the standard blackness of mourning

we shared so much, even differences :
teacher, chanter of the terracing

the priest's tenor loudly resonating,
he spoke of a man of learning

you could tell stories defying any formula,
laugh-maker, math's man, friend

you were 'going home' he kept saying;
I heard you reply 'I belong here!'

I'm waiting for you, I'll be waiting forever,
my comrade, Bluebird, friend.