'Gavin and Stacey' isn't funny. For a romcom , it has lost its 'rom' and has very little 'com'. As a sitcom , it doesn't even approach anything by Galton and Simpson.

   I've tried to like it ever since my son recommended it. He directed me towards  'The Thick of It' and I've found that hilarious at times, though he has been suspicious of 'Outnumbered', which is one of my favourites, with its usually interesting storylines, witty script and seemingly spontaneous exchanges between adults and kids ( in fact, a lot are improvised).

   I ought to like 'Gavin and Stacey': I rate Rob Brydon highly as a stand-up and in quiz shows ; it's partly set in Barry where I used to live and on the Island, where I worked. Above all, it's a Welsh comedy which has actually crossed the border ( like the central romance) to ensure popular success.

   Yet, the last episode with that appalling scene with the Welsh-speaking woman on the caravan site only vindicated my opinions further. It was truly insulting, prejudiced and also completely beyond credulity.The woman shouted out - 'Beth ydych chi'n meddwl chi'n wneud?' and then insisted it was her parking spot. To which Bryn answered ' Rdyw i'n hoffi coffi', obviously his only phrase of Welsh. What Welsh-speaker would come out shouting at English-speakers in such a way? It was absurd for all the wrong reasons.  To make matters worse, when Gavin and his family arrive at the site later and he talks too loud, Bryn tells him to be quiet or the 'Welshies'
might hear an Englishman and want to lynch him. In the credits, this Welsh-speaker is defined as 'Welsh nationalist'.

   All this is pandering to the English visitors' stereotypical view of Welsh-speakers i.e. they are being offensive in the native tongue just by using it and they are anti-English to the point of racism and are basically akin to the KKK! Does Ruth Jones have to ingratiate herself so much to English audiences in order to get a BAFTA or even an OBE?

   Apart from these dreadful scenes, 'Gavin and Stacey' has little going for it. Its plots are non-existent, its script rarely witty and its catchphrases repeated far too often. Only the acting raises it above the many failed sitcoms produced in Wales over the years. Not since 'Ryan a Ronnie'......

   Though we now have first class stand-ups like Rhod Gilbert and Rob Brydon, I really believe that we should look elsewhere for our comic talent.
The lyrics of the Super Furry Animals can be weirdly hilarious and the four funniest poets Mike Church, Peter Read, Peter Finch and Ifor Thomas are up there with those stand-ups. It's just a shame that poetry hasn't got its own programme on BBC Wales to prove it.

   When I booked Ifor Thomas to read at my school in Merthyr in the 90's, it was his first ever gig at a school. They'd studied some of his work, including the 'cling-film classics'. In those days he was a full-blown performance poet, using all the props. I warned him not to go over the top, as he prepared for an audience which included all of Year 11, including one Smiffy (no relation) a fan of his, who also happened to be a National Front following Animal Rights obsessive.

   Ifor soon got into his usual routine, tearing up Mills and Boons and taping them to a chair only to chainsaw it in half ( imagine getting that through Health and Safety nowadays?). Later, he launched into 'I like my clingfilm tight' and Smiffy was chosen to wrap Ifor in clingfilm as he recited. I thought he was going to pass out , as Smiffy wrapped it round his mouth and Ifor frantically tore it off!

   Afterwards, Smiffy must've made a comment, because Ifor made out to throttle him and muttered the words 'You bastard!' The new Head of Upper School was there by now and looked ready to close down the whole proceedings. But Ifor carried on  and the kids loved it, especially the finale
when he did 'Life is like a toilet roll' and Year 11, in tiered banks, were instructed to fling bog rolls at each other. The Deputy's face was something like Ifor's chainsaw had been earlier.

   Welsh literature has produced many fine comic writers, including Gwyn Thomas, Alun Richards and Dylan Thomas (of the short stories), not to mention the wryness of Dannie Abse in both prose and poetry. However, this poem was influenced by Chaucer, who relished innuendo -

 
Wooing the farmer's
widow

My friend contemplates chat-up lines

to woo the farmer’s widow.

 

‘Can I milk your cows?’

‘May I shave your sheep?’

He does say ‘shave’ not ‘shear’!

 

Better still – ‘Can I pick

the ripe cherries from your branches?’

‘Can we ride together,

or merely sit astride a gate?’

 

‘Can I examine your wheat

to see if it’s ready for harvesting?

‘Perhaps I can gather the eggs

from your cosy coop?’

 

‘Can I see the blossom

on your apple orchards?

‘Is it possible that we

could muck out together ?’

is his grimiest opening yet.

 

What about – ‘Do you keep a cockerel?’

I pertinently suggest.

 

‘No!’ he dismisses me,

‘I don’t want to be obvious!’

   Isn't modern technology wonderful? After a week of imploding Sky boxes, I was almost prepared  to embrace singer-songwriter Tom Waits' Luddite tendencies when he mocked phones that take photos, along the lines of ' It's like my bike being able to make a cup of tea.'

   But what would we do without those i-phones, which can do everything except mix cocktails? My son calmly records his TV programmes miles away from the set and we can be in a strange town and he can trace the local restaurants available and even download reviews of them. I am totally in awe.

   As Facebook gives way to Twitter, I am definitely behind the times : I've yet to become a 'Twitter-twat' ( was Cameron actually right about something?). Of course, it's thrilling contacting like-minded people anywhere on the globe, to reach a fellow Kevin Coyne fan in South Africa
for instance. However, my most frequent friends on Facebook would seem to be buildings. I even met up with one recently on a  trip to Tenby. It was a brief meeting and we didn't have a lot in common. The building wasn't very forthcoming and , to be honest, was rather tedious.

   The song that keeps returning is Chumbawamba's very darkly funny 'Add Me' from their superb album 'The Boy Bands Have Won'. The chorus goes -
              'Add me, add me
               My mother says she wished she'd never had me -
               Add me, add me
               Would you like to add me as a friend?'
   The character in the song is everyone's Facebook nightmare. Anyone who thinks of Chumbawamba as po-faced politicos should listen closely to this incredible CD : it's full of harmonies (often a capella), packed with humour and often underscored with sadness and righteous anger. It is one of English folk's finest ever, along with almost everything by Robb Johnson.

   Texting can be very useful as well. Inheriting my son's phone I also inherited his predictive texting. I was completely baffled by something which seemed to have been devised by MI6. In the end, I switched to normal text, but haven't yet mastered the lingo : mine is generally a weird combination of text language and Valleys' dialect, something like - 'Whr u goin afta?'

    When he was incarcerated in an asylum, the so-called 'peasant poet' of the Romantic period, John Clare, began to write all his letters in consonants alone. I once wrote a complete sonnet like that. In its purest form, text language must be similar. 

   What I like about texts is their minimalism, no fuss-arsing about with 'How are you feeling? ' or ' How many Sky boxes are dud ones?' I once texted my wife what she wanted for tea and her answer was '6' (no, it wasn't a takeway!). Better still her most recent to me, a solitary full-stop!

   Next time Tom Waits does a London concert, I'll go on my bike with the built-in teasmade and record it all for posterity on my digital contact lens camera.

                                  THE SKY PEOPLE

I sent you a text:
'Ok 2 giv ur no.
2 th sky pepl?'

I think you thought
I was going mad.

You replied in shock:
'Wot u on about?'

I think you thought
I was having visions
of angels, like Blake reborn;

that I wanted you
to be in touch with a spirit world
hovering above the clouds.

Till I texted back:
'Its £30 xtra 4 brdbnd'.
Your answer a single, meaningful full-stop.


         

   All this week, lines of one song have resonated in my mind : Peter Gabriel's epic, prophetic 'Here Comes the Flood' from his eponymous first album (if you investigate, watch out........the first three are all called 'Peter Gabriel'!).
     'Lord,here comes the flood
      We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood'

   Now more than ever the lyrics of this song seem to hold particular relevance. The tragic devastation in Cumbria , and especially Cockermouth, and the death of PC Bill Barker on a bridge at Workington that was swept away as if it was balsawood, bring home the consequences of global warming.
 
   As ice caps melt and seas rise and our climate becomes wetter and weirder, the biblical references of Gabriel's song match with the statement of Workington's MP Tony Cunningham who claimed it was 'of biblical proportions'.

   It takes me back to the 80's in Merthyr when the then Rhydycar cottages ( since re-built, in very different fashion, in St.Fagan's) were seriously damaged by flooding which caused a culvert to burst. Water destroyed their roofs and one person was killed. A precursor of things to come.

   Only last September, during a spell of storms similar to recent days, the Valleys were hit by serious flooding. I was working at Radyr Comp. near Cardiff and received a message from my wife saying that her school in Trefforest was completely cut off and they were evacuating pupils. Likewise, my young daughter's school in Pontypridd was being evacuated and I needed to pick her up.

   On explaining the situation to a Deputy Head, she replied -'You'd better go and sort out your personal problems!' I was ahgast and told her these were actually 'flood problems'. Luckily, public transport was functioning and I got a train to Ponty. However, the bus-station there was chaotic, with many buses cancelled and we finally got on the slow bus to Merthyr over the mountains. It took one and half hours to get home. In Fochriw, we watched one scally who threw himself fully clothed into a pond created by the heavy rainfall.

   The background of my book for teenagers 'The Climbing Tree', to be published by Pont next February, is one of climatic catastrophe. It envisages a time when rain and flooding dominate the world and focusses upon  two gangs of teenagers who try to cope with these conditions in very different ways. The heroine, called Low, is a Romantic, clinging to an oak above an increasingly bog-ridden Common, along with two friends who are less committed to the ideals of their gang.

                                       LIVING IN TIMES TO COME

                                                                            Every day now
                                                                more so
                                          living in times to come

   beginning with messages
                                late August oak leaves
                                                          falling brown
                                                                       blowin-in prophecies

                                      the rain turns houses to caravans

                               manhole covers sucked up
                                  landslides toppling trees covering railways
                                    roads submerged under a muddy deluge
                                       bridges collapsing like brittle branches

                        this weather weirding
                                                         more sinister

           (we take the slow bus home
                climbing up to the mountain-tops
                   looking down on a chasm of cloud

                              the patterned piles of drystone walls
                                  with leaning blocks in lines
                                       more resolute than many homes

                   sandbags gushed aside
                      like a tide on dunes
                                                           upturned umbrellas
                                                              dead crows on pavingstones

                                   the future rap-rap-rapping
                                       at every pane
                                          to be let in.

 
                                          
  

   Stacks of cassette-boxes like mini musical blocks of flats and behind them CD's on shelves in terraced rows, from Captain Beefheart to Robert Wyatt.

   Tapes for Marx's sake, in this age of the i-pod and i-phone! But these are all gifts from Ace Tapeman Andrew Bartz, friend and comrade ; the most avid and erudite music fan I know. For many years now, he has been giving me these compilations or taped CD's, sometimes taking their proper names, but mostly inventing ones such as 'The Frenetic Features' or 'But Stop Before The End'. Stereophonics should've employed him as their official album-namer, then they might've avoided the likes of 'Keep Calm and Carry On' (their latest).

   I have to thank Andrew for my love of so many varied artists I find it hard to list them. To mention but a few whose CD's I have since sought whenever and wherever : Tom Russell, Sufjan Stevens and, of course, that great Welsh musical maestro with numerous diverse albums through the years, John Cale. And there are many bands I'd never have picked up on; notable among them being two from the 1980's, when so much of the mainstream was insipid : Carter USM and Fatima Mansions.

   Only occasionally has he failed to convert and convince me. This is especially true of Welsh rockers Man, who he has followed since the 70's .
I actually preferred Deke Leonard's solo work to most of the group's output ( too many wayward guitar solos).

   His tapes have taken me through many journeys ( often to Aberystwyth and back). On a long return flight from Japan I got very peculiar looks when fiddling with my Sony Walkman ; as if I'd stolen it from some Gadget Museum! On this flight, my brother asked me - 'How many times have you listened to that tape?' convinced I only possessed the one.

   During all that time I can't recall being bowled over by a female singer-songwriter apart from Buffy St. Marie, who I'd liked in the past anyway. So it was strange and refreshing to listen on tape to Thea Gilmore's CD 'Songs from the gutter'.

   I'd heard her before. I'd bought 'Avalanche' and 'Liejacker' and quite liked the former but was disappointed with the latter. But this album , from 2004-05 and apparently recorded very quickly, had a profound effect. The sheer range of musical styles is breathtaking yet not forced and while the influences of Tom Waits, Richard Thompson and Neil Young are apparent, they are never overpowering.

   Above all, Gilmore's voice is emotional without any of the annoying vocal tics of so many others breaking on the scene and her lyrics are thoughtful and imaginative. She even does a Tom Russell ( see 'Van Ronk' from his 'Hotwalker' album) and recites her poem 'Don't set foot over the railway tracks' to atmospheric musical backing.

   In a world of X Factor karoake blandness and manufactured pop, I hope that Billy Bragg's right when he says - ' I think the X Factor might be good for alternative music, giving kids something to push against.' Certainly, Thea Gilmore has been pushing for too long and deserves to be embraced (on the evidence of 'Songs from the gutter') as one of the best singer-songwriters around.

   This is a fairly old one, but apt. A thanks to Andrew Bartz, heckler, doodler, artist and wizard of the cassette -

                                           SONGS IN MY HEAD

There are no better tickets
than these gifts you give,
these rattling boxes
passed like illicit substances
at our occasional booze-ups.

I want to praise you
long before any elegy,
your studiously penned
funny and angry titles:
THIS TAPE KILLS 99%
OF ALL FASCISTS DEAD
and the NOT WHAT IT READS  one:
you should've had a band
just for the covers alone.

Journeys unwind: the brown path,
the shining rails, the thin
road leading away
to Africa or Ireland,
obscure names like places
only you discover,
Marxman, Best Shot, Tarika:
villages into towns into countries.

The music of your recordings,
the passports never stamped,
the borders always open:
songs in my head flying.

  

   Fellow poet Chris Meredith (who appears in the first 'Red Poets' magazine) once told me an intriguing anecdote. Meredith lives in Brecon and not far from the barracks there and one day a soldier knocked on his front door -
     Are you the occupier? he asked.
    No, you are! Meredith answered.

   Today, Remembrance Sunday, we will no doubt hear much in the media about 'bravery' and 'sacrifice', but only the white poppies of the Peace Pledge Union will commemorate the many innocents who have died as a result of so many wars.

   I cannot wear a red one, despite the fact that both my grandfathers were involved in the First World War : one damaged for the rest of his life by gas and shrapnel and the other who never spoke at all about his time as a stretcher-bearer .I know from the war poets whom I admire so greatly
 ( particularly Sassoon, Owen and Rosenberg) how futile this war was. So fitting that only this week Sasson's 'Soldier's Declaration', where he stated that the war was being carried on deliberately by those who had the power to stop it, should be read out once again in the Commons, this time pertaining to Afghanistan.

   I know from witnessing the armed occupation of the Six Counties ( i.e. N. Ireland) in the 1970's, that all sides commited terrible atrocities, but that the British armed forces and RUC could do so with impunity. Tragically, the official inquiry into Bloody Sunday continues to this day : the day when 13 innocent civil rights protesters were shot dead by soldiers from 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (which is stationed in St.Athans). What fine bravery and sacrifice then, to murder them on the streets of Derry as they marched against a system of in-built sectarianism, discrimination and injustice!

   Of course, I cannot forget that the Colonel-in-Chief of that very regiment is one Charles, Prince of Wales. Our anachronistic and totally undemocratic
monarchy is inextricably linked to the war machine.

     The 'Troubles' ( it should've been called 'war' ) have been partly resolved through negotiation, as I always hoped they would. In the 70's, as successive Labour and Tory governments became increasingly repressive with the use of torture and 80's when Thatcher refused to acknowledge the political status of prisoners provoking the Hunger Strikes in the Maze, all talk seemed an impossibility.

   So when the MP Paul Flynn proposes 'talking to the Taliban' , he shouldn't be scoffed at. In fact, discussions have already taken place with elements of that disparate grouping, just as they were (even in the 70's) with leaders of the Provisional IRA. Soner or later it must happen, if there is to be a resolution.

   So today, when I think of those dying for 'Queen and country' I think -
 ' Yes, that's right. Sadly that is really what they are dying for.........a monarchy which represents a class system we've gone a little way towards dismantling in Cymru and a country, namely Britain, whose history is one of a falling Empire and wars against nations trying to fight for their independence against that Empire.'

                                        YOUNG SOLDIER

I saw him on the train:
Prince of Wales insignia on his cap,
bowing to German motto 'Ich Dien',
ornate white feathers incongruous above flak.

He was only about eighteen ;
a woman with her shopping carriers
smiled proudly,as if he were her son,
but I frowned with memories.

I know I shouldn't have done;
maybe he couldn't have helped
joining the murderous profession :
kidnap threat of dole and debt.

Rehearsed a condemnation in my head:
he would've thought me mad,
like the daily traveller arguing with himself
about all the houses as we pass.

How could he know I saw Belfast,
his face blackened, his camouflage
a daily menace ; guns fired at innocents
under orders, or in the wrong place.

Both of us got out in Merthyr,
boarded-up pubs, buildings falling down ;
his badge insisting 'occupier', 'invader',
as he marched homeward in a familiar town.

   'You can tell by what we carry that we come from Barry Town' we used to alter the words of the great Steely Dan to make them ones of pride at our town in Glamorgan, not the sneering condemnation of the place in upstate New York where songwriters Becker and Fagen attended school and which Roddy Doyle used for his Dublin trilogy. 'Barrytown people got to be from another world' was a mark of our importance, not the home of the Moonie sect!

   A place I  had always associated with holidays soon became identified with the world of work and vital friendships. With my mate Dave we headed every weekend for the Ship Hotel and afterwards the adjacent Fantasia disco, followed by the nightclubs of the Island.

   Apart from the Dan and Captain Beefheart, Bob Marley was in his ascendency and as we trudged ,or sometimes flew, across town and homeward bound,'My feet is my only carriage' would be our anthem. We got to see him at Ninian Park on a monsoon day, drunk on cider and playing footie with a flagon on the hallowed turf. We met Dave's schoolfriend Chalky White, top photographer for the then top music paper NME. Marley was superb despite the rain and sparse crowd. Whisperin' Bob Harris has described the vibes of violence coming from the terraces at that gig. What a load of Tosh ( Peter? )! The atmosphere was marvellous: at the end, I chanted out and another bloke replied with a 'Woy yoy yoy!'

   At the famous Memo (Memorial Hall) we saw bands like Deke Leonard's Iceberg and hung around a local group who modelled themselves on Cream. The lead guitarist indulged in very long solos, but was no Clapton. At their first ever gig in the Memo,sandwiches were provided and duly used as missiles by many of the audience to show their disgust. I don't think they ever did Manics though.

   After the revellry we inevitably ended up at Jim's Paradise restaurant, which opened till very late. Jim's was the gathering-place for all kinds of inebriates and dope-fiends and I once witnessed one punter ordering a plate of SpagBol only to collapse face-down into it. I don't think he was rescued either! One teacher I knew from Barry told me that Jim once accused him of not paying the week previously : to reinforce his warning he stabbed a large kitchen knife into the table, saying - 'You'll get that next time!' 

   In Barry I made some great friendships. Apart from Dave, fellow music fan and Bluebird, there was John who worked at the same garage and who was a Plaid Cymru supporter and socialist from the Valleys. Of similar politics and equally influential was Joan, who worked with me at a summer school teaching German school-pupils. Within a year, both died suddenly.
It was hard to accept.

   I also met fellow poet Tony Curtis and we briefly formed a Writers' Group. Tony was very generous and supportive and went on to publish my first poems and stories from his Edge Press.

   Every week I went to the local folk music club at The Railway Club. I had to write up events the following hungover day for the local paper and , amazingly, they only once rejected my copy as gibberish. Rod Tolchock was a regular there : one of the finest, forgotten singer-songwriters. Of course, that's not his real name, but I don't know what became of him after that, though I believe he went on to write poetry. Quite probably, he has re-emerged with a different pseudonym.

   This is a recent poem which refers to the closure of Merthyr pool due to an outbreak of a serious infection. It does malign Merthyr and Barry, but they're places I love for all their faults :-

                                          WHO  SHAT?

Who shat in our brandnew
all-purpose leisure pool?

There were suggestions
the disease could've come from abroad.
Two Councillors had recently
decided to join UKIP ;
when would others defect
(or should that be  defecate ?).

Nobody knows
the source of the faecal accident.
Kids still in nappies
regularly used it.
Someone after a very hot curry?

The one sure thing is
we've managed to re-create
the sensation of Porthcawl or Barry,
we've brought the seaside to the Valleys;
given the word float
a whole new dimension.

Whoever dumped their load
could indeed boost our tourism :
how about a Cholera Museum?

   'You can tell by what we carry that we come from Barry Town' we used to alter the words of the great Steely Dan to make them ones of pride at our town in Glamorgan, not the sneering condemnation of the place in upstate New York where songwriters Becker and Fagen attended school and which Roddy Doyle used for his Dublin trilogy. 'Barrytown people got to be from another world' was a mark of our importance, not the home of the Moonie sect!

   A place I  had always associated with holidays soon became identified with the world of work and vital friendships. With my mate Dave we headed every weekend for the Ship Hotel and afterwards the adjacent Fantasia disco, followed by the nightclubs of the Island.

   Apart from the Dan and Captain Beefheart, Bob Marley was in his ascendency and as we trudged ,or sometimes flew, across town and homeward bound,'My feet is my only carriage' would be our anthem. We got to see him at Ninian Park on a monsoon day, drunk on cider and playing footie with a flagon on the hallowed turf. We met Dave's schoolfriend Chalky White, top photographer for the then top music paper NME. Marley was superb despite the rain and sparse crowd. Whisperin' Bob Harris has described the vibes of violence coming from the terraces at that gig. What a load of Tosh ( Peter? )! The atmosphere was marvellous: at the end, I chanted out and another bloke replied with a 'Woy yoy yoy!'

   At the famous Memo (Memorial Hall) we saw bands like Deke Leonard's Iceberg and hung around a local group who modelled themselves on Cream. The lead guitarist indulged in very long solos, but was no Clapton. At their first ever gig in the Memo,sandwiches were provided and duly used as missiles by many of the audience to show their disgust. I don't think they ever did Manics though.

   After the revellry we inevitably ended up at Jim's Paradise restaurant, which opened till very late. Jim's was the gathering-place for all kinds of inebriates and dope-fiends and I once witnessed one punter ordering a plate of SpagBol only to collapse face-down into it. I don't think he was rescued either! One teacher I knew from Barry told me that Jim once accused him of not paying the week previously : to reinforce his warning he stabbed a large kitchen knife into the table, saying - 'You'll get that next time!' 

   In Barry I made some great friendships. Apart from Dave, fellow music fan and Bluebird, there was John who worked at the same garage and who was a Plaid Cymru supporter and socialist from the Valleys. Of similar politics and equally influential was Joan, who worked with me at a summer school teaching German school-pupils. Within a year, both died suddenly.
It was hard to accept.

   I also met fellow poet Tony Curtis and we briefly formed a Writers' Group. Tony was very generous and supportive and went on to publish my first poems and stories from his Edge Press.

   Every week I went to the local folk music club at The Railway Club. I had to write up events the following hungover day for the local paper and , amazingly, they only once rejected my copy as gibberish. Rod Tolchock was a regular there : one of the finest, forgotten singer-songwriters. Of course, that's not his real name, but I don't know what became of him after that, though I believe he went on to write ome poetry. Quite probably, he has re-emerged with a different pseudonym.

   This is a recent poem which refers to the closure of Merthyr pool due to an outbreak of a serious infection. It does malign Merthyr and Barry, but they're places I love for all their faults :-

                                          WHO  SHAT?

Who shat in our brandnew
all-purpose leisure pool?

There were suggestions
the disease could've come from abroad.
Two Councillors had recently
decided to join UKIP ;
when would others defect
(or should that be  defecate ?).

Nobody knows
the source of the faecal accident.
Kids still in nappies
regularly used it.
Someone after a very hot curry?

The one sure thing is
we've managed to re-create
the sensation of Porthcawl or Barry,
we've brought the seaside to the Valleys;
given the word float
a whole new dimension.

Whoever dumped their load
could indeed boost our tourism :
how about a Cholera Museum?

   National Poetry Day last Thursday and, from the viewpoint of media coverage, something of a non-event. The theme : 'Heroes and Heroines'. Poets not among them , it seems.

   To me, of course, every day is Poetry Day and at least here in Cymru our heroes and heroines are bards crowned and chaired at eisteddfodau. One newsreporter at the Poetry Society HQ told us that poets were reading there all day and also lots of young people (just to show that poetry isn't only for the ancients). To be fair, Simon Armitage was interviewed later and replied eloquently, explaining how poetry was something everybody could try, a genuinely democratic art.

   Almost all newspapers ( if they covered it at all) focussed on the poll of Britain's Top 10 Poets. Number One was T.S.Eliot for 'Cats' apparently ( never mind 'Four Quartets' or 'The Wasteland') : he was renowned for a hit musical. It was rather unsettling that most of the top ten were dead and Seamus Heaney didn't get a look in. Not-So-Famous Seamus all of a sudden.

   What you failed to get a sense of was the sheer plethora of events happening across the country : in schools, libraries, community centres and, in my case , a museum. I had the privilege of being poet-in-residence for the day at Big Pit mining museum near Blaenavon. It was tricky writing sonnets about pit-ponies underground with only the light of a miner's lamp, I can tell you.

   Actually, it entailed the writing of a single Big Big Pit Poem, a communal effort by many  Junior schoolchildren from Merthyr and Abertillery, unsuspecting members of the public who I press-ganged into contributing and staff ( some of whom are ex-miners). The result will be seen on the museum website -       www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/bigpit
   The great enthusiam of all those who contributed to the poem was truly inspiring. 

   Apart from this week, my best memories of Poetry Day are those spent on several occasions in Caerphilly Borough, taking part in their renowned whirlwind tour of schools.

   Four or five poets are involved and each visits up to six or seven schools throughout the borough during the day, doing readings and workshops. The whole thing usually begins with a mass Poetry Breakfast at one Junior school and ends with a get-together. The most memorable ending was a surreal beach party in Bargoed Library, which I wrote about in my poem 'On Bargoed Beach'. In Blackwood Comp. once , I found that I was visiting because I'd been won as a 'prize' by a pupil!

   The following is my most recent poem and I'm sure TV exec's will be ready and willing to respond -

                                STRICTLY MASTER-POETRY X FACTOR

Can't wait until
'Strictly Master-Poetry X Factor'
reaches our screens.

I'd have to prepare the perfect couplet
garnished with similes
in a sauce of reduced metaphor.

To construct  an elaborate villanelle
with those flourishes of structure
and all without a partner.

I'd have to make a sonnet sing
unerring in its lyricism,
in the manner of Shelley or Keats.

Out of my comfort zone,
I'd be challenged by a Masterbard
to produce a concrete poem for a Christmas card.

Then the Final, in front of those judges -
Heaney, Duffy and Armitage.
20 million viewers (six noughts more than a poetry reading);

to render a narrative ballad in terza rima
from the persona of the buried wife
of a mass murderer......who happened to come from Merthyr.

'What wonderful scansion!' would be the drool from Shamey.
'What mastery of rhyme!' the croon from Duffy.
Simon - for once not caustic - would proclaim me winner.

   Now that First Minister Rhodri Morgan is leaving (what a surprise!), it's time to look back on my career as a failed politician.

   I stood in the first election for the Senedd in May 1999, as candidate for the United Socialists in Merthyr and Rhymney. There was one major problem : we didn't actually exist!

   The group I was a member of were the Welsh Socialist Alliance, destined, of course , to become a major political force till it was hi-jacked by the SWP. We couldn't register under that name, so had to invent one. I stood for a fictional party : fitting for a story-writer.

   I stood against Alun Cox of Plaid Cymru, who even called himself a 'Welsh Socialist' in one official election poster and Labour's Huw Lewis, who has since been something of an absentee landlord (living in Penarth most of the time and sending his children to school there).

   Lewis was a rabid Blairite then, so the recent support of so-called leftie Jon Cruddas seems amazing. At one meeting, he accused me of 'living in cloud-cuckooland', but maybe that's closer to Merthyr than his residence. What has happened since - with Blair and Brown backing big business and the City and exacerbating the recession - makes my cuckooland a severe dose of reality to Lewis's monetarist advocacies.

   Looking back, I hardly campaigned from street to street and took little time off work. Retrospectively, I should have put much more into it.  Of my 580 votes, I often wonder how many mistook me for my namesake (who also lives in Heolgerrig), a former Labour activist.

   At the count, I delivered a brief speech calling for a Welsh Socialist Republic and was clapped by Plaid Cymru supporters. I wouldn't shake Lewis's hand afterwards. He has done so little for Merthyr. He has failed to campaign for an arts centre, preferring to call for a single theatre ( which never materialized). He has failed to fight against the scourge of opencast mining.

   Ludicrously, now he's joined the race for First Minister, the media suggest he is leftwing. His complete failure to oppose the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan (in fact, an apologist for the first one) was inexcusable. He has never advocated any genuine socialist solutions such as a nationalised Welsh railway network or been prominent in opposition to the selling off of social housing. In short, his left-of-centre posturing is sheer spin, like Alan Johnson at the Labour Conference evoking the ideas of Nye Bevan.

   Under Rhodri Morgan, there's no doubt the Senedd has enacted policies superior to those in England : on free prescriptions, student fees, abolition of SAT's and school league tables to name some.  However, we have not moved nearer a parliament with greater powers and there hasn't been a leftwing thrust based on ideals : where is the drive towards co-operatives, to get rid of fee-paying schools, to give Welsh equal status in all sectors, or to ensure the NHS serves everyone equally and cannot be by-passed by those who can pay?

   This is a poem I wrote a couple of years ago when Rhodri was at the height of his bungliness; two years back, for instance, he suggested that global warming might not be such a bad thing and when asked about Iraq on Question Time, he refused to give a view saying he had 'not looked at the issues'.

                            RHODRI IS A TREE-ALIEN

Rhodri Morgan really is
a Doctor Who tree-alien!
It's no accident
he was mistaken for one
when trying to enter the BBC.

How else do you account
for his mysterious absence
when war was declared on Iraq -
'I wasn't there!' he whined.
Well, now I can disclose
he was on his own planet
in immortal combat with a Time-Lord.

How else do you account
for his speech lauding
the benefits of global warming,
when his own constituency
could be covered in coral reefs?

And all those late or missing appointments
with Lizzy Windsor or to commemorate
the veterans : he was far away
in another galaxy trying to learn the words
of the Vulcan national anthem
(it's not the first time we've been run by an alien).  

     

   Now that First Minister Rhodri Morgan is leaving (what a surprise!), it's time to look back on my career as a failed politician.

   I stood in the first election for the Senedd in May 1999, as candidate for the United Socialists in Merthyr and Rhymney. There was one major problem : we didn't actually exist!

   The group I was a member of were the Welsh Socialist Alliance, destined, of course , to become a major political force till it was hi-jacked by the SWP. We couldn't register under that name, so had to invent one. I stood for a fictional party : fitting for a story-writer.

   I stood against Alun Cox of Plaid Cymru, who even called himself a 'Welsh Socialist' in one official election poster and Labour's Huw Lewis, who has since been something of an absentee landlord (living in Penarth most of the time and sending his children to school there).

   Lewis was a rabid Blairite then, so the recent support of so-called leftie Jon Cruddas seems amazing. At one meeting, he accused me of 'living in cloud-cuckooland', but maybe that's closer to Merthyr than his residence. What has happened since - with Blair and Brown backing big business and the City and exacerbating the recession - makes my cuckooland a severe dose of reality to Lewis's monetarist advocacies.

   Looking back, I hardly campaigned from street to street and took little time off work. Retrospectively, I should have put much more into it.  Of my 580 votes, I often wonder how many mistook me for my namesake (who also lives in Heolgerrig), a former Labour activist.

   At the count, I delivered a brief speech calling for a Welsh Socialist Republic and was clapped by Plaid Cymru supporters. I wouldn't shake Lewis's hand afterwards. He has done so little for Merthyr. He has failed to campaign for an arts centre, preferring to call for a single theatre ( which never materialized). He has failed to fight against the scourge of opencast mining.

   Ludicrously, now he's joined the race for First Minister, the media suggest he is leftwing. His complete failure to oppose the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan (in fact, an apologist for the first one) was inexcusable. He has never advocated any genuine socialist solutions such as a nationalised Welsh railway network or been prominent in opposition to the selling off of social housing. In short, his left-of-centre posturing is sheer spin, like Alan Johnson at the Labour Conference evoking the ideas of Nye Bevan.

   Under Rhodri Morgan, there's no doubt the Senedd has enacted policies superior to those in England : on free prescriptions, student fees, abolition of SAT's and school league tables to name some.  However, we have not moved nearer a parliament with greater powers and there hasn't been a leftwing thrust based on ideals : where is the drive towards co-operatives, to get rid of fee-paying schools, to give Welsh equal status in all sectors, or to ensure the NHS serves everyone equally and cannot be by-passed by those who can pay?

   This is a poem I wrote a couple of years ago when Rhodri was at the height of his bungliness; two years back, for instance, he suggested that global warming might not be such a bad thing and when asked about Iraq on Question Time, he refused to give a view saying he had 'not looked at the issues'.

                            RHODRI IS A TREE-ALIEN

Rhodri Morgan really is
a Doctor Who tree-alien!
It's no accident
he was mistaken for one
when trying to enter the BBC.

How else do you account
for his mysterious absence
when war was declared on Iraq -
'I wasn't there!' he whined.
Well, now I can disclose
he was on his own planet
in immortal combat with a Time-Lord.

How else do you account
for his speech lauding
the benefits of global warming,
when his own constituency
could be covered in coral reefs?

And all those late or missing appointments
with Lizzy Windsor or to commemorate
the veterans : he was far away
in another galaxy trying to learn the words
of the Vulcan national anthem
(it's not the first time we've been run by an alien).