There's a new currency in Merthyr and it's called the 'Red Poets' magazine!
   Last Thursday, after the launch of issue 19 at The Imp in Pontmorlais, I took a taxi home.
   The driver was an ex-pupil who asked about the event and then proceeded to quote a gritty poem he'd composed while at Pen-y-dre about life on the Gurnos estate.
   I was on a high, stimulated more by the success of the evening than a few pints of Pale Ale and impressed with his rap-like delivery.
   'Will you take the mag. as payment?' I chanced.
   'Yeah, of course! Look forward to reading it.'
   This was the culmination of a marvellous night, despite missing stalwarts like Tim Richards (holidays) and John Williams due to illness.
   There were many excellent poems performed by the likes of Julie Pritchard, Chris O'Neill, Jonathan Edwards and Mair Pitt and the Bartzman even did 'Winging It'.
   I'd like to thank Marc Jones for his hard work as co-editor and Gus Payne for a most thought-provoking and arresting cover; also Gerhard Kress for the back cover image.
   Marc wrote an Obituary for Alun Hughes, a regular contributor and astonishing character who died recently. I was astounded to find out about his close links with the ANC and his work for Naval Counter-Intelligence in the 2nd World War.
   I didn't realise that - like Dowlais historian Gwyn Alf Williams - he joined Plaid Cymru in his later years. He was always a staunch socialist and republican.
   The whole evening was a celebration of poetry and music and Jamie Bevan and Steve Shipman were so good they even drew in a couple of German tourists to experience Merthyr culture.
   Jamie's new material ( including one in English!) was as stirring as ever and Steve's cover versions of the likes of Woody Guthrie were expertly executed. His case full of mouth-harps made my old one in 'E' seem like something from the Antiques Roadshow!
   The issue includes three poems in Welsh and we should have several again in the next one.
   Phil Knight's article makes a strong case not just for a Green Dylan Thomas, but a fervently republican one as well. He claims that Carlo being made patron of the Dylan Thomas Centenary festival next year would have made the man laugh and vomit at the same time!
  In view of the present campaign to save the Chartist Mural in Newport from destruction, Jonathan Edwards' poem is timely and an excellent reminder of how important that is as a  commemoration of Welsh history.
   Red Poets are back on the road this autumn with up-coming gigs at the Castle Hotel, Tredegar on Oct. 30th and Oxfam Bookshop in Swansea on Nov. 20th.
   Next year we'll be publishing a book of stroppy left-wing verse from Tim Richards and we hope to produce a book every year as well as magazine. 
   As London-based socialist poet Owen Gallagher  has said 'RED POETS' is the socialist poetry magazine.......possibly the only one in these islands.
   You can order a copy from myself or the website  www.RedPoets.org  for £5 (plus P & P).


                


Crawlin on Em’tee


Now I know wha-a Big Society is really,

it’s like a ewge ole in-a stomachs

of my small famlee.


My two kids, Jade an Shania,

I carn afford t feed em no more,

school olidays ‘re worse ‘an ever.


I tried f’r jobs, got big ideas,

but arf a time don’ even yer :

slike droppin paper down a disewsed pit.


My mam as t work, my dad’s on sick ;

las thing I want is charitee,

but the Food Bank ave saved me.


‘Mam, I’m starvin! Wha’s f’  tea?’

Beans, beans an more beans ;

all yew yer on telly’s ‘bout obesity.


Shania an Jade are dead scrawny,

there’s a big ole in theyer lives,

theyr crawlin, not runnin, on em’tee.


   

VIAGRA  FALLS



When yew’re thinkin ‘bout

the job yew ad in Oovers,

when yew carn get round

even on-a mobility scooter

 

jest remember –

we’re the town

what discovered Viagra

 

when the on’y fags yew cun get

look like long, thin compewters

an there’s no gold left

in–a attic f’r-a pawnbrokers

 

jest remember –

we invented Viagra

 

when yewer time down under

stops yew breathin proper,

when yew begin t spend longer

down-a surjree than anywhere

 

jest remember-

the accidental birthplace o Viagra

 

when even-a mountains an rivers

don’ make yew gasp no longer,

when yew carn make a stand no more

an-a missis calls yew a Droopy Trooper

 

welcome t Viagra Falls

in  ome-town Merthyr!

   I thought I saw this on tv after the great bard died : Heaney gets off a plane in Dublin after winning the Nobel Prize and is immediately greeted by a young man who looks uncannily like Conor O'Brien of Villagers.
   Of course, I could well be wrong, but I'd like to think that in Ireland - where poetry and song have long been close siblings - this did happen.
   Because I believe that something fresh and thrilling is occurring with the emergence of this Irish band.
   Sure, in the last decade or so there have been many singer-songwriters who deserve to be widely listened to like Karine Polwart and Thea Gilmore, yet there has been a distinct dearth of groups able to combine poetic lyrics with melodic, challenging music.
   I've searched for the influences on Villagers and you could find them in many of the masters, including Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and Sufjan Stevens.
   In their native land, their lack of 'Irishness' has been commented upon, yet O'Brien (the undeniable front-man) never succumbs to a Trans-Atlantic drawl suggesting he's from Dun Laoghaire,  somewhere south of Louisiana.
   There songs aren't place specific, though they often use sea imagery in the second album. They are about as far from the Americana cliches of the Mumfords as Polwart is from Laura Marling's attempts at being the new Joni Mitchell.
   It's been interesting just spreading the word about them. When I texted a friend with just .....   (awayland) Villagers
   .....he thought I was bored and would be saying 'Mister Moon is in the building' next ! Now I've explained,  he's as enthusiastic a fan as I am.
   Another just started doing the YMCA dance in complete misapprehension!
   Conor O'Brien is to Villagers what Guy Garvey is to Elbow : both unique singers and original songwriters. Yet, like Elbow, they're very much a group not back-ups to a solo performer.
   Their first album 'Becoming a Jackal' is far more personal and shows its influences more readily, yet was deservedly short-listed for a Mercury Prize  and the second '(awayland)' is also on the short-list. It would be good if the judges got it right for once and awarded it to them.
   Contrary to rock mythology about '2nd album syndrome', the latter is actually an improvement.
   Music and Dun Laoghaire both need a boost right now. The latter because - according to a long-time resident I spoke to last weekend - it's more depressed than ever, with a high street full of charity shops (sounds familiar!).
   Music, because there really are so few bands to match them lyrically and musically : they are increasingly inventive and diverse in style.
  The first song I heard was 'The Waves' from the second album, played at Glastonbury this year and the televised highlight of the whole festival. It is even better live than on the recording.
   It is a mounting crescendo, as the sea gathers force and becomes more and more threatening, till it breaks down at the end with the repeated refrain of 'approaching the shore'. It reminds me of John Cale's incredible version of 'Heartbreak Hotel' and its screaming finale.
   The words throughout move deftly from viewpoint to viewpoint, a rarity in poetry never mind  rock, and at one stage take the persona of a bland character who refuses to accept the environmental damage we are inflicting upon our world and the doom of 'honey-bee cemeteries'. O'Brien rarely makes a generalised statement, yet when he does it is telling - 'One man's innocence, is another's chance'.
   It's a song which embraces the vitality of the waves (of both sea and sky), yet ultimately acknowledges that the sea is a symbol of ecological abuse and a portent of disaster.
   In total contrast is the optimism of the opening song 'My Lighthouse', a sparse and simple love-song which employs that sea imagery effectively and without a hint of pretension.
   O'Brien's voice on this is closer to the Sufjan of 'Seven Swans' and it shows how the albums are never over-produced: music matching lyrics like two voices in harmony.
   Many of the songs can be deceptive and none more so than 'In A New-Found Land You Are Free'. What initially appears to be a song about a new-born child and its discovery of life takes a very different , darker turn, and yet still manages to be optimistic in its sense of freedom ( a release from pain maybe?).
   I love the vigour and verve of 'Earthly Pleasures' and 'Judgement Call', both knowing fully the strength of a chorus. O'Brien implies criticisms of organised religion and inequalities in society, but always in a subtle , angled way and never heavy-handedly.
   Guitars are used sparingly and layered keyboards often feature, like the sediments  exposed on cliff-lines. Piano is  like the sun reflecting off  shiny rock surfaces.
   I admire Villagers because they defy all categories : they aren't a clunking guitar band, or nu-folk, yet can master tunes and words very much like Becker and Fagen in the early days of Steely Dan.
   The last laugh goes to the donkey at the end of the final track 'Rhythm Composer', only going to show their unique combination of wit and melancholy.
   To misquote them ( from 'Nothing Arrived') - 'I waited for nothing, but something arrived.'
   That something is a band who could change the face of music : sons of Heaney, their country and the sea and , beyond that, of visions and dreams.

       
                                 A   CALLING

I have a vision of him landing
(still don't know if I've seen it
on film or in my imagination),
greeted in his homeland airport
and the first hug from a young man.


Not a baton or some grand torch
passed on, but what would it be?
A branch of rowan maybe,
bright orange berries, leaves green,
a perfect perch for a calling.


To be nurtured, carried, held firm
like the neck of a guitar, slim bow
or the wooden rim of a bodhran ;
as words and music migrate
yet always sing of home.
   

Over the last few weeks there have been a series of programmes on BBC 4 about Folk Music, the Blues and finally World Music.
   Many have been intriguing and informative, others cobbled together from the archives. In other words, typical 4 fodder.....but essential viewing nevertheless.
   The two  folk programmes were very different. The first looked at the history of its development in Britain.
   I say Britain but (another feature of Aunty Beeb) this really meant England. This showed the way it moved out of the clubs to become an integral part of the music scene.
   Apart  from the exclusion of most Celtic influences, the programme lacked an overall narrative, a shaping voice who could demonstrate the interaction with the States (especially Dylan) and the development of a distinctively English folk-rock sound with the likes of Fairport Convention (akin to American bands such as The Byrds and The Band).
   The second programme consisted entirely of archive footage and was often a revelation.
   It was astonishing to see Steeleye Span welcomed onto Crackerjack like a mainstream pop group.
   Some acts were clearly only of their time. The insipid Donovan was given a lot more air time than he deserved, while Pentangle struck me as true pioneers of folk-jazz, which was later taken to another level by bands like Moving Hearts.
   Sandy Denny was at her emotive best with 'Crazy Woman Blues', yet the Richard Thompson song would have put you off his music completely ; a very annoying choice for the one who has not only survived, but made many recent classic albums.
   It ended with Billy Bragg rather then Robb Johnson or Chumbawamba (in their folk manifestation), plumping for safety over genuine political challenge.
   The finest of English folk today is to be found in the Anti-capitalist Roadshow, while the Scottish and Welsh varieties have many excellent singer-songwriters, as does Ireland with Damien Dempsey. 
  So, their conclusion came over as rather dated.
   The Blues programme was equally safe, though it did comprise a number of truly great performers , for example B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Champion Jack Dupree.
   I always like the little facts that are captioned, including one explaining how Dupree was a boxer before musician, hence the name.
   I was astonished to see The Kinks doing a stunning blues song and wished they'd carried that love of the Blues more into their later material.
   The programme missed the likes of Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters. Surely footage of these must've been available?
   Still, for someone not versed in the Blues, it was a reasonable starting-point.
   It would be interesting to see a programme about the influence of the Blues on singer-songwriters ( a much neglected area) : especially Meic Stevens, John Martyn and Kevin Coyne, all three with unique voices and styles ( much like Richie Havens in America).
  The first of the four World Music programmes looked at the way it was adopted by record companies and Western artists and transformed into a very popular genre.
   I once found Welsh language punk band Anrhefn in the 'World Music' section of a Cardiff record store. Despite John Peel's advocacy, Welsh language rock was still regarded as somehow distant and foreign in our own country!
   The programme's theme was about the hunt for 'the new Bob Marley', though bands did get a look-in as well, particularly Zimbabwe's Bhundu Boys.
  There were obvious contrasts between the way the latter's music was destroyed and sanitized by a major record company and the experience of Senegal's Youssou N'Dour.
   He was dropped by his record company and promptly went on to record the massive hit '7 Seconds' with Neneh Cherry.
   She described the song in overtly political terms, as a call for resistance (rather like Marley's 'Get Up, Stand Up').
   '7 Seconds' remains one of the very best songs bringing together African music and Western pop.
   But the real joy of watching the programme was, for me, about rediscovering artists I had sadly forgotten.
   The qawwali singing of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was - with Portuguese fado - the most transcendental experience.
   It's no wonder Jeff Buckley called Nusrat 'his Elvis'.
   I loved the anecdote about his concert at the Womad festival. He was supposed to perform for 45 minutes (about one and half songs in qawwli terms), but ended up singing for over 4 hours, with people joining the audience as he went on.
   With lyrics based on the poetry of Muslim Sufism (that mystical, philosophical branch of Islam which Richard & Linda Thompson joined), listening is something of a spiritual experience, even for this die-hard atheist.
   When it came to the next programme - an A-Z- of World Music - I couldn't help filling in the alarming gaps.
   Where was reggae? Where was S.America's finest singer-songwriter Victor Jara (also an exponent of Chilean traditional music), who was murdered by the Junta there for his politics and his songs?
  This A-Z was rather anodyne and only touched upon politics in an African context, showing the outstanding Tinariwen, who used to be both Toureg guerillas and members of a musical collective.
  The documentary about Youssou N'Dour was far more satisfying than his  quite recent concert which followed it.
   While the concert showed him going through the motions, the documentary was fascinating.
   N'Dour was portrayed as both a remarkable musician and man : someone devoted to his country as much as to his music.
   Always drawing on its traditions, the rise of N'Dour - with a voice singularly combining his religion, nation and the influence of Western rock -
showed him as very much the man to replace Marley.
   His collaboration with Peter Gabriel on 'Shaking The Tree' was utterly thrilling, as were his live performances with their vibrant dancing.
   Yet N'Dour never became the superstar who left his land behind ( see Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey for our Welsh contrasts).
  In fact, he actually stood for President in Senegal and - in a very frightening campaign - had to stop soldiers from firing on his supporters.
   He is now Minister of Culture and trying to put into practice the manifesto his songs often expounded.
  After Marley, he was certainly the most significant figure within that weird term 'World Music' : rightly a hero in his homeland.


                               SEARCHING

                  I'm searching
                                      for music
                                                       in the undergrowth
                                                             the hedge-tangle

                      blues     rai      reggae       qwwali        fado

                              people from all over
                                 the world
                              needing each other

                                                               yet struggling
                                                                   to survive
                                                                        (roots seeking water
                                                                            leaves asking sky)

                       the creepers choke and suffocate
                           come in may guises
                              from raised guns to forms of paper

                                       (searching for birds of various colours -
                                                     their plumage and dalliance

                                  and songs
             joining                                       separating
                             across the air
                                         
                  wires can only approximate

     the mating-calls
                           the warnings
                                              the celebrations of sunlight.
        

  
   

   I taught for nearly one year just down the road from Seamus Heaney's home of Bellaghy.
  His sister taught in the same school and her features were unmistakably of the same big-boned family.
He was not on the syllabus then, yet we lived constantly in the presence of that snagging northern Irish dialect he used so frequently in his earlier work. Words like 'a pockle' (meaning a nuisance) and phrases like 'the skrake of dawn' (very early in the morning).
  I had the great pleasure of going to see him read at a pub in Bellaghy and, though he signed a book, I never spoke to him, as he seemed surrounded by friends and family and I felt out of place.
   It was wonderful to hear him read those poems about farming and his upbringing and to think that so many of the audience felt intrinsically part of them. Even the most simple of things such as 'Blackberrying' he could render special and resonant with meaning.
   Here were the people of his townlands.
   'Townland' wasn't a word I had ever encountered before : small settlements and farms around one equally small village, like Rasharkin.
   Everywhere my wife and I went (she taught at the same school), we moved in his presence ; from the boat across Lough Neagh to the many farming families we taught.
  In late autumn potato harvesting time the classrooms emptied. Pupils took to the fields to help their parents and the Head turned a blind eye (he too was a potato-farmer!) . Their education inevitably suffered, yet they had very low expectations in that Secondary Modern.
   When the media proclaim about the benefits of N. Ireland's Grammar School system, they conveniently forget about the 60% odd who have to attend Sec. Mod's like the rest of us in the 60s. Most are stamped as failures from the age of 11!
   Heaney himself was a fortunate one and attended St. Columb's College in Derry after attaining a scholarship there. His much-studied poem 'Mid-term Break' relates to this time and the tragic death of a brother in a road accident .
   He was a brave writer in more ways than his remarkable poetry, criticism and translations. He once refused inclusion in an anthology of British verse, citing his Irish identity and lack of allegiance to Mrs. Windsor.
   At times during the upheavals of The Troubles, I felt he did pander to British propaganda. His narrow political vision always seemed to blame his own people for the violence of their struggle, whereas historically the republican population turned to the Provos out of necessity not choice.
   I believe this arose from his rural background more than anything else.
   In the area of Co. Derry where he grew up, Catholics and Protestants would mix more freely than the cities of Belfast and Derry and also coastal towns of the east like Ballycastle (essentially Catholic) and Portrush  (Protestant).
   The common communication and currency was undoubtedly farming and they had much in common. Though discrimination existed, it wasn't at the intense level of urban areas.
   Furthermore, the Catholic Church was far more conservative in places like Bellaghy (as a leftist, I was derided) and extremely suspicious of the increasingly Marxist Provisional IRA.
   When Heaney worked and studied in Belfast he moved among the middle-classes, who again mixed freely, Catholic and Protestant. He had little experience of working-class districts like The Falls and Shankill.
   Having said that, he still wrote a number of powerful poems highly critical of the British occupation if his country.
   One is 'The Toome Road', which describes the intrusion of military presence and its link , in his mind, to 'erectors of headstones' -
   'How long were they approaching down my roads
   As if they owned them?'
   The use of 'my' and 'they' are telling.
   His poetry had more effect on me than any other writer from the mid-70s onwards and I looked forward to his new books with the kind of excitement  I did later for the albums of Tom Waits.
   Each was so different in approach and content, yet grew organically from his body of work : from the bog people of 'North' to those moving elegies of 'Field Work'.
   It was always so rewarding teaching his work at GCSE and 'A' Level, as I felt I could give an extra insight to their inspirations.
  He brought together his wide learning from Celtic mythology, Irish history and the Classical tradition so naturally, it never felt like he was being deliberately difficult.
   So many events, sights and even sounds bring back his poems and when, in Japan, I heard the curious mating-calls of frogs I couldn't help thinking of 'Death of a Naturalist' and Heaney's description of his boyhood experience.
   I seriously wonder if any other poet will have the kind of profound effect on my life and work which Seamus Heaney has had.
   I do wish I'd spoken to him that time in Bellaghy, just to say thanks and tell him - 'I write poetry too.'

                                     THE  WORD-CUT


Of slow, slow country accent
hanging mist-like
over the lough

of the dialect words
like amethyst dragonflies
hovering over the ponds

of flags of bog-cotton :
small white fists
defiant in the marshlands

of the road-block, word-block,
night-stopping light and gun
pointed at the head

of blackberry ink staining
and thorns splintering deep :
the flow of juice and blood

of rotting flax turned
to linen-white sheet and map
of a body breached

of the word-cut ;
of feet, both left and right,
leading talk to potato yield.



  
   * To reply to 'Student' (no email). I went to one of these Grammar schools and it was generally dreadful. It was a myth about their excellence. In n. Ireland the majority of pupils are condemned to failure. Of course, this also happens in our so-called Comprehensive system, but at least the sense of failure isn't built into the entire education system, as it is with the selection process.
   In n.Ireland I know (from my wife's intimate knowledge of it) that it favours the middle-classes (of both sects) and exacerbates class divisions.
I would like to see a genuinely Comprehensive system, with no private schools ( similar to Finland), the very opposite of what is happening in England.
   My wife went to a Grammar school in the six counties and holds the same views as me.