In The Poetry

‘Talk Us Through it, Charlotte’ – one little thing I’d like to explain about this poem is that, for some reason, I have imagined Charlotte to be a Black Country girl. The Black Country is the part of England that I grew up in, a heavy, industrial area with its own voice, its own accent. [...]

I used to be a school teacher and many of the school poems I’ve written have little portraits or snapshots of me and this one shows me in my classroom at the end of the day getting rather ragged as you will hear.

Scissors

Nobody leave the room.
Everyone listen to me.
We had ten pairs of scissors
At half-past [...]

The Slow Man

The phone rings
But never long enough
For the Slow Man.

By the time
The set’s switched on
His favourite programme’s over.

His tea grows cold
From cup to lip.
His soup evaporates.

He laughs, eventually,
At jokes long since
Gone out of fashion.

Sell-by dates
And limited special offers
Defeat him.

He comes home
With yesterday’s paper
And reads it…tomorrow.

I think this poem has something to do with the psychological state of teachers. Imagine you’re a child in a class and you ask your teacher five questions during a day – that’s not very many is it, five – but if there are thirty of you that makes 150 questions a day, 750 questions [...]

Billy McBone

Billy McBone
Had a mind of his own,
Which he mostly kept under his hat.
The teachers all thought
That he couldn’t be taught,
But Bill didn’t seem to mind that.

Billy McBone
Had a mind of his own,
Which the teachers had searched for for years.
Trying test after test,
They still never guessed
It was hidden between his ears.

Billy McBone
Had a mind of [...]