Poems of Place

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

I’m going to publish some unpublished poems about place and this is the first one. This poem below was written when I lived just behind Portobello Rd (See previous post on Notting Hill v Hillingdon.) At that stage I was already into writing novels that fused fiction and poetry and rarely wrote free-standing poems. This one, however, was written during a week at the Arvon Foundation at Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. Around 2002, I think. I was teaching a course and the students were mainly female and older. I remember feeling quite annoyed that the poems most of them wrote were so rural, so pastoral, as if cities and the 21st Century did not exist. Arvon’s four sites are set in the most beautiful landscapes, which unfortunately affects what people choose to write about.

My reaction to this proliferation of poems about flowers and rolling hills and babbling streams was to write a poem about where I lived. Once the poem was written, and read aloud to the group (I took great delight in this), I had no further use of it. It was a poem written for a specific purpose and moment and that moment passed. It is a portrait of a place, and it doesn’t get any deeper than that. This is why I’ve never published it.

In the spirit of Emma McGorden’s last post showing her edits, I’ve also put the first draft of this poem (or almost first draft) at the bottom of this post. This longer, more unwieldly version was ‘published’ in the Arvon group’s end of week photocopied anthology. Then I revised it. Karen McCarthy’s online Open Notebooks (See link in sidebar) really focusses on the writing process and shows versions of poems. Check it out. It’s a brilliant idea!

Portobello

Drums played by blonde dreadlocks,
out of time, dressed in faded green combats,
Stretched goat’s hide, smoke curling
out of studded lips, criminal evidence
evaporates into ether.

Techno-didgeridoo encircled by amplified
rave crowd, eat organic take-away, washed
down with Evian to flush out Friday nights
toxins from Subterranea, crouched,
he moves all animal limbs, puffing red.

Market stalls sell everything you will ever
not need: Thai stools, bamboo screens,
tarot cards, tie-dye head wraps, though the Sixties
stopped swinging long ago –
the East is now back in the West.

This is where the millionaire entrepreneur
lives between council flats, where chi-chi
designer bags sell opposite Woolies,
where Coffee Republic is squeezing out Greasy Joes
though the market traders still opt for Nescafe.

This is where Toni, of the invisible
dangling member and obese breasts,
struts down Westbourne Park Road
in splattered floral caftan and lime-green plaits,
and no one raises a pierced eyebrow.

Where Ernie, at seventy, remembers
Rachman’s slums, teeming with Johnny-Just-Comes,
‘and dose ‘ouses dat went for a t’ousand
not a millyan, den, Ernie, who now models
his long grey dreadlocks for Paul Smith in Vogue.

This is where India, Tara and Tamara
speak loudly on mobiles of that Concorde weekend
in Manhattan, darling, I mean it was, like,
soooo wicked, innit, must dash, babes
see you tonight at 192.

This is where Julia met Grant,
where bright-eyed hordes come to snap The Door
though no one tells them the original
was sold off at auction long ago
for six thousands smackers.

This is where Ebony Steel Band starts up
in the hall under the Westway, they’ve won
carnival four years now, rehearse well past
midnight, leaving us all dreaming
we’re in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

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