Welcome to England: Working process and work in progress.

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Eeek! I’m a bit trepidatious about deconstructing my writing process. I see creative offerings in the same way I see magic tricks, I enjoy them much more if I don’t know how they’re done.

For me the trigger for a poem can be just about anything. Something will occur that elicits an emotional response and I’ll scribble a couple of lines in my pad. I’ll leaf through these notes at a later date and if something grabs my attention amongst the often incomprehensible dirge, I’ll isolate myself from distraction and expand upon it.

Here’s a work in progress, have a listen if you have the time and I’ll explain a bit about its conception.

Welcome to England from byron vincent on Vimeo.

Talking to people in and around St Pauls the issue of immigration came up too frequently to ignore.

During this process I’ve spoken to people from all over the world and heard some amazing stories. I’ve had some ace rum soaked chats with Windrush generation residents who were enticed over to England from the Caribbean by the post war conservative government who desperately needed to fill labour shortages in the public service sector such as transport and the NHS. Shockingly, these mendaciously inveigling immigration campaigns were originally championed by Enoch Powel, who later famously went on to incite untold acts of bigotry with his ‘Rivers of blood’ speech. They shared stories of how promises of prosperity and an auspicious reception to the commonwealth’s motherland were quickly replaced by a reality of intolerance and socio-economic exclusion.

On the whole the St Paul’s community is chilled, friendly and culturally diverse. I live in an old Georgian town house that has been converted into four flats. Of the three that are occupied the (recent) ethnic heritage of its occupants spans four different countries. People smile when they pass on the stairs, strangers of all nationalities chat to each other at bus stops and in shop cues. All in all it’s a nice place to live. It isn’t an affluent area, and with poverty comes social problems such as drugs and crime. But if you were to go to an equally poor yet less multicultural area in any part of the country you’d find those problems exist there too. You’re reading a poetry blog, so it probably seems obvious to you that the only correlation between race and crime is one of ghettoisation, but I haven’t had to travel far from home to experience attitudes to the contrary.

So I’d found my topic, but personally I’d feel uncomfortable writing something based on second hand information that I could never really have a full understanding of or do justice to. The epiphany came when I was in a cab. Often when I get in a cab and give the driver my address, there’s a sort of “Oh you live there do you” exchange. This is often followed by ill informed diatribe about Britain going to the dogs cos of “all these immigrants” coming over here putting paprika in our pasties or whatever.

This particular cabbie was banging on about he thought we were loosing our cultural identity and as I was feeling a bit pugnacious I decided to take him on. I asked him what all the great stuff was he thought was being lost under this supposed tide of ethnic inclusiveness. He floundered for a bit before saying, “Oh, you’re one of them are you?”, then kept his gob shut for the rest of the journey.

I spent the next few weeks baiting old duffers in pubs and it was the same story over and over again. Every time I asked them what we were loosing they kept saying “Our culture” but were unable to define what our culture was. So I suppose I thought that if they couldn’t vocalize what puts G in GB, I’d try and do it for them. The next couple of days i laid back and thought of England and that’s how the poem came to be.

I’d had a syllabic rhythm buzzing around in my head for weeks. This is unusual for me; it’s not something I tend to consider too much, preferring to allow that kind of thing to evolve more naturally. So the whole poem happened sort of back to front.

Instead of starting with the actual sentiments I wanted to convey, I started obsessively making lists of things that might be inherently English. Here are some that didn’t make the rough draught.

The cone hotline

Friday evening family shitcoms

Garden gnomes

Budgie droppings on Axminster carpets

Putting a “Donk” on it

CCTV

Discerning someone’s age by asking them who their favourite Dr Who is

School dinners

Naked WI calendars

Saying “sorry” when we really mean “please get out of my way”

Novelty Christmas singles

The structure of this piece is all about the rhythm, snippets of really intense rhyming patterns and alliteration. So fitting it all together was a bit like a giant word puzzle. I’m too obsessive to settle on a rhyme that doesn’t convey exactly what I mean so the process is fun but can be more time consuming than writing none rhymey stuff.

I write in isolation, the danger of this for me is fixating on minor or trivial elements of a poem and therefore not seeing the big picture. This could (and has in the past) lead me to mess up the tone of the piece. This is a particular worry with this poem. If I was performing it at a festival and someone was drifting in and out they might hear lines like “send em back” and assume I’m having some sort of neo fascist tantrum, which is generally frowned upon in festival poetry tents.

That’s about all I can say at this stage. This this is a rough draught so the process isn’t yet complete, so as always any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

tagged under: Byron Vincent.Welcome to England.work in progress.working process

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Byron Vincent

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Charlie Jordan
May 11th, 2009

Glorious piece, makes you proud to be british eh?! Some astute observations as always… Love the lines about topgear xenophobes/ God playing bingo at Mecca/ dogging on the village green/ posh sufis and rastas/ licking the lollipop man and ofcourse the triumphant last lines about the culinary highpoint of British food:)
Interesting the way this piece has differed in process and the tight rhyme scheme that came first. In a week or so, when it’s had time to settle, you’ll have to come back to it and see how you feel about it then, knowing the construction order.
Shame cone hotlines didn’t find room:)

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Mel Scaffold
May 14th, 2009

I’ve been struggling with the concept of English cultural heritage for a while. A few months ago I took part in an ‘Undoing Racism’ workshop where we had a ‘cultural sharing’ in the evening, for which we were asked to bring along an item that represented our culture or heritage. Being what I think funding bodies refer to as a ‘diverse’ group, many people shared beautiful and moving stories relating to food, dance, journeys and their relationship with home.

I could think of nothing specifically ‘English’ that I was proud of, and the only thing I’ve inherited is an almost debilitating obsession with grammar and punctuation.

In the end I took along a picture of my mates from when we used to live in a big, messy post-student house together, with the explanation that we were rejecting the notion of heritage and creating our own dysfunctional urban family with a distinct culture of moral haziness and Sunday laziness.

Now I think of it a gnome would have been easier to explain.

I’m really enjoying ‘Welcome to England’, particularly ‘we want Marks & Sparks not Charlie Dark…we love an underdog as long as it don’t bark’. It’s hypnotic, disturbing and darkly comic and I’m looking forward to hearing how it develops.

PS I think curry pasties are improvement upon their constituent elements and represent some sort of pinnacle of multicultural gastronomic endeavour.

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Byron Vincent Reply:
May 17th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
If you’re a stickler for grammar and punctuation my posts must be making you want tear out your hair (or possibly mine).

Also, in the Morrisons supermarket in Morecambe they have an International World of Pies counter where you can sample such culinary offerings as the chicken tikka pie and the balti pie. Its where I go for all my first dates, then on to the Alhambra coin arcades for a ten pence cup of tea and a go on the sloties. I’m a class act see, oh yes.

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Mel Scaffold Reply:
May 20th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
You have a ‘get out of grammar free’ card. I once sent out an email to my whole mailing list titled ‘Appels & Snakes’. It still makes me feel a bit sick thinking about it.

I’m very jealous of Morecambe Morrisons: Mecca of multicultural munchies. In Plymouth they give seekers of exotic food (e.g. avocado) strange and quizzical looks.

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Simon Mole
May 21st, 2009

Hello,
quality stuff start to finish I reckon, and with some real stand out punchliney bits too. favourites of the top of my head were – “brunel was french, yours truly ‘outraged of tunbridge wells” and that bit about jason’s doner-van…
I also like the switches every now and then to lines with less obvious rhythmical and rhymed connections to the words around them- makes certain bits which I took more seriously stand out well. That bit about there’s no need to be swell when you’ve got your own way (I think that;s the line) and the bit about racism and if you dont get it then you’re probably next. covert deepness.

Was also pleased to find that you raised the idea of classism too – that some people who (probably quite rightly) view a lot of these negative english stereotypes with a degree of snobbery actually make little or no attempt to understand why (usually) working class people might have certain prejudices. This then in fact turns to prejudice itself in exactly the same dismissive way that those they are judging often judge people from different cultures or races. Haven’t quite articulated that but hopefully you know what i mean.

Really interested by what you said about your process too – I often use listing like that when writing and you always have to leave some good shit out for the sake of the overall feel I guess.
Finally, I did get the sense of some warm feelings towards Britain at various points but would feel pretty confident saying overall it’s not particularly positive about our homeland and some of its inhabitants. Now, I share a lot of those views and thoroughly enjoyed hearing them voiced in such raucous style but I’d also be interested to hear what things you personally like about england/britain and traditions/history that you value. Maybe there’s not many, maybe it’s something for a different piece but either way just throwing it out there as it’s something I’ve been thinking and writing about with a piece in the offing I hope…
anyway, great piece – hope you enjoy developing it.
Simon

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Byron Vincent Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Cheers Simon, glad you liked it. You’re right about the misanthropy too, I should probably write a more positive piece to counteract the incessant hectoring. There’s loads of stuff I love about blighty, and although a big old rant may be cathartic ephemerally, I reckon its always more productive to focus on the positive. I’ll step to it soon. Cheers for taking the time out to have a gander.

Byron

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Anika
May 29th, 2009

Very interesting read, I think their would be a lot of mixed opinions on this. Love the theme that you are using, what is it?

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Julia
June 21st, 2009

Nice post and blog! Greets.

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