Oh good...National Poetry Day!!!

I used to love this day when I was teaching! Quite often I would entertain my classes with a newly written ode for the day...but more often it was the staff room who got the benefit - I once remember struggling my way through about 25 staff members at St Luke's with a limerick composed for each!

I started writing poems when very young - I recently found an old exercise book from 'Millbridge Upper', my primary school in Liversedge (Nr Heckmondwike), Yorkshire. Amongst imaginative stories about Aladdin's Lamp (no boring 'rubbing it' for me... the inscription on my lamp read: 'stuff stinkbombs down the spout and you will get a surprise!' In the margin - in red - Mrs Ingham's reply read clearly, 'so will you if you write this sort of thing again!') and King Xerxes sits a poem, complete with pencil drawing carefully coloured in: it's title was 'The Ustranoch'. It begins thus:

"The Ustranoch comes from Uranus

It's body is made from jellyus"

Maybe an inauspicious start - but I was only 7 at the time!

Poetry began to flow on a family holiday in 1981. We used to spend a couple of weeks each summer in one of the Salvation Army's holiday homes - alternating between Broadstairs, Folkestone, Westgate and Cliff House near Bournemouth. In retrospect, I'd say we were at Cliff House the most but that 1981 holiday was remarkable for many reasons... For a start it coincided with probably the most exciting Test Match of all time - the one that led to the England v Australia cricket series becoming known forever as 'Botham's Ashes'. The first item I wanted to take to the beach each day was my transistor radio...and I sat on the sand listening to Johnners, Boilers, Sir Fred, The Bearded Wonder etc. day after day as England toiled...*

My dad had turned his radio off in disgust as England lapsed to 135 for 7 in their 2nd Innings - following on and still nearly a hundred behind...history goes on to aver that at least two Aussies placed bets at 500 to 1 on an England win, never believing for a second that there was the remotest chance...But Sir Ian had other ideas and blasted 149, ably assisted in building a lead by the unlikely duo of Chris Old and Graham Dilley.

By midday the next day (it was Tuesday, July 21st, by the way) nobody had even ventured onto the beach - the tiny TV room was so overcrowded they had to move the TV into the lounge...and then even into the dining room as Bob Willis skittled the Australians out to take 8 for 43 and led the troops to the unlikeliest of all wins and the start of an irrepressable run of form that lasted the rest of the summer!

Please excuse that massive digression as I veer off-piste...it's the Ronnie Corbett syndrome again! Blame it on my passion for writing, for cricket and this absurd memory I was blessed with (I don't have to Google these facts and figures - they just sit waiting for the chance to leap out of my head!!!) Eight days later Charles and Diana were married at St Paul's and we crowded round the TV again in Westgate...but the excitement even of that Royal Wedding Day could not match the Test Match!**

Back to poetry...it was on that holiday that I also took a blue school exercise book and, inspired by an Edward Lear and Monty Python kick I'd been on, I began to write nonsense poems. Every evening I would be summoned by other guests to entertain them with the fruits of my day's labour - and they fed my writing habit with copious laughter and merriment - particularly one dear lady, Olive Daws, who laughed hysterically poem after poem! (Olive is the mother of David - now famous as one of the best cornet players in the world, of course!)

...And I've written poems ever since. I remember that once, while part of an entertainment team at Butlins in Bognor Regis I was challenged to write three poems in an hour on subjects nominated by the audience - I just found them today before I started writing this piece! Around 1990 I was persuaded by friends and family to assemble an official collection of poems and this I did, paying to publish it myself on school equipment. It was half a book of funny and nonsense poems and half of profound or reflective poetry. The first run of 100 copies sold out very quickly, as did a second run and I even made more after that...one or two tattered copies might still be knocking around somewhere. It was called 'Cortina Biriani' in deference to 'Carmina Burana', the famous piece of music by Karl Orff - the cover featured a plate of curry...sans meat but littered with rusting Ford cars, of course!

If I had to pick one poem to mark today, though, it would not be one from 'Cortina Biriani' but one that would bring me back to music (once again...all roads lead to music...) I wrote this poem while waiting for the last few finishers to leave a very boring Geography Exam I was 'invigilating' in 1994. Harry Nilsson had recently died and I wrote the poem to mark the passing of the singer/songwriter I still acknowledge today to have been my favourite pop/rock musician ever and also the most inspiring influence on my own songwriting.

It was later published in the Nilsson Fanzine 'Everybody's Talkin'' and, when we met in 2001, Curtis Armstrong (noted Nilsson historian and, of course, famous actor) told me it was his favourite poem ever. Most John Lennon/Beatles fans will be aware of John Lennon's 'Lost Weekend' - a period of some 18 months when he and Yoko went through a separation in the mid 1970s. John spent some of that time living in a drug and booze filled house with fellow hell-raisers including Harry, Ringo and Keith Moon (drummer from 'The Who').

John agreed (while drunk, he later claimed) to produce Nilsson's next LP - unfortunately for all concerned, by the time the sessions were underway Harry had raised hell to such an extent that he had ruptured a vocal cord and was coughing up blood whenever he tried to sing! His famously smooth, gliding baritone was reduced to a croaky rasp...yet he tried to hide the truth from Lennon and an LP was, finally, released - Lennon crediting his contributions to a pseudonym 'Dr Winston O'Boogie' - even the seemingly innocent cover of the LP (above) features toy letter-blocks...a D and an S...with a 'rug' inbetween...you get it?

I'm glad they made the album - 'Pussy Cats' - two of my favourites working together...it's not my favourite Nilsson album...but it's Harry and John, you know??? To other fans it obviously IS a favourite - American band 'The Walkmen' re-recorded the entire project as a tribute a few years ago! You can find out lots more about the album if you follow the Nilsson links from http://www.marcharry.com/ but...for now, here is the poem in honour of Harry, John and National Poetry Day 2009:

Pussy Cats

Sing a song of Schmilsson

A bottle full of rye,

O'Boogie, Moon and Starkey

Soon drank the bottle dry

So they opened up another

As the tapes began to roll

And, while Harry 'laughed his ass off',

The bottle took its toll.

And they 'had their share of good times'

And their 'spirits' kept them high

And they left us with an album -

And they left us wondering why

The Almighty, in His wisdom,

When He said 'My will be done'

Deemed 'pussy cats' get nine lives...

But our heroes only one?

(copyright HarryMusic 1999)

*these were the affectionate names beloved by all England cricket supporters who listened to the national institution known as Test Match Special on Radio 4 each summer - in turn the names referring to the wonderful Brian Johnston, Trevor Bailey, Fred Trueman and Bill Frindall...

**unbeknownst to either of us at the time, it later transpired that between these two momentous events my future wife and I had met for the very first time...or at least been present in the same Salvation Army service in Ramsgate...we realized many years later this was the case when we recalled the item for young people in the meeting involved a game of Chinese Whispers with the message to be passed along being "if it rains on Wednesday a lot of people will be very disappointed".