Less Land More Text

Poetry in the landscape is not a new thing. In the revolutionary sixties Edwin Morgan had verse on the sails of yachts floating on the Brighton seafront. Agitprop writers chalked text on town hall steps, planted slogans in daffodil bulbs in city parks. Apposite quotations, full of pith or sentiment, have been the staple of gravestones and school premise proscenium arches since the time of the Victorians. What’s new in the recessional twenty-tens in public poetry’s ubiquity.

Cardiff has long had bits of verse out there in its public face. In front of the Central Station stands William Pye’s stone block recreation of Cader Idris embellished with verse snippets by everyone from Dannie Abse to Rhys Dafis. On the waterfront of the Bay’s Inner Harbour John Masefield’s Cargoes is set in iron. “Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, / Butting through the Channel in the mad March days…” It could well be the Welsh Capital at its industrial height he’s talking about.

And no one could ignore Gwyneth Lewis’s now world-status iconic lines staggering in ancient Roman form across the front of the Wales Millennium Centre.

My own poetry is now in four public sites. A bilingual incantation celebrating spuriel (rubbish) runs along the top of the Lamby Way landfill site. Weather and greenery are taking their toll. A large piece of R S Thomas reprocessed by PF for the digital age rises up the front and then carries on along the corridors of BT’s Internet Datacentre on the Ferry Road peninsular. Around the base of Renn and Thacker’s gleaming silver steel blue-lit lighthouse in front of the new South Wales Headquarters on James Street runs a poem about the races and languages of the city. The ballast bank replaced, the past brought back to life again. My latest, my largest concrete poem yet, is an acrostic made from the various spellings of the word Cardiff as recorded by history. Kerdiv. Cardaif. Gaerdydd. Kerdiff. This straddles the paving as part of Jean-Bernard Métais spike and ring L’Alliance outside John Lewis. My largest concrete poem ever, I announced at the unveiling. Doesn’t he know the slabs are made of granite muttered someone from the developers.

The National Poet, Gillian Clarke, is a central component of the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s Landmark Sonnets proposal. This popularist scheme, which apparently has the backing of Gordon Brown, aims to put poetry onto public sites right across the UK. Given the status of the organisers we can expect the verse to be excellent. The locations will be stunning. Gillian’s is already composed. It’s a verse of fish pass and people which will sit somewhere on the Cardiff Bay Barrage alongside a translation into Welsh by Menna Elfyn. Others will follow. Watch the Insider for news of progress.

A version of this posting appeared in the Western Mail as The Insider on Saturday 8th May, 2010 with the world still undecided, well the British world, and the skies full of dark clouds. #146

Shouting Down The Stairwell

National Poetry Day and here I am on the second floor of Cardiff’s brilliant new central library celebrating the publication of Jennie Savage’s Arcades. This Safle published compendium is a wonderful mixture of photograph, history, anecdote, map, discourse, reportage, plan and chatter (included on a CD stuck inside the back cover) and an absolute bargain at £9.95. But it isn’t poetry.

There’s certainly something odd about all of this. National Poetry Day is the time each year when verse rises to the top of people’s consciousnesses. The BBC run polls, poetry gets televised, verse is recited by news readers. All over the country poets move to the forefront. Somebody has already told me that, earlier, a shaven-headed man was seen shouting poems down the Library’s vast stair-well – Ifor Thomas as it turns out, employed for the day to encourage the versification of visiting punters. Out of the window, embedded in the paving in the front of John Lewis’s new store, are the letters of my new piece of Cardiff concrete poetry. From this vantage point you can read them in all their acrostic glory – how the town had its name spelled down the centuries – Kairdiv, Cardaiff, Caerdyff – spread out in a permutational square. It’s poetry but not there for verse’s national Day.

In the paper is a list of the top UK poets as voted on by those members of the public who could be bothered to fill in the poll. T S Eliot, an American, heads the list. Wales fares badly. Maybe I should create my own list. I put thirty names in a hat and then pull out ten: Gillian Clarke, Gwyneth Lewis, Robert Minhinnick, Ifor ap Glyn, Alan Llwyd, Twm Morys, Tony Curtis, Gwyn Thomas, Menna Elfyn, Dannie Abse.

What about a top ten outsiders? Nick Fisk, Charles Jones, Childe Roland, Chris Torrance, Lloyd Robson, Martin Daws, Ian Davidson, Idris Davies, Rhys Iorwerth, Aneirin Karadog. Or our funniest: Ifor Thomas, Mike Jenkins, Mab Jones, Peter Read, Goff Morgan, Emily Hinshelwood, Tiffany Atkinson, Jan Price, Ann Drysdale, Catrin Dafydd.

Maybe most republished would be more interesting? Dylan T. The best on harmonica? Nigel Jenkins. The most popular? Owen Sheers. If I had space I’m sure I could come up with a post-National Poetry Day list that included almost everyone. Maybe you’ve got your own favourites? Do let me know.

Meanwhile, with the great day safely behind us, we can now get back to the regular life. One where poetry rarely intrudes. Auden reckoned that poetry was the place where nothing happens. I disagree. I’m now expecting a few phone calls from those Welsh poets inadvertently excluded from my lists above. No insult intended. If you are not there then let me know and I’ll try to slot you in.

An earlier version of the posting appeared as The Insider in the Western Mail of Saturday 21st November, 2009