Here is another wonderful picture taken by Glyn Goodrick and my poem to match. If you’re tempted by these poems and/or pictures, they are from ‘Recollections’ available from flambard press.

Fortuna

Your wings
are still buried
in our muddy river
yet you offer, with your right hand,
a drink.

Top Up
every barrel
daughter of Jupiter.
We owe our rough times and our smooth
to you.

So cheers!
Our Geordie cups
will always be half-full
not half-empty: that’s our nature.
Good health.

Who knows
the stone’s story
or what blessings it brought,
but we are the inheritors.
Our thanks

Fortune,
You smiled on us.
First angel of the North,
from your horn of plenty you filled
the Tyne.

Like most men of Shields he loves clubbing
chasing daughters of night beyond dusk.
It’s a madness that frees him from labours,
a kind of apple-lust.

On the pull and undressed-down to kill
he’s out on the town with a vengeance
two pints and he struts like a lion;
wears the skin on his sleeve.

And if his right arm’s raised in passion
it’s not that he’s waiting to strike.
Travolta-slim hips on the wriggle;
that’s the action he seeks.

He’s more of a god than a hero
to whole legions of men in the north.
The sight of him makes every woman
fall in praise at his feats.

They see past his hard reputation
past the belt-grabbing lover of ale
to a disarmed man who would travel
the far ends of the earth.

Look again at the Shields man the god;
test his metal against other men.
Then tell me who you’d rather ride with,
in the bowl of the sun.

Ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral, The Thorn Tree in the Quadrangle of St. Mary’s College. This tree is purported to have been planted by Mary Queen of Scots in 1563, and finally, St. Andrews Castle.

During the week commencing 21 April I spent a great four days at beautiful St. Andrews. It really is the most amazing place. Staff at the school of English look out on St. Andrews Castle and then out to sea. I really don’t know how anyone manages to get any work done, given the view they have from their windows.

It was lovely catching up with Robert Crawford again and chatting with Don Paterson. Isn’t it funny how the busiest of people can always somehow manage to find time for you!

In between planning presentations and the usual exciting stuff of housework, (and Oh yes! being informed that next year I am to become the mother of the bride and that dreaded figure, a mother-in-law)I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the usefulness of poetry, linked of course to Horace’s view that it should be both beautiful and useful.

Naturally, when Horace talked about ‘useful’ he had entirely different ideas in his mind than I have now - I wouldn’t dream of setting myself up as a teacher of morals and behaviour, but then I guess he wouldn’t have gone to down town Rome to tackle issues of exclusion, or to an endangered patch of green to provide an opportunity for the local community to express their views and anxieties. Which ever way you look at it though, I suppose both Horace and myself are making a social commentary - would that I could make mine with his eloquence!