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      John Irving Clarke: Old Glory

      On a visit to South Eastern Michigan poetry group

      Jimmy AndrexbyJimmy Andrex
      14-11-2020 10:45
      in Poetry, Region
      Robert Norbury

      Photo: Robert Norbury. Www.robertnorbury.com

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      On a visit to South Eastern Michigan poetry group

      This is where we tender our poems

      where freedom terminated and began,

      where Rosa sat out her days uncontested

      and Aretha belted out her need for…

      spell it out by letter… just a little respect.

      Henry Ford mass produced for the people

      and Berry engineered soul from the heart.

      Where the street names betray their provenance:

      Normandy West, Custer and Manitou

      and where, I imagine, Windermere 

      was a home-sick Cumbrian’s insistence.

      A coffee house off the Thirteen Mile Road

      in the great motor city is where we riff, 

      scat and play around themes, touching upon

      depression and oppression, love and life.

      How Karin took comfort in a hashtag

      before scattering petals on the lake

      and Eric shrugged off the weight of doctrine,

      stealing into the gentile janitor’s 

      room for a religion-free cigarette.

      And the guy in the corner, who has still 

      not given his name, bares the criss-cross back

      borne by his ancestors, scars like the stars

      raised by rebels and the white-cloaked Klan

      desperate for some new kind of glory

      star-spangled, fluttering tall, proud and white.

      But this, this is

      a mongrel nation of huddled masses 

      yearning freedom, who have brought to the mix

      whole continents’ worth of riches and dreams,

      to honour the past, set down roots for kids

      and grant them wings to fly. We have our say;

      those before, those with whom we share a name,

      we the people, who aim to rise above.

      How we note, in critique after critique

      on love, loss, and hope as thin as a reed,

      the poems we write and songs we sing

      are one and the same, 

      and they shall not be moved.


      John Irving Clarke is a poet, novelist and workshop leader who has been published widely for the last forty years. He co-founded Red Shed Readings in Wakefield and still follows the misfortunes of Carlisle United with an interest bordering on the morbid.


      More from Poets’ Corner:

      • Julie Mellor: The Moment
      • Paul Francis: The New Jerusalem
      • Steve Pottinger: You Ask Me Where I Want to Live, My Love…

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      Jimmy Andrex

      Jimmy Andrex

      Jimmy is a Wakefield poet who performs all over the UK. Co-founder of Red Shed Readings, he is a presenter on ELFM’s Love the Words, where he writes and produces the Jimmy Andrex Outside Broadcast, as well as co-curating their Writing on Air Festival. Cartoon by Hamley Jenkins.

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