Four Northern Boys Coming At You
Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet
Four Northern Boys Coming At You
They stride, actually larger than life,
in black bronze, down the Pier Head
coming at you from the sixties,
from the tumult of post-war ingenuity,
from the docks where New Orleans
met Merseyside, from the pulsating North.
Two motherless boys, the right and left
hands of the Mersey Beat, Paul and John,
skiffling rock and roll into the Kasbah club
and the cavernous gap where the heart
of a city was waiting to be won over,
where a new currency was to be coined.
Losing the Silver and Hamburg proved,
the Beatles grabbed the beat and ran,
ran out of the working class and onto
the stage, ran with Speke quiet George
and new boy Ringo Starr; a glittering name
for a child of bad housing and tuberculosis.
And what did they say these beatnik braves,
one step from the docks and slums? Love!
Love me do, love is all you need, love
the lonely in St Peters graveyard - they had
no one to hold their hands, but these boys would,
they would change the world with love.
And here they are, still striding towards us
with innocence and flair, holding the pain
of loss in their dark hands, asking us to imagine
a better world where blackbirds still sing
in the dead of night, a North that can still
work a hard day’s night and earn a ticket to ride.
As some of you know I have two podcasts. The first has been going since 2018 - I explore poetry, anxiety and vulnerability from a personal point of view and with a whole host of guests. It is has been a real joy to put out there and to hear back from people that they find it helpful, enjoyable and sometimes inspiring. Here is a link to the latest episode.
In 2022 my good friend Matt Carr approached me with an idea. He knew I was writing a collection of poetry about Sheffield and that I had a fascination for all things Northern - music, poetry, culture, politics, cuisine, history and economics. We used to meet up and have long discussions, always revolving around our common interest in the North. He thought we might be able to produce a podcast that would cover some of our common passions. Matt is an author of both fiction and none fiction - currently writing book about Patagonia. He also has his own substack called Matt Carr’s Infernal Machine.
And thus Grim Up North? The Podcast was born. We managed to get the permission of the KLF a classic northern band to use their song Grim Up North! for our opening jingle and Matt’s uncanny ability to get people to come on the podcast kicked in with our opening episode. We interviewed the author of a new and definitive history of the north Brian Groom. His book Northerners had just been published and proved a great launch for our show.
We are now coming to the end of our second seven episode series. We have covered myriad aspects of the north. Here are the fourteen titles:
True North -
The North | How Did It Get So Grim?
The Defeated North
Getting Carter | Noir from the North
Angels of the North
Acting the North
Seeing the North
Welcome to the North?
Walking the North | Sheffield’s Edges
Cooking the North
Speaking the North
Our Friends in the North
Farming the North
Singing the North
We have travelled to Newcastle and the Angel of the North, to Cumbria and North Yorkshire to visit two hill farms. We have interviewed George Orwell’s son, the writer of the generation defining TV show ‘Our Friends in the North’ -Peter Flannery, two crime writers - A A Dand and Lesley McEvoy, the lovely Asian writer Zaiba Malik about immigration into the north, as well as many other experts and academics. We have done vox pops on the streets of Sheffield and Liverpool and under the Angel of the North. We have been shown around exhibitions of the Lindisfarne Gospels in Newcastle and the Pitmen Painters in Ashington and eaten Scouse1 in Maggie May’ cafe on Bold Street, Liverpool. It has been a northern joy!
It has also launched me into my next writing project. I realised that this excursion across the geographic north, into the historic north, through the fictional north, into the political dynamics of the north, and sampling the cultural delights of the north had furnished me with all the raw material for a new collection about place. I am calling it Grim Up North as a working title and the poem at the head of this post is a part of this new project.
When we recorded the Cooking the North episode and went to Maggie May’s cafe we wandered through Liverpool and we encountered a fabulous statue of the Fab Four on the waterfront. It really moved me and as you can see from the photo it has the same effect on many others.
Here is what the sculptor of this work had to say:
“it’s a statue that needs no title, no explanation, no instruments, no gimmicks. It’s a monument to a moment and that moment started in Liverpool.”Chris Butler onThe Fab Four Statue.
Please have a listen to the seventh episode of our second series - Singing the North. You will hear me reciting this poem and the wonderful Mike Jones former songwriter with the 80s band Latin Quarter. He treated us to a tour de force about the Beatles and northern music. He is programme director of an MA in Music Industry Studies. He also contributes to the MA in the Beatles: Music Industry and Heritage. Hope you enjoy it.
Scouse is a traditional stew made with the weeks left overs and odds and sods - each family has it s own recipe.