I hadn’t planned to write and post last night’s Sun Pocket poem, I also didn’t know it was National Poetry Day today until seeing it on the news this morning. Despite graduating from the University of Leeds with a PhD, a lone ‘chav’ at the height of chavophobia (I wanted to criticise it in university, but was stopped by my department, and then it was more presentable London champagne socialist Owen Jones who got the publishing deal, took the credit and had a career breakthrough – tutors robbing the University of Leeds of the credit!) and chav child grooming in the UK (glossed over by Jones), I’ve been ignored by the University poetry department, university and city libraries, and cultural organisations such as the Ilkley Literature Festival.
Other Side of Sun Pocket: Between a Rock and Hard Place
Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, it looks as if I’m a bad writer and poet now, as they’ve hidden and ignored me enough to make me look unworthy, while they promote less qualified academics and skilled creators to make it look as if they believe in edginess and equality!
Thirteen years after graduating, and with loads of books and articles published, and over a thousand blog posts free for the public, I think people are still wondering how I became a doctor of philosophy; rather than asking why I’m not a bestselling media cultural expert, and recognised as an innovative creator (limited in some ways, as I’m quite happy to admit; but so are most others; perhaps in not recognising talent in people like me!).
Yesterday’s poem stemmed from an idea I’d had earlier, revolving around the ‘The sun has got me in its pocket and I don’t want to leave.’ line, with this time of year in the northern hemisphere the time to find sun pockets. Sometimes they are natural, or sometimes constructed, such as walls and shelters on hills and mountains: there are nice ones on Yorkshire’s Three Peaks: Whernside, Ingleborough and, as seen in this photo below, Pen-y-Ghent.
Poetry Construction
After having that one-line idea, I thought about making it into a Folding Mirror by including it with sleep in the bottom half, with a white sun-like light in the mind often a sleep destination for me, perhaps in line with the Buddhist point of singularity? This was what I wrote on a back of an envelope, saving paper, in the morning:
But then when I wrote it last night, I thought of just focusing on the sun pocket, like a song or nursery rhyme, with the repetition concentrating the focus on what was the original theme, and my genuine appreciation for the sun (although it does have negatives too, greenYgrey style!).
There are loads of great poets out there, and a lot more expert and dedicated than me, but I am more than some ‘celebrity writers’ who get invited, and paid well, to those conferences.
While I mainly criticise the ‘establishment’, they generally follow the public market, although they can create or break writers and poets, as they have done many musicians before, either out of personal or social tastes: such as putting grooming gangstas before chav children!
mistYmuse 