Setu 🌉 सेतु: Paul Brookes

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Seven Security Guard Sonnets

Paul Brookes

A Big Pit

A Good Hiding

Long curved drive from main gate like a rich house.

Six Security guards sit in an old

building, play cards, warm up, ogle Penthouse.

Its door reached as slurrytides mudslosh cold

into wellies. Coal packed trucks push their vast

tyres twice your size down roads. Don’t wade wasteland.

Slurrysea cambers causey edge as they pass.

These potholes must sink deeper than England.

Pick your way with care over gantries. One

guard lost his grip, caught hold, saw his bright blue

hard hat tumble thirty feet down and gone

into wet mud, slip under duvet smooth.

Lads say need two-by-four for coal nicking

locals who sell it need a good hiding.

I'm Making New Ghosts

Mrs O’Brien gives us dinner Christmas

Day. Tommys microwave warm's plates. Little

Billy’ll bring t.v. again fort laughs.

And after your snap when your stuffed full,

if you get bored you can always patrol

outside. Don’t forget your Walkie Talkie

for takes a good four hours to trog round all

perimeter. Watch for Mad Monk as he

walks int mud. Seems to float over it cos

you can't see his feet. That's Monastery

under't slag. Don't tell no one this. Tha loss.

Stop production. Jobs on line. Tha'll be sorry.

All pits have their ghosts. Now the pits are ghosts.

Industrial estates, call centres, future ghosts.

My Pit Ponies

Old George like others given half a chance

knew tha'd two o' thee snap. Bit for them, bit

for thisen. He'd nuzzle inside a man's

donkey jacket. Times on entry to pit

down drift leading others he'd stop swing head

to and fro, wait a moment or two, turn,

gallop up and out pit. Swings chuffing lead.

Take bloody shift to get bastard ont turn

back down. When tha were leading guarantee

some wily bugger'd stand on thee toes and

If got behind 'um, hit you so harshly

tha's winded three days. Got nowt out my hand.

Pullin' tubs were hard, no word of a lie,

week pullin' doubles one up and died.

Fitters Shop

Tang of steel shavings, watery oil, brick

Dust, smear of grease around heavy tungsten,

A dull lathe shutdown, slices motes in slick

Dream of employment, now redundant, then

Awaits auditors' decision, sweat stinks

Through polished wood clamped by rusty vices,

Light slants diamonded windows cracked glint

Made by lobbed desiccated plaster

Chucked by workless youths- graffiti remnants

Of breadwinner workers. Machines muted, still.

Await demolition, no longer meant

to maintain roofs over heads, cash in till.

Tang is a tale told, a smelt memory.

Shops closed, all now cashed, unhealed history.

In smashed glass I see a Ford parked outside

The Working Men’s Club with a painted sign

Over its broken windscreen inscribed

“POLICE DID THIS!”, and watch steady, sure climb

of a bloke with handlebars of his bike

heavy with a full sack of picked coal,

Haul it up the hill to home during Strike.

All kallin in pub on a night was all

Black Maria’s waiting down sidestreets

packed with police without numbers or names

while tv news reverses events and keeps

talking of enemy within to blame.

Now uniformed myself I police remains,

watch old miners walk their dogs through their pain.

Harsh Light

Gentle light should enter these open eyes,

slow. Sat on slagheap blue sky midday see

flit white clouds pass shadows over pit, ply

and flow girded redbrick coal washery

over bright puddles, empty slurry tanks

cross concrete bunkers of unused sand, lime,

gravel. Recall days ago nightshift rank

veins freeze blood heat, ice encrusted hands rimed,

ground concrete hurt all when I fell one snowed

winter day heavy weight hauls postal bag

down, I slip on an iced drift to unload

post bottom of door number eight. I rag,

open sprung letterbox, sharp fringed brush put

letter pull out quick metal lid slams shut.

I. A Watchclock

Once it took a regular twelve hour shift
walk with a clock. Trained security

guard of N.U.M. ripped floor-tiles, boots lift

dust piled up like unused coal. Find key

to fit the clock to record time account

for your existence, evidence. Other

keys echo their jangle, their fine cut sound

in empty spaces, unlock, uncover

a wasteland of rooms without walls ceilings.

You can see cold October sky abuzz

with stars, coke plant behind its steel fencing

work up a head of grind, glitter and buzz

of lights. Had nowt to do but waste time, kick

up weather worn tiles old floors, slow time tick.

II. This Village Heart

Look forward to going in, lose fresh air

from coking plant, climb creaking stairs into

security guards' room where asks Mayfair

and unattainable ogled Bill. So

why you back so early? Don’t you get it?

Soon as you get back, sooner I'm out. Dumb

Shit! Takes clock leaves you to room. It's

three o'clock. His tales of old steelwork thrum

in your head. Industry let him go, too.

Remember this sat supping coffee in

village Activity Zone, wait on new

workless to attend your jobsearch session.

Hear how building you guarded will now be

called heart of village, in recovery.

The Cage Drop

Pit demolition crew joke all will not be there, a memory.

Pit security guard I laugh. Cage drop,

ears pop, stops flash by, reach deepest Barnsley

Bed. Never knew vast gusty dark. Hard top

lamp helps avoid stumble on railway tracks.

This cathedral high roof, crumbly soil, root

rot, pit support steel arches. Drift way back

dark I stared into now stares back, mute.

Where once much clank, heat, scrape and busy must

there is left the gust and heat slow dust. "Turn

light off." says Deputy. Eyes can't adjust

this absolute dark, cannot see this hand. "Turn

light back on." says Deputy, heaves a small,

latched white wooden door open to storeroom,

discarded tools in stone trough. Pony stall,

where they rested between shifts, feed and groom.

To fresh air, cage rises one last time and date,

to "Land to Let" and Industrial estate.

Echoing

I. Whorled

Winter night before stood sentry on ice

cracked edge of North Gawber pit above grown,

Willow Bank, Whorled Water Millfoil site.

I in the dark contemplate ice in bone.

How Millfoil survives harshest icy blast,

turions, shoots sink to stillness.

Pit on one side, on other Barugh Green's vast

trading estates. From pit site when lights less,

the other: tall concrete and steel units.

From this Victorian pit's living talk:

welding buzz, mine repair shop hammer hit

recall no such noise on the gravel walk

outside, another hour and a half freeze

before twenty minute break warm release.

II. Echoing

Inside pray not dodgy biro, note time,

quick slurp flask, before out again to bright

lights harsh flare as I cross over the line.

They switch off once I walk out of their sight.

Do as I'm told. Hear gust shake chains on steel

fuel tanks, whip up thin gravel round huts,

empty and temporary, echo peels

off discarded plastic wraps, a sound puts

me in mind of boat's rigging. Barugh means

hill. But I, down on flood plain look

over

River Dearne, up to Gawber whose name seems

in Old English, to mean gallows hill. Stir

echoes in its dark drifts, darkness stares back.

Pit closed, became trading estate like Barugh.

Setu, February 2024

British Working Class Poetry: Guest Editor Preface

Paul Brookes

Immensely grateful to the editors of Setumag for inviting me in 2022, and again this year to curate a selection of some British Working Class Poets. Also, thankyou to Peter Raynard who provided a basic list, and to the poets who recommended others. If your suggested poet is not included, this will be due to them not replying before the deadline, replying that they have no unpublished poems available, or that they felt themselves to be more middle class than working class.

When I worked eight years for The Workers Educational Association as a part-time tutor many of my students were superb writers. Some did not want to pursue a literary career and were just happy to submit work in the workshops. I love promoting, fresh, neglected, or side-lined voices with their vibrancy and urgency, their richness and diversity. I do it on my blog, The Wombwell Rainbow, too. I give a platform in the form of interviews about their creativity and ask in detail about their work. It is important to me that this is not behind a paywall, so any may read it.

These are vibrant, important voices that should be heard. I am glad to be given a platform, to promote their intimate, angry, domestic and incisive accounts, and pointed lessons for us all. In the spirit of the Chartist poets who insisted on being heard, on encouraging and cajoling those without a voice to make themselves heard.

All F Bombs have been replaced by an X.

Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes is a shop assistant. His chapbooks include As Folktaleteller, ( ImpSpired, 2022), These Random Acts of Wildness, (Glass Head Press, 2023), Othernesses, (JCStudio Press, 2023). He edits The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews and challenges and has had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and BBC Radio Sheffield. Nominated for the Rhysling Prize, and twice for the Pushcart Prize. thewombwellrainbow.wordpress.com

Forthcoming, Wolf Eye, Red Ceilings Press,

British Working Class Poetry 2023: Authors

Setu, September 2023

April Sonnet: Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes

Rain words, dull roots, flowers, heady woodland

wild garlic scent , bird song, bleating lambs, wild

riverside daffs, smaller, more delicate, grand,

a paler yellow trumpets silence styled.

Kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills, shag

and puffin, gannets, fulmar, back to shore

stanzas. Blackthorn blossom a white froth brags

engenders tales white flowers before

words burst bud. Curlew's soft, bubbling call. Ring

Ouzel's a blackbird with white bib blasts out

of heather. Emperor moths day-flying

eyespot patterns verbs on their four wings, spout

verse cocoons on moors. I sit to sup gold

ale sunglint on pint glass, thankful winter's told.

Setu, April 2023

Paul Brookes and Ian Parks: Mutual Readings

Paul Brookes

Windows: Two Poems by Ian Parks looked at and through by Paul Brookes

Ian Parks is a poet and academic. He is the author of eight collections of poems, one of which was a Poetry Book Society Choice. His versions of the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy were shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award. He is the editor of Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry and The Selected Poems of Harold Massingham. His own Selected Poems is due from Calder Valley Poetry in 2023. He manages Glass Head Press.

He is cited as the finest love poet of his generation by Chiron Press. More of his love poetry later. Parks is renowned for the balance and poise of his sentences.

The Cage

My father relinquished

his claim on the light.

At sixteen he went down

to work the seams.

The cage was lowered

on a rusted thread;

the men were crowded

in behind steel bars.

And then began

the drop into the dark

- a sharp descent

that took the breath away

which afterwards he heard

in his worst dreams.

Through me his dreams persist.

Son follows father

in the way of things

and so I come belatedly

to where his lamp bobs

somewhere underground.

A smile breaks

as he touches me;

an indigo coal scar

tattoos his wrist.

(from The Exile's House, Waterloo Press, 2012, page 8)

Parks father worked as a miner when the pits were open in his native Mexborough. I see this description of his dad as talking about his dad's death. And that Parks sees his dead dad. In the afterlife of the underworld. Divided into three line stanzas that use enjambement to complete the poem the reader gets the sense of a downward journey through the work. Only in the fifth stanza does this passage end in a full stop. And then the poem continues as if N has taken over from his Dad. This second section is almost dreamlike "And so I come belatedly/to where his lamp bobs/somewhere underground. The underworld of the dead where the closest to us still have a physical presence, and still bear marks of their trade. Folk are defined by their trade, mentally and physically. Which afterwards he heard/ in his worst dreams.

Cleverly, Parks leaves a gap between the word "breaks" and the next stanza, giving the reader pause and the opportunity to see the smile widen.

Sky Edge

To lie here, sleeping almost,

in an unfamiliar bed

with dawn-light breaking grey

over Sky Edge might prove

a blessing in disguise

except the city raises up a ghost

each time you lift

your disaffected head

and all my love

poems turn into elegies

as the earth rolls over

on its side. Up there

is where the Chartists met

before the planners

sketched their politics

in tower-blocks

along this edge of sky.

Their torches flare

across a ruined century

to find a place behind

our green and dreaming eyes.

From now until midnight

all the stopping trams -

their doors slid open

as they pass below-

revolve their progress

through a metal groove.

In all the wasted cities

of the north time builds

and time destroys;

while you and I

With nothing left to prove

Look down upon the fallen stones

On quiet days, you tell me

The silence makes a noise

(from Love Songs, Flux Gallery Press 2009, page 36)

Described by Chiron Review as ‘the finest love poet of his generation’.
Parks did his PhD on “Chartism” and is fascinated by Chartist poetry that was published throughout the life of the movement. Chartism was a working class movement for political reform in Britain between 1838 and 1848 and the first mass working class labour movement in the world. Chartists campaigned for sweeping changes to the political system and in particular, the introduction of the Charter which consisted of six points;
Every man over 21 to have the right to vote. A secret ballot to be introduced. A prospective Member of Parliament (MP) should not have to own property of a certain value to become eligible to stand. All MPs to be paid to allow working men to serve in Parliament. All constituencies to be equal in population size. Elections to Parliament to be held every year in order to ensure accountability to voters. A meeting was held at Sky Edge and after leaving the meeting those who attended met Dragoons.

Parks is one of the few people to have poems published on the same day in The Times and The Morning Star. In this poem the public and private are brought together in an elegy for the momentary defeat of love and politics.

In an interview with me for The Wombwell Rainbow about this love poem collection Parks says:

Temperamentally speaking, I'm of a reflective disposition and the exploration of loss suited my poetic sensibility. I also wanted to push the limits of the love poem. Auden had showed that the love poem occurs in a context, a social and political one. That was something I wanted to pick up on and develop… Looking back, I think the landscape my lovers inhabit is a northern one - the streets of post-industrial mining towns or the desolate stretches of the Yorkshire coast.

In the opening lines he seems to be staring out of a window. Windows are a constant theme throughout his poetry. He says of this:

It's no coincidence that one of my favourite poems is Windows by Constantine Cavafy, where he draws attention to their dual nature - and it's this duality that fascinates me: they offer a (limited) view of the outside world (rain, snow, misty northern landscapes) while, at the same time acting as a barrier between the viewer and the view.

And of the blending of public and private

In Sky Edge, for instance, the speaker wakes up in 'an unfamiliar bed' and is aware that the hillside opposite is' where the Chartists met'. The private is never far away from the public, something that I tired to convey in these poems.

…They aren't an attempt to understand the nature of romantic love or to explore it in all its dimensions. They are moments of insight, kisses in the dark.

I cannot recommend highly enough that you read all of his stunning, enlightening, memorable poetry. And his Selected Poems to be published this year, 2023 is a Must Read.

***

RANDOM ACTS

Two Sonnets by Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes is a poet, photographer, and poetry activist from South Yorkshire. I want to talk about the first two poems from his sonnet sequence Random Act of Wildness which is forthcoming from Glass Head Press. Above all else, Paul Brookes is an honest poet who stubbornly refuses to make more of something than it requires; subsequently his poems are colloquial, engaging, and deceptively simple. What we see on the surfaces isn’t necessarily what we uncover as we enter into a close reading of the poems. Living a few miles away from Paul I can pick up on the idiosyncratic rhythms behind his poems and the subtlety with which they are assembled. I say ‘assembled’ because there is a very real sense of these poems being put together from random fragments where the form they take not only gives them shape but meaning too. Of course it is a tremendous challenge for any poet at the beginning of the twentieth century to write in the sonnet form which has been around for centuries. And yet Brookes manages to breathe life into the sonnet and to find it still fit for purpose. In this skilful hands the sonnet isn’t so much a straightjacket as a template – something the poet works against rather than with to produce the tensions which make these poems worth reading. And it is this tensile quality – the everyday content of the poems encountering the structure of the verse – that makes them distinctive. This is an ambitious project, bringing together a group of sonnets that are at the same time related and yet distinctive in their own right. Each individual sonnet invites comparison with the rest in the sequence so that it can be approached as a whole.

***

Lawn Cutting

Wife likes our lawn to be cut in straight lines.

A mute boy next door in fascination

Keenly watches the geometric times

I reach the edge, marks the delineation.

He has a toy lawnmower of his own.

Sometimes his mam kindly allows him grip

her hands on their mower, grass mown

by both, her feet follow his as they strip

the wildness out of their lawn. His toy won't

cut grass but safely glides over its length,

so he stamps and bawls when his world don't

conform to his straight lines, because it's bent.

My wife says "Better" to our short shorn lawn.

We all want the wild to be uniform.

In Lawn Cutting, for instance, the first line casually drops the ‘The’ or ‘My’ we expect to launch it, beginning instead with ‘Wife likes our lawn to be cut in straight lines’. This makes for a more economic and concentrated line, while at the same time taking the domestic and investing it with a strangeness which is compelling and intriguing. The mowing of the lawn becomes, in its own way, the making of the poem where the poet ‘marks the delineation’. The ‘mute boy’ watching from next door is drawn into complicity with the act just as the reader of the sonnet is drawn into an activity that is at once concentrated and absorbing. The boy’s toy lawnmower can only imitate the action of the real thing, not cutting the lawn ‘but safely glides over its length.’ The form of the sonnet is integral to its meaning. Brookes has skilfully broken the structure up into three distinct and free-standing quatrains followed by a stand-alone couplet which offers a kind of summary of the whole poem. And yet the formal expertise isn’t too obtrusive: we are drawn away from the form of the sonnet and towards what it is attempting to say. The form is therefore for the poem and not the other way around – which is as it should be. ‘We all want’, the poem concludes wryly, ‘the wild to be uniform’. Just as the wife controls the lawn the poet controls language through form.

***

A Clock Watch

When clock parts of the lion's tooth are blown

apart, I see first and second hand their

fertility flight numbers broadcast sown

gusted chaotic in warm summer's air.

The exploded mechanism flits over

close cut lawns, weeded borders, neatly

fenced, dips over powerhosed driveways, stir

of cats on rooftops, prey hunting sweetly.

Organic time tamed, all about decay

not growth. Imagine accurate time based

on a gradually emerging way.

However, all things reduce to waste.

Our Dandelion's blown clocks are seeds.

to be uprooted as unwanted weeds.

The second sonnet in the sequence is called A Clock Watch and contains all the virtues of the first: the formal control, the understatement, the exemplary wit. A clock watch is, of course, the dandelion which, according to folklore, tells the time by the number of blows it takes to clear the head. In this poem the speaker watches them sown – ‘gusted chaotic in warm summer’s air’. Like mowing the lawn this is, in itself, a random and ordinary activity; something we teach our children to do. And yet, underlying this is the sense of our obsession with the passing of time. All things, as Shakespeare himself noted, are subject to the laws of nature and tend towards atrophy or – as Paul Brookes writes – ‘all things reduce to waste’. Brookes uses the same technique of splitting the fourteen lines of the sonnet into three distinct quatrains with a final couplet to summarise the rest of the poem. The ease with which he accomplished this makes the poem accessible, its message significant. Once again the ‘random acts’ he describes find a kind of unity in the form he uses to encapsulate them.

I hope that this look at the first two sonnets of Random Acts of Kindness will encourage readers to find out the work of Paul Brookes and especially the sequence we’ve been discussing. These poems are shaped by the guiding hand of traditional formal values and are yet stunning in their ability to engage us in the processes they describe, and in their modernity.

Ian Parks

Setu, January 2023

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