The Day the Fish Died: A True Story

Written at Colchester Write Night, on Monday 22nd May 2017, the first meeting at our new venue, Firstsite Gallery. We looked at the story behind Grayson Perry's Julie Cope and did a writing exercise  inspired by this. Here is mine...

A young boy likes fishing in the river behind his house; that is a shop at the bottom and a flat at the top. He lives there with his mum and dad and sister, and a big white dog called Penny. Many years later the young boy’s dad remarries and his new wife is called Penny, which amuses the much older but still not very grown up man-boy, but not his dad when he reminds him of it.

The young boy used to fish in the river behind his house that was a shop at the bottom a lot. He would often walk up the road and buy maggots for bait. He (the young boy) used to put the maggots in the bin outside, until one day his mum lifted the bin lid to put some rubbish in and lots, and lots, and lots of big black flies came out. This was not the first, or the last time, that the young boys mum was cross with him, but it was the last time he put maggots in the bin.

One day, long ago, the young boy was fishing in the river behind his house that was a shop at the bottom, and the fish started to float to the top of the water, which was going blacker and blacker.

The young boy was upset, and went back to the bit of his house that was a shop, and told his mum and dad who worked in the shop (and who lived above it with their son and daughter) what had happened.

On the other side of the river that the young boy used to fish in, and loved to wade across in his bare feet and look down at the crayfish in the water and the fish he used to try and catch, was a factory. This factory had leaked some chemicals into the river which had poisoned the water and killed all the fish. The young boy never fished in that river again.

I Read It Somewhere

I read this at Colchester Sixth form college Readings Evening on Friday 8th July 2016. A fundraising evening for EducAid a charity raising funds for education in Sierra Leone. I was one of several performing and £350 was raised. Thanks to Eddie Ross and Jim Pey for organising and comparing. I think this is better listened to than read as I can give the emphasis where I need to. But enjoy it anyway, it's purely for fun....

I Read It Somewhere

Our bodies are made up of 60% water

or is it 75 or 83?

Something like that.

More sea than land anyway

just like the earth itself.

Each of us a microcosm

It’s why the moon effects our moods

as it does the oceans tides.

The lunar in the lunatic

and why we feel at peace near streams and brooks.

I read it somewhere.

Our bodies don’t end at our skin

there are aural bodies that surround us

if you believe that sort of thing.

Our physical bodies inhabit our spiritual souls

but our arseholes are part of our physical bodies.

Some arseholes stand for election to positions of power

and other arseholes come along and vote for them.

Some of us simply can’t be arsed.

I read it somewhere once that holding in farts can cause bad breath

and that it’s impossible to hold your breath until you die.

There’s two breath related gems for you.

I read it somewhere that when cars were first invented

people thought that if we drove at speeds of over 20mph

the force would crush our bodies.

We’re all one thought away from greatness or madness.

I read that somewhere too.

When we are asleep

the tiny people that live inside us wake up and walk around 

clearing up the mess we’ve made,

But when we’re drunk 

the fumes from the alcohol in our blood makes them dizzy

so they bump into each other and drop things.

That’s why we get hangovers.

I’m not sure where I read that.

Don’t believe everything you read

I definitely read that somewhere

Everything is made of atoms

all life on Earth

and atoms are made from stars gone supernova 

exploding throughout time and space.

The cosmos is within us

we’re all connected

all made of stardust

I read it somewhere and it’s true

although I've simplified it a bit

If I could wish for something to read 

that I haven't read yet,

I would pass it forward to our children’s children so they could read how

their grandparents generation realised nothing would change unless they stopped being arseholes and become change themselves and that was how the world woke up 

and that is how they came to be living

war and poverty free lives 

of equality

and unlimited possibilities 

That’s the book I’m writing.

Reflections on poetry leading to other things

After talking poetry with a friend last night, this morning I take two of my favourite collections down to the water where I sit and slowly read from them. Each poem a treasured memory yet also something new on each re-reading. In one book is a short essay on prose poetry as a form, which I devour. I begin to reflect on poetry.

People are taught, at an impressionable age, that poetry is the poems themselves. Some say poetry has to rhyme, and many like to decry it as meaningless, never reading it, preferring meaning handed to them through various media without any thought involved. Some people are so moved by a poem that it changes the course their entire lives. Some teach it but never write it, reducing it to dry academia. I cannot imagine life without poetry.

Matsuo Basho studied Zen buddhism and dedicated his whole life to the Haiku form, giving up everything in it’s pursuit and attaining a profound mastery. He even invented his own poetic form the Haibun. 

One of my favourite quotes, that I have written in a notebook somewhere, comes back to me, by W B Yeats. ‘Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.’

From where I am sitting I can see across the short stretch of water. The tide is out. On the other shore, between some trees, I can see the top half of a house with a tall chimney, painted white. Immediately I begin to imagine a story. On the sea bed a boat leans to one side, stuck there until the water returns. 

A woman jogs past, her running shoes make a tapping noise on the concrete and her lycra top a ssshhhhing sound as her arms brush against it, in rhythm with the movement of her legs.

The breeze has a rhythm to it, a flow, and the birds call to each other. But I am restless now, and nearby there is a large shallow pool of water, left from when the tide was high. I have a yearning to put my bare feet in it so I walk over and remove my shoes and socks and roll up my trousers. The water is cool at first but soon warms. Initially I step tentatively as if drunk, trying not to fall over, but soon become looser and more confident in my stride, stirring the sediment. Something primordial awakens in me. 

The fish in me wants to dive in and swim away, and live my life beneath the water. The puritan in me wants to give up caffeine and live a chaste life. The fornicator in me wishes for the horses giant cock and an endless supply of willing women. The contemplator in me wishes for Einsteins mind and the Monks concentration. The poet in me wishes for paper and pen and a white walled room. And for days like these.

All of this is poetry, as clear as the poems printed in the books in my bag. Here is rhythm, and form, and white space, and couplet and stanza.  Here is prose, short story and novel. 

On the surface of the water reflections shift as each wave makes it’s way across the pool, carried along either by it’s own momentum or by other forces, until it runs it’s course. Just like we do.