The Oaks Madonna

7th May, 2017, saw the unveiling of the monument commemorating those men and boys who died in the 1866 Oaks Pit Disaster. This poem was composed for, and read at, that event.

December, the hurrier month

Towards the coming of the light,

Excited anticipation

In a match struck and the advent

Candle flame. Children counting on

Coal dusted dads able to hew

Pounds and pence enough, even as

That near Christmas candle burned blue.

Etching, hand coloured and showing

Wives gathering at the pithead

Just as the maw of the main shaft

Belches fire. They’d have known the dead

Numbered their colliers. Amidst them,

Anthracite hair hurriedly styled,

Spilling down her spine over shawled

Shoulders, a Madonna and child.

Calamity wrought and rendered,

Firstly in fibre glass, and then

Bronze, to bear so tragic a weight

Of all those lives, of all those men

And boys, whose silent names will lie

Along her monumental tongue,

An eternal lament always

On the tip, about to be sung.

 The Oaks’ Madonna realised

By artist, etcher and sculptor,

This trinity fabricating

A real vision of truth in her,

A young pitman’s wife made widow

In a moment, having to cope

Because of the child in her arms,

The child being the advent of hope.

                                                                Dave Alton 

What's That Wheel For?

"What's that half wheel?"

My daughter asked

"I see them everywhere"

How could she not

know what it is

or the reason they are there?

"What they were for",

I said to her

"When made into a wheel;

Was to wind the miners

down to work

Did they not tell you in school?"

If they just teach

of kings and queens;

of wars and ancient times

What will we know

of pits and coal;

Of working in the mines?

It's up to us

who lived the days

where memories are so clear

To keep alive the history;

don't let it disappear

The half-wheel's there

to remind us all

of the people of our town

They became our heritage

and we must not let them down.

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

To The People...

Hewer and Drags-man,

Driller, loader, barrow-man and breaker,

Farrier and sparks,

(The only sparks made welcome underground)

Chippy and blacksmith,

Bands-man, timberer,

Banksman, hurrier,

Putter and pick-man…

Fuelers of progress,

Of light,

Of heat,

Of…

The nation and its possibilities.

Danger down there, it’s said, and comradeship,

Told by the very tongues that tasted coal,

That were irrigated by spit-polished

Lozenges of it, that heaved kibbles full

From face to surface.

There’s testimony

Of wives who would turn their faces towards

The headstock and wonder about rock falls

And the striking of rogue sparks and blue flames.

And railwaymen who had to haul away

Truck-loads of the black tonnage from pitheads

On muscular shoulders of their locos.

And the mums and dads who shovelled the slack

And cobs across their modest hearths, or lit

The gas to feed their families, or flicked

The switch to illuminate their lives through

The mystery of electricity.

All knew then of darkness, dust and danger,

Knew there was a cost to convenience,

Knew tall, bleak-black headlines, like tombstones carved

From anthracite, when that cost was blasted

Or buried in debit columns of names.

And the owners knew the price of safety

Would have to be off-set against profit.

A wage rise subtracted from dividends,

Shorter days worked diminished their leisure,

And

That socialist devils make mischief

For idle hands. Far better, then, to press

Colliers to the coalface, their families

 Into narrow double-rows, their wages

To a minimum. Production to a

Maximum, or lock the colliery gates.

But,

Those socialist devils make mischief

For working hands, hands that cut the coal

Fuelling

Factories and mills and workshops

And foundries for

Making the munitions,

Weaving battledress, manufacturing

The instruments and rolling out the steel,

For the guns and the bombers, for soldier,

Sailor and airman, for the fitting out

Of naval vessels, tanks and landing craft

The tore the swastika from the flagpoles

Of Europe.

                                Miners did this, made it all

Happen and then could not return their pits

To the ancient Reich of the coal owners.

“For the people, by the people!” This was

Inscribed in red on to the swelling heart

Of the nation, demanded by the voice

Of the nation and grasped in the clenched fist

Of the nation.

                                Sweet, oh so very sweet

On tongues of colliers…NATIONALISATION!

For

Hewer and Drags-man,

Driller, loader, barrow-man and breaker,

Farrier and sparks,

Chippy and blacksmith,

Bands-man, timberer,

Banksman, hurrier,

Putter and pick-man…

Fuelers of progress,

Of light,

Of heat,

Of…

The nation and its possibilities.

                                                              

                                                               Dave Alton

Haiku - For International Women's Day

On Sunday, 5^th March, International Women’s Day was celebrated at the National Coalmining Museum. Amongst a plethora of events the resident poetry group, Coalshed Poets, invited attendees to pen a haiku.

It’s scary the unknown,

How do we look forward in hope?

Present in turmoil!

Anon

Only source of light,

It’s precious, lives depend on it

Down this deep, black hole.

Anon

Out in drizzling rain,

Almost like coal mining is a game

Against society’s gain.

Moira

Cold, wet March morning

Gathering to celebrate

Women and the mines

Tim Fellows

Driving here today

Windscreen wipers stopped working

Feeling very stressed!

Sheila Bradford.

Damp and wet

Many memories

Let’s celebrate

Richard Opasiak

On a wet March day

We women came to Caphouse

For songs and poems

Jane Loe

Cycling alone

To the end of the Pennines.

Drink? Toilet? Or both?

Clare Furness

The Old Miners

Down the long throat of shaft their bodies caged

in bony stoops, rammed joints, scrubbed skin,

they’re heard now for that guttural crack

back of the throat brimmed cough,

its spittle of spent black dust

from an earth-life below,

deep-down as the pockets of city toffs.

They lived by tonnage and beamed light,

the shot-blown or bad dreamed blast. The wedge

of each pit prop a third arm or handy leg

that helped raise the sunken roof of seam.

Hackers, drillers at the unbroken face,

they broke through, they broke through,

digging out what spoke for them.

                                                                  G.F. Phillips (1949 – 2017)

An Ode From A Miner's Grand-daughter

There is a coal house way up north beyond the backyard gate

Where starlings flock and pigeons cough to welcome in the day

The sky is dark, the wind is raw as the village slowly wakes

When men and boys conjoin, in gas-light haze, to find the colliery gates

Down paths well trod they make their way to mine the said black gold

And with lamps in hand they wait their turn to descend the

dank, dark shaft.

This toil is hard and noise is all around as seams are worked so deep

 beneath the ground

The air is thin and chests are tight with choking dust and grime

But men and boys must carry on until the siren sounds

With blackened faces out they come to daylight sharp and bright

And as heavy lungs and tired limbs take their toll they make their

way back home

And there in the distance shines a light - oh what a heavenly sight

In the modest home the wife awaits to greet her grimy man

She too has toiled to make his home a warm and happy place

With polished range and food to serve she sits before the embers

And holds their son against her breast with dreams to be remembered

But for tonight these dreams must wait as she stokes once more the fire

The latch is lifted and he is home - oh what a sorry sight

The grubby clothes are peeled away and in the zinc tub he soaks

Until once more he feels revived and again can live in hope

Time passes by but this still young man now carries old man’s bones

and sees through old man’s eyes

At his son he smiles, his pride and joy, and his schooling paid its worth

For he is leaving soon to follow paths well trod

 But not towards the mine thank God

His mother weeps with tears of joy as all her dreams come true

 Her boy is free - no colliery dust for him but only fields of gold

For Mum

 Christmas 2015

Carol Grainger Spalding

Oaks Ballad

A pre-Christmas, sparkly, 12/12 day.

Then… Explosion felt, far and near!

Cracked black diamonds blew away.

Déjà vu, The Oaks of yesteryear.

Devilish fiend of firedamp struck mine.

Some workers bid each other goodbye. Amen

into vortex of Dantean-layered decline

I’ll never see those darlings again

From nineteen counties: Northumbria to London,

Norfolk to Cork, toiling on the dark side.

Men and boys, local and incumden

deaths. Howmany, howmany, howmany? The Oaks’ detritus cried.

A valiant voluntary rescue but 383 were dead.

Many bodies unburied, deep in Stairfoot terra.

Family futures, stark glimpses ahead;

burdened down with perseverance and terror.

Gloria Victis.

The Oaks and The Tears

of a hundred and fifty years

are remembered by us today.

.

When The Oaks Took 383: Give Or Take

Claire Crossdale