The Terror

There is a terror lurking deep, deep down,

Cold and crawling, slithering close behind

Through potholes, caves or where coal has been mined.

When and where was it hatched? Why has it grown?

How did that fearful seed come to be sown?

No matter, it’s there, as its victims find,

Thriving in darkness, this terror is blind:

Whomever suffers must face it alone.

Going underground, where there is no light,

The terror is waiting down in its lair,

Waiting for the sort of victim it likes:

Those who can’t reason why they take fright

At thoughts of the pit, of being caught down there,

Of becoming trapped. Then the terror strikes!

                                                                                                                                                                Dave Alton

Winners of the Pony Poetry Competition at the National Coalmining Museum

Category: 5 – 7 years

Pit Ponies

Pit ponies work underground,

Carrying heavy, heavy coal all around,

Waiting for the day in the mines to stop

Filling their carts all the way to the top.

The mines are horrible,

Dark, cold and dangerous,

I think the pit ponies were very brave for us.

                                                                             Chloe Grimshaw (7)

Category: 8 – 12 years

Chip

My name is chip, I live in the pit,

I don’t know if I work night or day.

No spring, no summer, no autumn or winter,

No wind or rain,

It’s all the same.

Because I’m in the pit, dusty and dirty,

Young face I see by the white of the eyes.

I don’t have much of a life,

I work really hard transporting coal

Backwards and forwards.

Don’t know whether it’s day or night,

That’s my life in the pit.

Chip.

                                                                             Olivia Loraine (10)

Wakefield Rising Renga

A bright summer day,

Hover flies over water,

Nothing much happens.

On the Northern Line again,

Remember to feel the heat.

Two years – five boxes,

Is that all we ever were?

Words were left unsaid!

We are now fragments of selves

Ripening into our new self.

Leaves out in the yard

Need sweeping up every day:

A bloomin’ nuisance!

Time, ticking like an endless

Sad cricket, above the fire.

Drifting into sleep

With curtains closed, TV on

Nights long, daylight gone.

Pannage in the library,

Every page a sparkling gem.

   

Slick icy puddle,

Plodging in muddy rapture,

The best things are free.

Season for woolly sweaters,

Welly bobs for rain and snow.

Standard lamp glowing

Makes the room warm and cosy,

Dark shadows on walls.

Lonely, the winter tree can

Never shed it bitter spikes.

Animals awake,

Humans out passed 4pm,

The days get longer.

Let’s have a flingy thingy;

All the way! All the way! All…

The blossom appears

Growing daily on the boughs,

Promises to come.

I am unknown, I am feared,

I am inevitable!

Poets: Claire Crossdale, Fiona Fellows, Timothy Fellows, Stefan G., Jean hales, Halima Mayat, Simon Widdop

Composer: Dave Alton

3 Sonnets

Miner's Sonnet #1

The cage door slams and down the shaft we fall
The rope that holds our lives the first set trap 
Of many heartless ways that death may call
To transport us in its eternal wrap  

The roof that hangs low o'er my lamp-lit head
May just decide to slip and down-ward drop
The work's too hard for me to dwell on dread
That comes from cracking sounds of failing prop

We hew and hack the black and shining seam
As with no warning firedamp slyly creeps
One fatal spark will light the gassy stream
A man is gone, his lonely widow weeps 

Though peril tracks the collier's daily grind
We are within its thrall of pay entwined


Miner's Sonnet #2

With comrades brave to work each day I'd go 
Joking as back and forth the wit and craic
We'd scarce be fear'd or cowed or weakness show
We knew our brothers always had our back

Communities were built on mines and coal
One whole and nourished, fed by that dark pit
The bond we had held tight within our soul
Strong as atoms no government could split 

With pride we marched together as one kin
In war the ranks of blue against us stood
Knowing that should we either lose or win
We'd pay for our revolt in flesh and blood

Yet danger lurked and lives were harsh and tough 
The death of coal did come not soon enough

Miner's Sonnet #3

The strike is lost; so back to work we go
The fire has gone; the will to fight is slain
The comradeship continues down below
But things will never be the same again  

There's coal down there and they all know the price
But no-one counts the cost of human pain
No jobs, no hope, a village slowly dies  
Our leaders arrogant in their disdain

A collier's spirit I will surely find
At school I failed; or was it failing me
I'll not allow despair to rule my mind
Can I a new trade learn at fifty-three? 

Leave behind the only life I've ever known
My future I must plan and I must own

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

Ten Minutes

In the long history of mining there are many large scale disasters that made the news - scores of lives taken in a single, horrible incident. But there are also thousands of individual accidents where men were taken. On 21st February 1935 my great-uncle Jim Hooper went to work at Parkhouse No 7 colliery in Clay Cross (known as the Catty Pit) and never came back. I did some family history research and uncovered the full story in a newspaper article of the time. This poem is a simple retelling of that article - the thing that was so striking for me was that he was so close to the end of his shift.

"Just one more tub

Give it a shove

Ten minutes we'll be done

Get out of here

at ten o'clock

And we'll be going home"

But fate had plans

For a mining man

No journey home for Jim

His pals were scarcely

yards away

when the roof caved in on him

Thirty tons of

rock and coal

A groan was all they heard

His comrades dug

and cleared in vain

their desperation shared

The doctor came

down in the mine

Four hours it took in all

But life had gone

when he was found

The doctor made the call

Around the quiet

grave they stood

His grieving widowed mother

Teddy, George and

My grandad Bill

His three surviving brothers

His sister, girlfriend,

working pals

they came to say goodbye

Just a lad

a score in years

They must have wondered why..

In a Clay Cross pit 

he was lost

One more brave mining lad

Swallowed whole

in the quest for coal

What life may he have had?

Ten minutes more

that was all

Jim would have walked away

From the face

back to his mum

To live another day

When he'd return

to that dark place

To hew the black coal seam

Day on day

his life to pass

Ten minutes killed the dream

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

In memory of James Ernest Hooper 1915-1935

Manchester Triptych

!

Floret of flame, echo of the big bang,

Flinging innocent creation apart,

Flaying thin skin from an orderly world,

Punching and pummelling breaking bodies,

Undoing flesh with nuts and bolts and screws,

Undoing families in a moment,

Undoing this cause through its own effect,

Discounting the life which this is the sum,

Discounting lives summarily totalled,

Immaculate lives blown out in a flash.

?

Who the bomber? One dressed in his best vest,

High on the opiates of his people?

Or higher, two miles high, super sonic

And scratching the sky so close to the void?

Or miles out to sea, maybe, on a cruise?

Or cruising through cyber space and zapping

Pixilated people deaf to the drone?

And who the victims? Outlines coloured in

With bold strokes broad enough to blur edges,

Such simplified figures, which children count?

$ + £…

Words are not cheap, they do cost lives, spoken

With redacted care to prick sentiments

With forked tongues, justifying calls to arms

For the hundred years and more war, all one

Global war over branding, re-branding,

Bottom lines, arrayed on banners, dressed up

In various uniforms, or civvies,

Obscured by common words, such as Great War,

Second World, Cold and Hot, Insurgency.

And then, on the home front, comes a flash point.

Dave Alton 

Underground Unaware

like the insignificant drop in an ocean

like the merest dot

like the vaguest notion

like the hint of a fleck

like the point of a pin

i am the speck

which has crept within

your long-term resident guest

silently lining your lungs

like soot darkening a chimney breast

laboured breathing will be the norm

as your respiratory system i deform

inflammation fibrosis 

cavities nodules and necrosis

will give you 

a chronic cough shortness of

breath and cyanosis

coal workers fear me as a diagnosis

why 

i am yours truly pneumoconiosis 

or

 when extracting your last breath

death

i am legion

i am everywhere

i am no germ seeking germ warfare

i am just

as 

recorded in common prayer

dust

which you inhaled 

underground unaware

so ironic so unfair

 stan duncan