Concrete Poem

In early February, before Lockdown, a party of Year 3 children from Boothroyd Primary Academy had a visit to the Mining Museum. While there they ran into Dave Alton, the museum's resident poet, who invited them to to collect words and phrases from the information boards. The intention was to use their contributions to make a sort of free verse poem. However, the flip chart page they subsequently produced is a work of art in its own right (should that be write?), a concrete poem of found words.

For Now... (...this museum* is closed)

Pit bottom, for now, deserted,

Surrendered back to the darkness.

Ghosts of colliers past alerted

And begin to gather, to press

Themselves into and occupy

This hollowed earth. Fossilised fronds

Begin to sway in a warm, sly

Breeze that blew by primeval ponds,

Resurrection of anthracite,

Born again up into a world,

Never exposed to human sight,

As actual trees, before being hurled

Down by storm or time, as if chance,

Or some undivined divine plan,

Determined it would be so. Hence,

Tremendous power assumed by man,

Until, for all that industry,

A meagre mote of RNA,

Invisible, but broken free,

Sent humankind scuttling away.

Headstock is stilled, the cage locked down,

Canaries sing for all their worth,

The last shift’s hooter, long since blown,

Echoing through our hollow earth.

                                                                                                        Dave Alton

* National Coal Mining Museum of England and Wales.

Below are two poems written about the present medical crisis. So far there are 6 in the series, posted at www.sonnetwright.blogspot.com . I invite people to submit poems, or even ideas for poems, for the Coalshed Poets blog on this or a related, however distantly, theme. Please send to bellowingbob1@aol.com.
Important: Please put your poem in the main body of your email from where I can copy and paste it. No attachments please.

Dave Alton

(Coalshed Poet - National Mining Museum) 

Covid-19 (No.6)

Take a strand of RNA, tie a knot

And make a wish, count phases of the moon.

Pray nothing pernicious comes this way soon,

Or if it should then it doesn’t draw your lot.

One hundred years after the Somme ended,

Exercise Cygnus played H2N2

On the gaming table: Only, it’s not flu

But coronavirus that’s descended.

It seems predictions were catastrophic,

So, were noted and quietly filed away,

Until came the contagion, came the day

For the accounting of the mounting sick.

Austerity, efficiency, not fate

Has proved “just in time” is far, far too late.

                                                                                                   Dave Alton

Covid-19

This poem is posted to mark the first day of the public closure of the National Coal Mining Museum of England.

There are no rats streaming off from rigged ships,

No bell clanging crier calling out the dead,

No trundling overburdened tumbrils led

By masked spectres as the malady grips.

No crosses daubed over doors, though handles

And handshakes could prove fatal. Fast as fear

This plague flies, a traveller’s souvenir

Round the carousel of the world, dandles

Life and death without intent or purpose

Other than its own being. City shaken,

Markets deserted and futures tumbling.

The preachers of profit are at a loss,

While pubs are closing, last orders taken.

Lock all the doors…but the walls are crumbling.

                                                                           Dave Alton

Spectrum of Welfare

The following poems have been composed from phrases contributed by visitors to the National Coal Mining Museum of England. All were collected on one day, 19^th February 2020, and drawn from information boards displayed around “The Hub”. The contributors were invited to write their chosen lines by selecting a coloured pen. The subsequent poems have been made from words written in the same colour. All the words used are those supplied by the visitors. My role has been to form them into reflective verse. I have retained mis-spellings and non-sequiturs as they contribute to the sense of the poems.

(Dave Alton – Coalshed Poet)

Red

I can’t tell a lie,

We were working on a seam:

Canary – Gas – Cage.

We are awkward, hard to use,

Dust made people hard to breath.

To pass a message

On eye-catching equipment:

Banners at a cost.

Explosion of welfare schemes,

Family in rescue teams.

Orange

Kept two canaries,

Two steel doors. Amazing days

Working on a seam.

It’s time to celebrate-

Wrestling, boxing, colliery bands.

Banners promote pride

And children-s entertainment

For use underground.

Danger still in existence,

Fun activities also.

Pink

What does remind you?

A mine? The helmet? Banners?

Colours and mottoes,

Gala days, celebrating

Once the most dangerous job.

Time improved greatly,

Family and friends rescue pride:

If bird feints – gas leak!

Coal mining was explosive,

Smoke disaster over years.

Green

Encourage miners

Struggle for gala of change;

Everythink proto.

Equipment, holiday silent,

Built family, love and friendship.

Turquoise

Join colliery bands,

Once the most dangerous job

Still chirping away.

Games in London used to ruffle,

Creating cuts and bruises.

Purple

Friends, smoke and helmets,

Draped in black to mark a death

Behind pit banner.

A very dangerous job,

Disasters still in existence.

Deadly days happened,

A colliery incident,

Gala team performed.

Celebrating time rescue,

Trained bands in the museum.

Black

All of a sudden

Everything deadly silent,

Danger with the lads.

Colliery bands were waiting

With family and friends by hell.

A sudden something,

Working a seam a yard high:

One hour in you knew.

Men in black killed or injured,

Thousands, I’ve cried, carried out.

We would rush for help,

All named still in existence

Until formal death.

Coal mining is dangerous,

But safety rules made us think.

Unusual happened.

Volunteers seriously

Went about today

To really mark areas

That mine inspectors once saw.

Telling Stories

Telling Stories

(Poem composed from conversations with visitors to the National Coal Mining Museum on 5^th February, National Story Telling Day)

(1)

Granddad was from Fife,

Miner all his working days,

Mainly in Stoke, though.

Dad escaped in a spitfire

And I live now in Salisbury.

(2)

“Children, whose bag’s this,

And where is your group leader?

That’s it, two by two.”

Crocodile slouching its way

To the coach in neat order.

(3)

Thirteen’s old enough

For the joinery shop:

Time served and ready.

When the kids came, where’s the brass?

From rip saw then to ripper.

(4)

Saturday scrum-halves,

From pit props to prop forwards,

All in the same league.

Come Monday, under the sports’ field,

Players back at their tackle.

(5)

My brothers went down,

Dad, of course, and my uncles.

I went to college.

Gran gave me ten bob each week,

“Just ‘til you’re working.” she’d say.

Dave Alton

(Coalshed Poet)