There's A Dead Poet Under Hucknall
And so I find myself in a cafe in Hucknall, a short walk from the church where I've just paid my respects to Byron. Had I intended to do this when I got up this morning? No. I've got nothing in common with Byron except for an appreciation of things poetic, pagan and erotic. But that's actually quite a lot to have in common. I have more in common with him than with this hoodie-boy thug who I can see outside this cafe window, who's slouching against a wall, trying his best to throw a macho pose, but really just looking a bit fidgety and paranoid. But who knows? Maybe as he smokes his tab down to its nub he, like me, like Byron, is cherishing his rhymes...
So why am I here, again? Maybe I've just asked Byron - in lieu of other divinities - for his blessing, or intercession with the muses, or for some poetic grit. Anyway, now I've drunk my hot chocolate I'd better leave this downtrodden little town with the body of a poet buried in the middle of it and get the tram back home. Am I avoiding what I should be doing? Yes. Am I making my drifting/fleeing seem like intention? Yes.
New Year Resolutions. The most crucial thing I must address is how to knuckle down to work on '1969' and its commentary, plus 'Serpent', plus 'After Michelangelo'. These three poems are ambitious. I've made good beginnings on all of them. But they are a long way from being what they ought to be and what I want them to be. For them to come to fruition I have to work long and hard, that's obvious. The question is, why am I so scared of even starting? It's fight or flight, and I've been fleeing for quite a while now, that's for sure. Are they too ambitious? No. But I must learn to work incrementally, chiselling out just a little, just one part, so that I can fool myself into believing that that one small part is all there is. When it isn't. When there's a huge fucking plan waiting to be executed...
Christmas with the in-laws in France was wonderful. Lots of dogwalking under the big, frosty, sunlit sky. And the landscape. Bony and austere and undulating round copses, farms, hamlets, to the horizons. That's what I've missed in Nottingham: d i s t a n c e . Even the buildings in this city seems to lean, rather inconsiderately, into my personal space.
