Bill Griffiths (1948-2007)

Quote from Nicholas Johnson's obituary of Bill Griffiths in The Independent: The poet Bill Griffiths was an extraordinary writer: radical, experimental and scholarly, but also fun. His was the poetry of a biker, a cook, a boat owner and a social historian.

http://www.billygriff.sathosting.net/

It was good advice then and it's still good advice now...

It’s there again…

It’s there again…

The pernicious hum

Of my computer,

The white rectangle

With just the cursor

Looking like an ‘I’.

Walker (2011)
© Walker & Jones 2011

Coming Soon!

walkerandjones@gmail.com for details.

1971

Wilf had a nineteen fifty nine Ford Galaxie. It was red with a crème roof. I remember that whenever we went for a drive people would admire the car because it was different. He used to refer to it as ‘my automobile’ in a phoney American drawl. Sometimes when he was staying at home Wilf would pick me up from school or from my friend’s house in the Ford Galaxie. These places were within walking distance from the house, so he just did it as a treat.
 In nineteen seventy one Wilf had to come back home to live. It was strange having him around, seeing him eating his breakfast, having him at home in the evenings. My mother was a great deal calmer when Wilf was around; when he was away she had been very highly strung. I had heard her saying this exact phrase to my auntie: Jeannie, I feel highly strung. In time I began to realise that other than this extraordinary car there was nothing remarkable about Wilf. From time to time he would get drunk and then he and my mother would argue about money.
 Finally things got so bad that Wilf sold the Galaxie to a man called Howard. When Howard came to collect the car he could not disguise his glee. He was leering and rubbing his hands together. My mother said that she hoped that Howard took good care of it. Wilf was very sullen. I had this idea in my head that now that Wilf had got rid of the Galaxie he would never go away again, as if it was the only car that had been capable of taking him away, and that now he was stranded here at home.
 Within a week Howard had crashed the Galaxie. Wilf told us over the supper table that it was a write off and that Howard had been lucky to survive the crash. My mother cried.
Wilf took me to see the Galaxie at Gwyn Cable’s scrapyard. It was sandwiched in the scrapheap between two nondescript cars, crumpled and faded. My throat felt tight. Apparently Wilf went there regularly, standing by the railings of Cable’s yard, as though he was visiting a grave.

Walker (2007)
© Walker & Jones 2011

Homeostasis

'...not untypical of modern South Wales where discipline and belief in anything is at a discount'.

Rugby Football Annual, 1927-28.

JOHN RUSSELL, R.A

John Russell, R.A, who lived from seventeen

Forty four to eighteen hundred and six

Produced vividly detailed drawings of

The moon’s topography having made his

Observations through a small telescope.

Walker (2011)

© Walker & Jones 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_J_Wolman

Charles Horace Jones (1906-1998)

Here was a man who took his poetry out onto the streets and didn't give a fuck about the consequences.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-horace-charles-jones-1198810.html
http://babylonwales.blogspot.com/2006/04/charles-jones-epitaph-for-poet.html
http://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Charles_Jones
Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics by William Donaldson

The Bad Nerves Gene

The Bad Nerves Gene

Slouched, my

Mother wore her worry

Like a heavy pendant

 Resting near her belly.

Anxious ladies have anxious babies

Cortisol and adrenaline shoots up yr umbilicus like amphetamine

And you never ever recover…

Fear me fear me squealed the garden gate

The daisies screamed

And the kitchen clock ticked

Like dripping blood.

Buried alive by the sky,

Dread pressed down on my axis bone,

  Nostrils stuffed with phobias.

I have tried, you know,

Tried hard

 But you never ever recover…

Walker (2011)
© Walker & Jones 2011

My Old Man’s Calculations.

My Old Man’s Calculations.

The South Wales Evening Post

Was a broadsheet in those days.

It gave you inky fingers

And smelled of damp pulp.

And the Old Man came home late

Smelling of the cold road

And oil.

He ate a warmed up supper

And did his calculations

In the borders with a biro

He kept in a cracked mug.

Cryptic figures,

Long divisions

Under the yellow kitchen bulb.

Concentration ploughed his huge head,

Curls greying on his smeared brow

His broad notched fingers ingrained

With the dirt of days.

He never looked pleased when he’d finished

Never satisfied

One more multiplication

As at last he sipped his tea.

Did he calculate arthritis,

Or the wear and tear on his will?

Did he ever find the number

Of the things his sums could not reveal?

Walker (2011)
© Walker & Jones 2011

Just do it, mun

As you can see by the variety of poems, rhymes and simple prose we've been posting, anything goes.
There are no stuffy rules holding you back, there is no intellectual snobbery to be afraid of, no limits, no boundaries.
Words, the arts, the world is ours, we need to grasp it, embrace it and smash down the walls that hold us back, that keep us in our place.
For far to long the intellectual elite have ruled the roost, happy to feed us crumbs, accept our lot whilst they sit at the top table, greedily slapping each other on the back, protecting their precious little empires.

We must create an environment where creativity flourishes, where it feels good to scream, safe to shout, free from criticism, where the work of each and every one of us is accepted, valued and loved.

The arts in this country of ours should belong to each and every one of us.
It doesn't, and that has to change, and change pretty damn soon.
Let's all join forces, get off our backsides and do something beautiful.

It's not about any one person, there are no stars, no celebrities.
To do this we must all be as one.

Before it's too late.

Turkish Delight

swirling girls,

twirling girls,

some girls with spikey hair.

happy girls,

and angry girls,

and girls who do not care.

orange girls,

and foreign girls,

girls with bums to die for,

some with tints

and some with squints,

and one you’d like to try for.

the older girls with bottled curls,

and one who looks

like Greta,

they drink and flirt

with the flowery shirts,

when they really

 should know better.

there’s girls with shots,

some with the hots,

and some who look

quite hammered,

yet big or small,

win lose or draw,

they’ll all go home deflowered.

but mock them not,

this cheerful lot,

these girls who make us shudder,

we’ll down our pints,

rip off their tights,

and soon we’ll call them Mother.

these girls who come

to this smalltown,

and drink and dance within it,

these are the girls

who rule our world,

as they like to tell us…….

…………………….

…………………

…………..

……..

….

..

INNIT.

Jones(2010)

© Walker & Jones 2011