National Poetry Day

The News, Portsmouth

National Poetry Day, celebrating Portsmouth poets and the NPD theme of refuge.

Transcript

00:00 This is my poem.

00:02 Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan,

00:08 We bond you as best we can.

00:11 Africa and Asia, we try to erase you.

00:15 Turned up the heat on your continents

00:19 With western climate incompetence.

00:22 So don't get in your boat,

00:25 Risk life and death while you try to float.

00:29 We won't offer you a lifeline,

00:35 Not now or at any time.

00:38 After all, this is a colony,

00:41 Like a bum who makes a loan.

00:44 Of course, if your skin wasn't brown,

00:49 We probably wouldn't turn you down.

00:52 Couldn't let you live in our town and city,

00:56 Offer you a home, even pity.

00:59 Between 1870 and 1900,

01:09 Nearly 12 million white Europeans

01:14 Sought refuge in the USA.

01:17 White and welcomed by a giant statue of liberty,

01:25 And even words on an imbutable poem

01:28 That inscribed inside of them,

01:31 Written for love and for care.

01:34 Give me your, this is an extract of the actual poem,

01:39 Give me your tired, your poor,

01:43 Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

01:48 The wretched refuse of your teary shore.

01:54 Send these to homeless tempests lost to me.

01:58 I wonder what it would say on this very day,

02:03 Here in the UK.

02:06 Don't come here if you're black or no gay,

02:10 Tortured, terrorised, your home bombed away.

02:14 The list is too long, cruel and wrong,

02:19 Haunting, deathly.

02:23 I think this speaks for myself.

02:26 That's me.

02:28 I'm drifted here like a, to a strange island,

02:34 Sorry, start again, sorry.

02:37 I have drifted here like a castaway to a strange island,

02:41 And built a life from the things I found.

02:44 This is not the way I thought it would be.

02:48 When I started my voyage, my dreams were of harbours,

02:52 Masks and statues, crowns and flags.

02:55 And I floated here to this empty shore,

02:58 And built a life where I made my shelter

03:03 Like a cavern scribe of sticks and stones,

03:06 Bright shells and glittering fragments.

03:09 And perhaps, after all, that can be enough.

03:13 That's the end of that poem.

03:17 I'm a blues musician.

03:21 But I do write songs, kind of for myself,

03:26 Which are stories.

03:29 And I like to write about where I came from.

03:34 I come from the North East, near Durham.

03:38 Can you hear it?

03:41 We normally have pickups on our guitars,

03:47 But I've got two mics now.

03:50 I used to have two mics in the old days.

03:52 So I like to write a story about my family,

03:57 And I like to write stories about where I came from,

04:00 A mining area in Camden.

04:02 So I write about mining disasters,

04:04 Which is always a cheery thing to write about.

04:07 And I thought,

04:09 I first of all thought about writing a song about refugees,

04:13 And I just can't write to water.

04:15 I can only write when songs come to me.

04:17 So I hope you'll forgive me that.

04:20 But here's a song that kind of reflects on

04:24 One effect of refugees,

04:26 And I'm making a little bit of a tenuous link here,

04:28 But one effect of refugees,

04:30 And that is the splitting up of families.

04:33 And this is a story that

04:36 Is kind of a close one to me.

04:41 It's called 'The Ballad of Me Moon'.

04:45 [Guitar music]

04:55 Now here's a story

04:57 About a nanny

05:00 Who passed away in 1935.

05:05 She used to spend her days

05:09 Writing postcards for me saying

05:13 "I'm a devil born, wolfhound by her side."

05:16 At 18 she was married to an engineer

05:25 Working on the Leavens mine in October 19.

05:30 When her rope broke

05:33 And he was holding on

05:36 The nanny never saw her man again.

05:41 [Guitar music]

05:45 Well now he left her

05:47 With seven children

05:50 Bringing them up all alone

05:53 Was not there in her plans.

05:55 So she sent them off to live in a forest

05:59 Around the countryside

06:02 But only for a while, now you understand.

06:07 [Guitar music]

06:16 Well now her husband number two

06:18 He was a gambler

06:20 He disappeared in August 1921.

06:25 She waited for a year

06:29 But he wasn't coming back

06:32 So she up and married next to a trawler man

06:36 [Guitar music]

06:40 Now with this trawler man

06:42 Lily was happy

06:45 And they settled in a cottage by the sea.

06:50 But you know what?

06:52 The gambler returned in April 1925

06:57 So off she went to jail for the week.

07:02 [Guitar music]

07:09 Well now Lily's offense against the person

07:14 Brought Lily seven years with a ball and chain.

07:20 So with six months of good behavior

07:23 Let's say it was October 31

07:26 Before they saw her way out again.

07:31 [Guitar music]

07:53 Now all this time

07:55 The trawler man had waited

07:59 But he never quite forgave what she had done.

08:03 So he moved to Nova Scotia

08:07 And she stayed there by the coast

08:10 Riding boats, cars, to the waters and the suns.

08:14 [Guitar music]

08:18 Now I heard this tale

08:20 From my grandmother

08:22 And she swore to me that everything was true.

08:28 [Guitar music]

08:32 And she showed me a postcard

08:34 Saying "From your dear Mama"

08:37 So I'm passing on this story to you.

08:41 [Applause]

08:46 (applause)

Category

Transcript

Recommended