I want a true history of my city

10 Murray: to be crucified at the alter of good taste, April 2010.

A large - if not the central - part of the reason that I would not like 10 Murray to go is explained by the following poem. I want a true history of my city, not an airbrushed, tourist-friendly, blandishments dominant theme park of convicts, sandstone and trees.

PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS, by Barry Tebb

I want a true history of my city

FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE

FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY

And all his descendants

With their particular vilenesses -

I met one in the sixties

Who had all the coldness of Himmler

So svelte and adored by the cognoscenti.

I want a history responsive

To the needs of the working-class

One that will minute the back-to-backs

Spread over the city like a seamless robe

SO FUCK CUTHBERT BRODERICK’S TOWN HALL

BRIDEWELL AND MAGISTRACY.

I want a history of the culture

Of the working class and not

Hoggart’s slimy gone-up-in-the-world

Jabber for the curious bourgeoisie

He was especially maladroit

On working-class sexuality

A voyeur picking humorous moments

To show the ignorance of the class

He sprang from. “Anything was an occasion” -

Or did he mean ‘excuse’? - “for intercourse,

Even a visit to the chip-shop”.

O for the gentleness

And the quiet intimacy

And joyful spontaneity

Of working-class sexuality

Reading Shelley’s ‘Defence of Poetry’

Sitting on a bus by a girl who, smiling, said,

“I told Jack if he was finished with me

He wasn’t having any but he pulled me

Into the bushes laughing all the way

So what could I say?”

I want a history of the warmth

Of working-class mothers

Explaining the mysteries of periods.

To their adolescent daughters and the

Revelations of working-class brides.

I want a history of family outings

To Temple Newsam where I saw an ass

Eating straw from the steel manger

Of Christ.

Comments

Roddy said…

I too want a city I can relate to. Not a bloody great T.V. screen.
Where would we be if we pulled all old buildings down. Nothing left to date history. Good or bad, it is a time stamp.

17 April 2010 at 12:34

tony said…

Yorkshire Rules!

17 April 2010 at 21:04

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, too right.

Tony, this is one of my favourite poems. Terrific ending in particular.

18 April 2010 at 16:45

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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