Poem of the week

Somewhere in Liverpool by Jim Bennett

I wrote the poem “SOMEWHERE IN LIVERPOOL” 25 years ago.  It was about a time much further back, 1967 and my early forays into performing poetry.  The poem appeared on my CD “DOWN IN LIVERPOOL” in 2001.

You can hear me read the poem from the CD here https://poetrykit.org/27.wma  

somewhere in Liverpool

we were poets we were scousers
and it was the Summer of Love
now as I write this it is the end of the century
thirty years on from the days
when long haired rough spoken poets
wandered into O’Conners
and screamed their poems above the bar noise

now hairy academics look back on our lunacy
see the shadows left in books
but can never grasp what t was really all about

but they still tell us what we felt
why we did it say that we don’t matter
we were never a movement never relevant
we were just performance poets
café and barroom entertainers

as if that is something less important
than book published poetry
read quietly self consciously
to yourself on a bus to Speke
or studied under anglepoise
in a musty prep room

our poetry was different
it came alive when the lights went off

they tell us that we were second rate
that we were stoned
on psychedelic hallucinogens

well some things you just cannot argue with
but poetry was the new thing
it gave us a voice

in Leece Street there was a club Monday night
poetry read at your own risk
you could get up and read whatever you wanted
and in the reading of poetry
we wrote the manifesto for a new world
I suppose we must have had brain damage

the poems were good the poets were better
Roger Clive Adrian Sylvia
three Johns two Daves and two Marys
and all the other name forgotten faces
whose nasal voices echoed through the streets

and how we all loved words real words
to be used with energy portmanteau words
like scaffoldills new metaphor and simile
that slopped around the walls
like jelly and sticking to us forever
and when we found a word it was treasure to be horded
and I still have my notebook of gems
my vocabulary of dissent
my own often read little red book
and every word has a subtext texture
that echoes with the moment it was first said aloud
in a smoky room or bar corner
somewhere in Liverpool

somewhere in Liverpool
where we are poets
we are scousers
and it is still the Summer of Love