spoken word – Page 26 – Robert Garnham

We are Brixham

I’ve had a great month (and summer) getting to know the people of Brixham and writing poems about their fishing industry, its importance, history and culture.

We are Brixham

Amid the pontoons and jetties, the wind whistle
Through yacht mast rigging,
The stone breakwater a loving arm,
The harbour calm.
Amid the trawler bustle and diesel throb, the hum,
The roar, the continual movement,
Night-lights of long-distance trawlers
In their humdrum heroic return,
We are Brixham.

Amid the labyrinthine narrow lane cottages kissing
Face to face over alleyway cobbles,
Amid the crafty cats and shoals of sprats,
And bearded trawlermen in blue cloth caps,
Amid the grind and wheeze of autumn’s first breeze,
Of chilled fingers numbed by winter’s first freeze,
We are Brixham.

Amid the rust and plants and smuggling haunts
And quayside pubs where sea legs find their own solidity
On the moving deck of life itself,
Amid the gift shops and chip shops and ship hulls
And sea gulls and old father time his
Beard soaked in brine,
We are Brixham.

Amid the local lore, the drunk pub bore,
The concrete remnants of the Second World War,
The plastic floats, the high-viz coats,
The loaded totes from chugging boats,
The sea serene, the sea-scape scene, the holiday dreams
Of vanilla ice cream, the trawler beams,
The harbour walls, midnight pub brawls,
The pirate ghost ghouls, the mechanic with his tools,
The people, the town, the community and life,
We are Brixham.

The Trawler Basin

That tangle of beams and nets and ropes
Might well be mistaken for a metal arboretum but
There are no robot squirrels here.
You!, caged whales in a concrete dock,
Shackled together as slaves on a swell,
You’re nodding your bows as if each
An adventurer’s remembrance of
Channel fog, white horses, force six storms,
The biggest, toughest load you ever hauled

As callous hands winch and yank, at one
With the rolling seas, you, with your
Portholes perhaps pining for the quay’s embrace,
Where gathered your beams tower and peer
Like giraffes from their zoo enclosure, you,
Named for wives, girlfriends, daughters, fathers,
Ungainly, cormorants with wings folded, oh,
I think I’ve run out of metaphors now.

A morning’s diesel throb cast off you’ll seek
Invisible bounty by sonar glow, hands numbed
By cold clutching metal cups at the wheel,
How many souls have stroked your innards and
Uttered a silent trawlerman’s prayer?
Keep us safe, return us once more, I have a
Life and a bank account and Davy Jones is no friend of mine,
And that, up there in the lines, is that a winch,
Or a robot squirrel? The cold, the dark,
The long hours, they do strange things to a soul.

Poet in Residence on a Beam Trawler

POET IN RESIDENCE ON A BEAM TRAWLER

Cod, halibut, mackerel, rainbow mullets,
Brown turges, narrow-eyes loomheads,
Grand flappers, suspended marlin,
Norwegian screamers, ribbon-tailed Kenneths,
Sole, turbot, plaice, haddock,
Bulbous flatfish, flounder, spasm ray,
Honey roasted dogfish, the common eel,
To name but twenty species of fish.
And scampi, that’s twenty one.

And me? I think I’m gonna spew,
This old rusty tub flung round like
That Danish weather girl in the
Last series of Strictly,
Last night I honked up in my
Left welly
And only remembered this morning
When I put it on.

The trawlermen here have all got nicknames.
Stinky Sam is our captain,
I’d follow him to the ends of the earth, I would!
And Stinky James, our cook,
And Stinky Jim, who looks after the engine,
And Stinky Bill and Stinky Keith,
Who gut the fish.
These are the nicknames
That I’ve given them.

I was so cold last night
That my nipples went really big.
I had a weird dream
That I was stroking a caterpillar.
And in the morning Stinky Keith said,
‘Gosh, my moustache feels really smooth’.

Oh, the banter!
This morning I was laughingly called
A barnacle-encrusted puke-soaked
Impertinent half-witted buttock,
And I said,
‘Nice to hear from you too, Mum.’

Out on deck,
Hauling in a big load with Stinky Jim.
‘Do trawlers often sink?’, I yelled,
Above the clatter of the engine.
He replied, ‘usually only the once’.

Gutting fish with Stinky Bill,
He’s seen it all, has Stinky Bill
Looks one way, then the other,
And says,
‘Sonny Jim,
Have you ever been sexually aroused
By a walru…’.
I said ‘no.’

And a giant octopus stole my cheese sandwich
And a sperm whale
Tried to mate with us
And I was winked at
By a squid
And I’d never seen so many crabs!
And our captain was out on deck
With a jumping rope
Jumping up and down
I suppose that’s why they call him
The Skipper.

And the sea got rough
And I spent the whole afternoon
Being tossed
As the trawler rose up
Through swell and wave
And the skies spat rain
They were ever so brave
This lonely tub
On the wide wide sea
Perhaps this was the wrong moment
To tell Stinky Pete
That he would make my life complete.

He slapped me
With a gurnard.

I’m a trawler

I’m a tough floatie boater
With a proper prop and motor
I’m a hauler crawler trawler
I’m a total turbot-toter

I’m a clean pristine machine
With a spar and jib and beam
And a crew that’s green and keen
If you know just what I mean

I’m a sonar blip daytripper
With a flipping chipper skipper
Catching cod and rock and roe
For a fish’n’chip shop flipper

I’m a drippy full-net winder
I’m a shoal of fish finder
And the load I brought in tuesday
Was a whopper and a blinder

I’m a bandit fish-stock robber
I’m a diesel engined throbber
And I’ll keep you safe and warm
If you’re wearing the right clobber

I’m a chuggy flounder lugger
In some foggy muggy weather
I’m a quayside harbour parker
With a strainy ropey tether

And you’ll see me every day
In the ocean briney spray
And for my hunky bunky crew
I’m a home while I’m away.

Yay!

‘Yay’ is the title of my new book, to be published by Burning Eye, and my new solo show, both of which are due to come out in the Spring of 2021. I’ve been working on both of these projects for a couple of years and I thought I would explain what I’ve been up to.

‘Yay’ will be a collection of upbeat poems, most of which tell a story or deal with a very specific place. Some of them are a little bit silly, some of them are somewhat life affirming, some of them are downright weird! And all of them are comedic in tone. The whole collection has been designed to make you laugh or smile.

The collection was devised a couple of years ago when it seemed that the world couldn’t get any more depressing. Naturally, after I started working on the project, it then suddenly did! The book contains poems from In the Glare of the Neon Yak, and Spout, my two solo shows, as well as material from my new upcoming show which will accompany the book.

The show will be called ‘Yay! : The Search for Happiness’. It was written in the first few months of this year and I have begun the process of trying to learn the thing. Indeed, I have been working with a director, the wonderful Dr Maggie Irving, with some funding from Torbay Culture, and she has been instructing me in the art of mime, movement and body expression. Unlike my previous shows, ‘Yay! : The Search for Happiness’ will have no props at all, just myself and a microphone. So in other words, I need all the help I can get! The reason for this is simply that I wont have to lug bags and boxes of props all over the country.

I’m still working on the collection. At the moment I’m in the process of deciding which poems will definitely be included. And of course, new ones keep arriving. It’s a very exciting time at the moment!

I’m looking forward to getting the book and the show out there into the world. Fingers crossed, of course, that there will be a fringe circuit next year. But if not, I’ll find a way to bring Yay! to your town.

All-night humming at the ice factory

One of the most unsettling things of living in Brixham is the presence of a perpetual hum. Not everyone can hear it and these hums have also been heard in other places around the world. Some people reckon that this is a supernatural manifestation. And while I’m not discounting that, the most likely explanation for Brixham is that it is the ice factory down on the quay, manufacturing ice for the trawlers to use for their catch.

All-night humming at the ice factory

At night I dream of the ice factory
Manufacturing glittered frost under corrugated iron,
Snow on cue, sleet on demand,
I dream as it chills the night for me
And glaciers the dawn.

Three in the morning, in sweated sheets
Flung aside!
Windows open and not a breath of air,
There’s a humming noise coming from the quay.
What could that purring
Possibly be?

I’d like a snowdrift, please,
And ice so fine you can
See right through it!
I want to see my breath
In the trawler lights!

The sweat is rolling down my face,
And the hum, that’s just adding to the
Intensity of it all,
And a throb of engines too,
The sweat is rolling down my face.
Don’t tease me.
Freeze me.
be my icy queen!

Get me through this night!

At night I dream of the ice factory,
An ice conveyer belt and iced up workers,
Hauling ice and shovelling ice
And moaning about the cold.
Snow on cue, sleet on demand,
Blizzarding the morning as the sun rises
Over the trawler basin
And I moan and sweat as a clock strikes three.

Squidbox

Today’s poem is the title poem of this whole Squidbox project, I suppose!

Squidbox

Of all the buckets,
Containers, plastic tubs,
Amid forklift reverse hooters,
Shouting, throbbing
Trawler engines, plastic
Yellow coats, wellies,
High viz,
Of all the buckets
Of the aforementioned
None can be more repulsive
Than
The squidbox.

Deep sea dreams and
Night time beam trawlers
Dipping down on wave vales
Off the coast of Wales
With sonar and shouting,
Excitable as the net is
Brought up dripping
For commerce, there
Is no sport in this

And thence homewards
With a belly full of tubs trays
Buckets boxes profit gain
And rusty flanks from dripping nets
The loving embrace of a concrete
Breakwater.

The squidbox
Under fluorescent lights stark.

A scream for the sea

A Scream for the Sea

Landlubbers!
Shipwrecks!
Grockels!
Ahoy!

Climb the masts!
In the brig!
Avast ye!
Ahoy!

Breakwater!
Saltwater!
Tidewater!
Ahoy!

Where are the giant squid?
Where are the dolphin pods?
Where are the lobster pots?
Ahoy!

And the trawlers
In their port
Look like giraffes
In the zoo
Ahoy!

Salt encrusted
Barnacle clung
Metal rusted hull!
Ahoy!

This long concrete arm
Protects us from harm
Calm our harbour
Ahoy!

We feel them deep inside
The tears of those who died
Washed ashore with every tide
Ahoy!

Weary legged trawler sailors
Bearded boat captains
Deck hands and net-menders,
Ahoy!

A bobbing anchored light
A rhythmic flashing sight
A beacon in the night
A buoy!

A prayer for the wind
Some salt for the soul
A scream for the sea
Ahoy!

I like it here

They cling to the hills like multicoloured limpets,
Slate tile roofs shining, fish scales reflecting
Sodium streetlights, the salt air
Curling in from a dark abyss.

This whole place is yours, right?
No, just two rooms on the second floor.

And is either of those a private cinema?
No, but you can get nextdoor’s wifi in the khazi.

I like it here.
This corner of the universe.
I dream of escape
But I’ll never leave.

I like it here.
It matches my soul
The centuries fold in
They embrace me.

I like it here.
So cosy here.
It feels I’m the century’s daughter
Though I feel like a fish out of water.

I like it here.
I feel no fear.
I can be me here.

I like it here,
This is my home.
If only I didn’t
Feel so . .

(Get a proper place)
I like it here
(Move on to another town)
I like it here
(Buy a mansion in the Hollywood hills)
I like it here
(Let me show you the world!)
I like it here
I like it here
I like it here

They cling to the hills like multicoloured limpets,
Slate tile roofs shining, fish scales reflecting
Sodium streetlights, the salt air
Curling in from a dark abyss.
I like it here.

Do you hear the sea still calling?

When the First World War started, the Brixham fishing fleet found itself depleted with sailors and fishermen called away to war. Others stayed behind, exempt so long as they carried on supplying the nation with fish. Old sea hands found themselves back out at sea with cadets and schoolboys. But there was danger, beyond the usual danger, of mines and U-boats, and snagging nets on sunken wrecks.

Do you hear the sea still calling?

Sea-dogs and cabin-lads,
Cooks and schoolboys, cadets
And old hands with tales to tell.
It’s so dark at one in the morning.
Do you hear the sea still calling?

A generation called to war,
A fleet depleted,
A country undefeated,
Patriotic employment,
U-boat periscope deployment
Seemingly without any warning,
Do you hear the sea still calling?

A metal spike broke the surface,
Gift from a silent foe this
Mechanical creature from the deep,
‘Say your prayers, lads’,
And every hand dare not breathe lest
An errant wave should draw it to the hull . . .
Detonate
Deploy
Smithereens
Heart-rates slowly falling,
Do you hear the sea still calling?

Tin fish on the high seas,
Literal minefields,
Sweepers and sleepers
Trawler nets a-haul
Souls entwined in brine
The ceaseless march of time
Trawlers keep on trawling,
Do you hear the sea still calling?