‘October Guests’ — October 2007 — Poetry Tour Notes Revisited August 2009

NY TRIP OCTOBER 2007 …

followed on from the successful 2006 poetry trip to NYC, Long Island and Connecticut by myself and fellow Cumbrian poet, Linda Graham and host, NY poet, George Wallace… and came about after three Cornish poets had read in Cumbria. I’d already read with George Wallace in Cornwall, Cumbria and north America, with Apples and Snakes in Kendal, Ulverston, Penrith, Carlisle, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Swansea, Falmouth, Penzance, Camelford, NYC, Connecticut, Long Island and other venues – an exchange trip by Cumbrian and Cornish poets to NY seemed a good idea!

Cumbria and Cornwall share many similarities: rural, isolated, wild, Celtic, links with King Arthur, Guinevere, Camelot (I live close by to Pendragon Castle, Long Meg and her Daughters, King Arthur’s Round Table and Castlerigg) Irish Saints and a strong sense of place, language and identity. And the third link to Cumbria and Cornwall?

New York City, Greater New York and Long Island — so different, yet parts of New England are like Cumbria with dry stone walls, mountains and agriculture. What better than a contrast and communality in cultures, language, urban/rural and linking such dynamically differing landscapes, all linked by a love of poetry and a strong sense of community.

As stated in The Cornish Tour Notes: “One characteristic of Cornish culture is its international reach – remote from London, it naturally connects, through the Cornish Diaspora, to North America, Australia, South Africa and Mexico, than to the conventional metropolis.” Through the Cumbrian Diaspora, Cumbrian culture shares this same characteristic with Cornwall – Fletcher Christian springs to mind! Even the Cumbrian and Cornish flags are similar. My personal link to Cornwall and North America is my Paternal Grandmother, Isabella Henry, born in Truro, of a Tin Mining family who moved to Cumberland because of the newly sprung Iron Ore Mines, in the late 1800’s, and my Great Aunt Lucy Coyles, originally from Sligo, who emigrated from Whitehaven to Brooklyn.

SUNDAY, MONDAY

My part of the trip began on Long Island, 14th October – Penelope Shuttle, Caroline Carver & Victoria Field having read the previous week at two gigs in Canada. From stepping off the plane, being met by my host I was whizzed off to his home and family and, after a quick hi to everyone, was whisked off to Walt Whitman’s birthplace and museum for a poetry reading, honouring Vince Clemente.

It was a great way to start the poetry reading tour! It was also good to speak afterwards with Long Island poets, including the honour of meeting and speaking with Nassau County Poet Laureate, Maxwell Wheat. What a truly delightful human being… how anyone could treat Max in the shabby way that some did is way beyond me. He was nominated Nassau County’s First Poet Laureate, only to have the award withdrawn because some of the legislates objected to one poem of his relating to war and peace. You only have to look at his smiling, childlike eyes to know that here, at least, is someone to whom greed, pettiness and mean-spiritedness just does not apply.

Anyhow, after this it was back to the Wallace’s for their hospitality and rest – well, after wine, a walk in the nearby organic gardens, a Jack Daniels and a catch up with Peg on happenings from my last year’s visit.

Next morning, after a lazy start, we headed off to Coney Island, taking in Parsonage Creek en route, for George to take a pic of where Sojourner Truth preached and baptized people in the creek. He chatted with a gardener, called Roy, who didn’t know the story of Sojourner and whose eyes grew wider as he listened to who she was and how she came to be on Long Island. I enjoyed watching Roy’s face as much as listening to George tell the story.

Next stop, an ‘opportunistic one’ said George – of which there were many! And we pulled in to visit Maxwell and his wife, Virginia. ‘Max! Max!’ called Virginia – ‘He’s in his study, you go through the kitchen, down the steps and turn left, yes, that’s it – Max! You have visitors!’ and we went into his book-lined study or rather books, books, books that somewhere in its midst had a room! And Max came out ‘Oh, aww, now then! This is nice, this IS nice!’ and we sat down in their living room and I listened to he and George chat about poetry, life, wildlife and history on Long Island. Anecdote after anecdote as they back and forthed tales, Max occasionally jotting down something George had said and Virginia, smiling and nodding and Max beaming at me as he said how pleased he was we’d stopped by and me? I was a child entranced, listening.  

I love the way Max slapped both hands on his knees and strained forward, eager and big-eyed and laughed and said ‘Haw!’ at something that grabbed him. I love openness and enthusiasm and big-eyed wonder at the world. Max has this in abundance.

No time to linger for a swim at Jones’ beach, and after a last garden chat, ‘what’s this?’ Pokeweed. And this? Rose of Sharon. Uhuh, Byee Max, Virginia! And off to Coney Island, George all the while pointing out things of interest. The shacks close to JFK, built by families years ago that can’t be torn down – I love that! It reminded me of my Uncle’s bungalow,’ Borneo’, on the cliffs at Nethertown, Cumbria.  

Coney Island grabbed me from the start, even though it was out of season, in fact, maybe because it was and I could see the skeleton of the place, stripped of people, noise, and laughter. . what I loved about Nathan’s Hot Dogs was standing in the queue – English love queuing!! – and soaking up the smells and voices, a bit bewildered as always in America by the number of choices… waddya want? Ses George … umm whass zat? You have that with mustard and sauerkraut… erm… ok! You order, in case they don’t understand me.  

I stood and absorbed faces, tracing Italian, Jewish Polish Hispanic shapes and colours and the smell of sausages grilling big stacks of them on the grill and oh those cheese fries!!  Could eat one right now! Big fat potato chunks smothered in melted cheese, oh yes! Sigh… we ate outside, too warm and sunny to be indoors and I looked around at other’s eating, a woman in a wheelchair talking to her small lap dog, men talking into cell phones, a couple on holiday, he tall and protective of his dainty Chinese girlfriend – they asked if we’d take a pic of them by the American flag and Nathan’s hot dog sign.

We walked down to the beach – beach! What a beach! No wonder New Yorkers hop on the subway and go there… it was huge and long and sandy and dazzling and I was envious of a beautiful black girl swimming… I didn’t have my bikini with me, so I paddled and was so absorbed in rolling my jeans up that I never noticed a wave come in and gently lift my shoes and bag!!! George grabbed them – thanks George!!

There were some birds I’d never seen before, large, dark grey sea birds in a flock with other seabirds, only these had quite stubby orange and black beaks…. They rose and landed like confetti as we walked towards them, me taking pics of the rollercoaster, Ferris wheel, freak show signs and pier.  

The bare bones of the place stood out and I imagined it 80 years ago, the New Yorkers in droves coming out for their holidays… vaudeville shows, the freak shows wooing them back again and again. I think for me, what attracts me to places like Coney island and also New York, is the blast on your senses, all the different accents – here’s me asking how much a t-shirt is and the man answers in English with a lilt of Russian; the many shop signs in different language, Cyrillic script and the sanitation officer who rolled down her window and asked us where east 11th Street was, in what I thought was French but which was musical and West Indian and the scents of cooking and street dust and Woody Guthrie’s house, for sale, on Mermaid Avenue and stoops where people’d sit chatting and him taking in all of humanity with his humility and spirit and love and I felt wide open wanting to embrace everything to be as fully aware as a new born…

top

 TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY… the New School and Gramercy gigs, NYC

But before them came more days of stretched time! Tuesday, a day to explore Long Island, its history and what better raconteur to have as a guide but George Wallace who knows Long Island’s history, people, landscape, culture and geology better than anyone I know… though Maxwell Wheat comes close, I phoned him up to ask him the name of the seabirds and, after describing them to him minutely, he said ‘hum… black skimmers!’ It’s great to get an inside view and sense of place from someone who knows and loves his home. 

I’m writing this up after a walk across the fields to Ullock, down Bullbent Lane and then along Newlands Beck, where Roy pup leapt in and swam after sticks and a dipper, a small black bird, bobbed up and down river. The smell of cow muck, sheep, mist and rain was a welcome home and the tenderness of the drizzle on my skin was sweet and I thought of the waters that I’d been in over the last 2 weeks, the Atlantic at Long Island and Coney Island, the rain at Twin Ponds and the Merrimack River… and now here, recycled water, like poetry absorbed, spilt out, taken in nourishing… 

Tuesday I swam at Fleet Cove… it was so hot! And a dozen swans came up to watch me. Peg asked me:
‘What did you do today?’ ‘Oh I went swimming’ Here’s her response: ‘In Oct O BERRR!??’ 

We had the first gig at The New School that evening and headed off into NYC to meet up with the three poets from Cornwall, Caroline, Penelope and Victoria. It was a funky art college with students milling around, looking self conscious and important and happy with art work under their arms, or linking each other chattering away like flocks of birds and the guys looking cool and gangly. We were shuffled into a small waiting room before the reading. I kicked off the reading as an unexpected guest poet, with one poem; George finished it and afterwards the audience asked questions.

Luckily, because it was a gig for the three Kernow poets (Kernow, Cornwall), organised through Penelope Shuttle and Phil Fried, I could sit back, knowing I didn’t have to bat answers to some tricky and pertinent questions back and forth!  

Samuel Menashe asked a cool question, ‘You don’t sound as if you’re from Cornwall, are there any poets from Cornwall, or who have Cornish ancestry, say a grandparent, who are writing and getting published today?’ Having a paternal Cornish Grandmother from Truro I could answer that one! 

Wednesday was a rest day before the reading at the National Arts Club at the crazy Gramercy Hotel! What a weird place! Gothic meets Harry Potter meets the Phantom of the Opera… wowee! I dunno where to start with this one! The stairs, thick and dark and wooden and ornate and the strange atmosphere that made me feel sick.  Heavy paintings lined the walls; the huge pot lion at the top of the first landing; the massive arched doors, high and heavy, big and imposing. The room where we read, with a massive inset window that had a large cage in its embrasure with a raven inside - yes, a raven, jet blue black with a collar of white feathers and in two smaller cages beside it, a Mynah bird and a finch.

It was good to see an old friend from George’s Skiathos workshop, a fine poet, Jean Lehman. She looked great and alive and it was good to hug her and have her in the audience. The other poets also had unexpected friends or family there. Poetic synchronicity! Reading with a raven cronking behind was unusual, though it stopped when we really got into our stride! Downstairs it was like something from a Woody Allen movie; well to me it looked like that. The cupola ceiling by the bar was Tiffany glass, delicate and exquisite and we sat and chatted, sorting out arrangements for the next few days, who was staying where and when were they to be picked up, that kind of thing.

 Looking back, and having just come in from a walk, locally at Whinlatter Forest, it’s interesting to think about walks I went on while in the U.S. and how they differ from walks here. Walks around Twin Ponds, Long Island, Fleet Cove, Eaton’s Neck, the Tern Colony, Coney Island beach… but there were no footpaths to walk on, no pavements/sidewalks down the back roads on Long Island. Although I’m sure there are trails up in New England that could be explored on a future visit.

Before wrapping up this first part of the trip, it occurs to me that, although I live in the country and there are similarities between Cumbria and Cornwall, I’m also from an Irish immigrant family that settled in West Cumbria a hundred years or so, ago. And being in New York gave me an affinity and understanding, about what it’s like to be an immigrant, to carve a new niche in a new country, to make your way. Literary hospitality came to the fore, a shared understanding of our search for identity and sense of place in the world was discussed.

I’m thinking here of my great/grandparents, railway workers, dockers, cleaners, servants, my mum a dancer and a cleaner, the tales she’d tell of working at Mossop’s farm, the time there was a dead pig in the bath, covered in gauze, being salted! Dad, during the 1930’s depression, going to London to work, aged 14, got a job in a grocer’s and the means testing that went on, if you had a bike or a coat that was worth something, then you had to sell it.  

Even myself, growing up in Ulverston on a council estate (council housing), being taunted by neighbours’ kids, ‘Irish Catlicks, get back to the bogs!’ and stones thrown through the windows. Where dad came from, Cleator Moor, west Cumbria, it’s still known as ‘Little Ireland’  Experiences like this gave me an insight into the differences and difficulties immigrants face with their introduction of language, food, music, sport and religion… one thing my poetry tours have shown me is the importance sharing, of exploring what it is to be human, through poetry. 

top

THURSDAY – BOWERY POETRY CLUB NYC

One of the things that was fun about this trip was the way the poets came and went. Penny stayed at the Wallaces after the National Arts Club reading and George showed her round LI whilst I ‘volunteered’ (ahem!) to make shepherd’s pie, to let Ted have a taste of English food. Mind you, going shopping to buy the ingredients was funny! I made a shopping list – sooo bourgeois! But useful! – lean mince, carrots, herbs, Lea and Perrin sauce, celery potatoes.  Most of the carrots were packaged in condoms, not lying fresh and loose like they do in our local supermarket, ditto the other vegetables. Oh and the choice of foodstuffs! What kind of mince? Lean, no fat, fat, this size that size, this pack – in the end I settled on Aberdeen Angus. Phew!  

Mind you, I nearly caused uproar – well, ok I did cause it! – in the bagel shop last year on LI. The poor bagel man looked despairingly at George, eyebrows raised, hand clutched to forehead as I’m standing there, faced with over twenty different kinds of bagels, asking him ‘what’s THAT one?’ pointing to a green one, and THAT? (point to pink one) – I wasn’t allowed near that shop on this trip. So! While George showed Penny round the Vanderbilt House and Centerport Beach, I boiled masses of potatoes and carrots in Peg’s huge pan! And cooked mince, onions, celery, garlic, herbs, dash of Lea & Perrins strained the spuds, mashed ‘em up with butter and pepper, put the cooked mince etc in a large baking dish, creamy veggies on top layers of cheese and tomaytoes! Let it cool and it was ready to re heat when we got back, that night from The Bowery reading. 

BUT!, before that, I sat in the garden, going through what poems to read that night, then lay down on the lawn for two minutes. Two Minutes I was on the cushions, chillin’ out and in that time a gnat buzzed round my left ear, then it got louder, I brushed it away, it didn’t go, the buzzing got louder, I flicked my hair, felt round my ear, the buzz was still there – oh my god! it was in my EAR! Well, that did it! I freaked. Dashed into the house where Peg’s brother – a total stranger to me – was on his cell phone, discussing building material. ‘Hello, I THINK I have a GNAT in my EAR.’ he turned, spoke into his cell phone, ‘hang on a minute, Mike, I have an issue to deal with. You think you have a WHAT!?’ 

While he was searching for hydrogen peroxide to pour down my left ear, I couldn’t stand the buzzing, so went upstairs and found hand sanitizer ‘kills 99.99% of all germs!’ – and squirted it down my ear. Do not ever, I mean ever, try this. I nearly hit the bathroom ceiling!  

George and Penny came back to find Pete, pouring bleach into my ear. The look on their faces, as I waved bloody tissue paper round and Pete’s yelling ‘stand STILL while I pour it in your ear!’ was almost worth the pain… and in retrospect it was hilarious, like a scene from ‘I Love Lucy’ 

And then we went into New York City for our reading at The Bowery.

I love that place, I do indeed. Oh, but en route George had another ‘opportunistic moment’ (the previous one was stopping for a pic of where Sojourner Truth preached and baptised at Parsonage Creek). We drove round the back streets, cobbled and narrow and bustling and reminiscent of the small streets of Paris, with tables and bistros and cobbled street. 

What was interesting en route to the Bowery was seeing the ‘gentrification’ of the Greenwich Village area. It’s happening to cities everywhere, parts of Manchester have been gentrified with the old local characters, artists, drop outs, poets and smack heads shoved out for the richer, young yuppies to move in. But it pulls the heart out of a city, takes the crazy tapestry of jostling humanity away and where do they go? Edged out to peripheries, the place loses its hip hop happy lopsided looniness and energy and the area may as well be wrapped in plastic shipped off to yuppie land. No, give me the raw edgy energy of a place that hums with sweat and spew!

Beautiful to step inside the Bowery again, to meet up with Caroline and Victoria, to see Samuel Menashe, and to have the event hosted by the really great NY poet, George Wallace and then myspace friends arrived, real friends! With hugs, REAL faces, smiles and shyness. It was a beautiful moment to see Larissa, Ruby, Lori, Zoë and Mark – if you’re reading this, hi guys! 

I kicked the gig off and re told the ‘gnat adventure tale’ and then we just swam into the music of poetry and energy that the Bowery holds, It feels as if the energy from one gig feeds into another, that it overlaps, overspills so that you soak up and become nourished by what went before and then pass the baton of energy, words and music to the next act, which was a real wham in yer face band, head banging loud and punk metallic and insistent! Then back to Long Island for shepherd’s pie and a catch up of the day’s events with my host’s family. 

top

Remaining Gigs: The Poetry Barn, Long Island; Colony Café, Woodstock – plus visits to Sleepy Hollow, Lowell, Jack Kerouac country, as well as his life on Long Island, and his sojourns to Gunthers Tap Room; New Paltz Apple Farm for a Pumpkin and Apple Fest; back to Long Island and a walk on Hobart Beach before Caroline, Penelope and Victoria headed back to England.

Thanks to the following for the July 2006 Poetry Trip; the October Celtic/America 2007 Tour; the extended July-August 2008 Poetry Tour & the recent July 2009 gigs:

George, Peg & Ted, Geoff, Carol, Dorothy, Devey, David, James, Rhonda, Eero, Linda, and oh! So many friends along the way, in Oklahoma, Long Island, NYC, Upstate NY … Andrea, Russ, Tammy, Eero, Tom, Mankh, Lorraine, Caroline, Victoria, Penelope, Ed, Meri, Kelly, Barbara, Edgar, Tony, Dan, Don, Cyndi, San Diego: Jerry & Diane Rothenberg - and Newlands Beck, for walking my poems and notes into words.

 2008: Woody Guthrie Festival Okemah, Oklahoma, NYC gigs: Bowery Poetry Club, Brownstone Poets, Fall Café, Cornelia Street Cafe, Small’s Jazz Club: New Jersey, Via Dolce; Poetry Barn, Long Island (feels like home now)

 2009: WoodyFest, OK; Bowery, Poetry Barn, Summer Gazebo Readings, Poets in the Park, Albany, NY. Geoff and I have had so much fun – with more to come!

Geraldine Green, Keswick, Cumbria, UK
August 2009

top

you, with your jaunty smile and eyes in a teacup

you, with your hat on one side, a wide brimmed smile

blowing you over the hempsteads

you, with your blackthorn stick and stride

your billowing voice lamenting the parting of seabirds

you with your arms like happy windmills!

waving to the sea, the land, the railroads and soldiers

you, with you laughing beard

you baring your chest as you make your way round the boundaries of oceans.

you, walt whitman, of the long line and bounding somersaults

of tender poetry

with your working man's hands and mystery in the digging of graves

and gardens

and the planting of trees here on your beloved paumanok fishtailed island

in your heart of lobsters and clams dancing

inside your wonderful beard, the king james bible walking

with each step you make as you mark the bounds

stopping to stroke a dog, touch a child

smiling as you see someone you resemble

a woman cradling a child, an old man, a prophet, a hobo, a wanderer.

you walt, pray to the sea and the air as i do

bending your knees to better understand the blades of grass.

published in Primal Sanities - A Tribute to Walt Whitman,
an Anthology of Poems and Essays, Allbooks Press, USA,
eds. Walter E Harris III and George Wallace
ISBN 978 0974 360 362

top

bloodied by the rain today on the island by the sand and the waves

by the pack horse trails and the tales of indians along the way

here on the island bloodied by today and the waves and the rain

here today on the island my legs scratched by blackberry trails

and waves of rain and blood and the trails of indians and the paumasett

and montaukett and shinnecock and settlers the settlers here on the island

and the amish who built this barn one day opening the sides flat on the ground

like a wooden petalled flower and it rising up! rising up to the sky

like the sun drawing up water like my spirit making waves like smoke to the sky

and the rain and the thunder fat as houses rain drops fat as sky!

and lightning zagging my eyes as i wake here at home on this island.

top

© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
site feedback welcome