English beat poetry

The story of English beat poetry begins in a man's attempt to assert the nobility of his soul in the face of alienation from his environ, an irrelevant suburban "village" (sic), and that oldest of phenomena: being jilted, dumped, by a girlfriend, while "down".

It's really very simple, this girlfriend posted on a poetry site, thus, English beat poetry was the name my genre claimed for itself. Coincidentally, I'd given this girlfriend Jack Keroac's On the Road before I'd known of her interest in poetry.

I've since wondered if I should have called this "football poetry" but I guess as I never visit football games that might have seemed odd.

I admired the characters in On the Road, so there it is: an accident of fate, a grasp at something bigger and another thing for search engines to fix themselves onto. What's in a name? I am, I exist! Find me search engines! Let people read the world of a nobody who wanders past graffiti bridges, aloof from his world but wanting to be heard.

As is explicitly rationalised in Moon Train (which is re-written in parallel with this piece).

There is also a distinct, if somewhat "hazily" distinct, like a road distorting in the sun distinct, narrative within these poems, and pieces of writing that grasp at the poetic.

English beat poetry was also born out of a more distant personal history: that of associating with the homeless and feeling, psychologically at least, homeless myself. During this time I developed a, not unquestioning, admiration for travelers ("Gypsies"): even those who swiped my sandwiches, featured in Moon Train, the three Guevarras. They have Che Guevarra tattoos and sweat-shirts. One I class as a friend.

I've since developed a wider interest in American hobos and both these facets of my ideology hark back to my own youth, when I hopped trains in Europe to escape from my conspiracy theories and a small-town world that felt as if it was crushing me.

So, again the trains felt like a possible avenue of escape but having obtained a flat I was loathe to lose it again and in my English beat poetry there's a constant battle with wander lust that takes its texture from the small parochial village in which I live and the route back to it, past the bridges and slumbering trains.

This battle is fought out in Moon Train, Riverbank at Night, Magic Owl, Thirty, Autumnal and Skinhead Girl.

The river I walk by to get home, it shows me the sleeping trains, easy to reach over the fence. It shows me the graffiti (nomad) culture and it shows me nature. It at once prompts me to move, to embrace the ideals which call me, to reject the parochial nowhere to which it leads but also at once it's a solid reason to stay.

As the poetry builds up the reason to stay here increases. By that stretch of river I walk through my own poetry and also through the poem of David J. Bullen, Swanney's Deadbedriver, which haunts my English beat poetry.

There's a human terrain which haunts my poetry and "being here" also, David J. Bullen, the Che Gueverra, they are part of this terrain, the three schizophrenics too. So many people, including Charlie.

That's another strand of this narrative, Charlie, his coming into my world. A very kind man who possesses an "unwise wisdom". Sometimes it may seem as if he doesn't have the sense he was born with and then, out the blue, he will ask you an existential question that you just can't answer without re-reading Sartre (I tried in this, I failed).

Charlie has lived, he has dwelt and worked with, Romani ("Gypsy") travelers and his forehead is scarred. When I looked at him I see the Magic Owl incarnate. I used to talk to Charlie often on the phone. Writing down what he said, verbatim, then re-arranging the word order, I composed Abode TV philosophy.

Even though Charlie always attempts to urge me to nurture my flat this "accidental philosophy" of his makes me think about the world of squalid hotels as another possibility of "outside".

The poem Outside Social Security is definitely about this aspect of English beat poetry. So too is Penguin adventure though this returns to the true essence (sic) of English beat poetry in that it alludes to circumstances with the ex-girlfriend. By now I was frequently being thrown out of the club we used to go to, the local Afro-Caribbean cultural club, by the doormen, and I wondered if this was at her request, rather than for simply sleeping.

There is a counter-movement of the outside theme and this resides in Soup Angel, which also celebrates a beautiful child, who, come to think of it, was totally unperturbed by the cold.

Moon Train alludes to graffiti which in turn alludes to a slashing in an off-license (liquor store) this is what gave impetus to the piece Ladder of Daggers. I'd also had a knife put into my face a few days before.

The slashing, by an irate Asian, the trains and the ex-girlfriend, I feel they all met in the dream depicted by Alexander The Large, in Wonderland.

By now, having been slashed, and having written most of the aforementioned poems, I was working the ex-girlfriend out of my system, pretty much, and the poem Rainbowed passion, like Ladder of daggers, represents a move beyond the particular ex and into the possibility of an ex in the beyond, or "the outside". Not a goddess this time, she just has "an open portal". The open portal leads from the outside to the within of passion and that passion keeps its beat to the rain. It is the passion of the outside, literally, coming in.

This outside is at the core of English beat poetry, what it aims at, it seems it is bigger cities, with metal stairwells rather than flower-beds and picket fences, with women who tolerate that wandering and welcome you back. More than that, it's an answer, I feel, to another lost love, as depicted in the poem Desolate. It's an attempt to move into the "outside" or beyond of happiness in requited love, passion, freedom from the economic drudge and nihilism of derelicts and Chellovecks, in writing, in nomad culture and in hope.

In Desolate the poet is looking in at a lost inside, at a lost open portal that is pure negation of his spirit. It's a bitter lament. The link between the two pieces exists in the rainbowed gasoline puddle of Desolate.

Derelicts and Chellovecks, despite feeling hopelessly incomplete, and being written in Anthony Burgesses' "nadsat" (of a Clockwork Orange) is what this writing style is all about. English beat poetry is an attempt to formulate a rush of rhyme in prose-style that drums on the stairwell of modern culture, like the rain of Rainbowed Passions. Crazy Lady and Fear and Loathing are also written in this style.

Sometimes though, I find the conventional poetry scheme suits me, I'm not sure why. I never set out to learn to write poetry, I just wrote poetry because people I liked (on the net) validated this form of expression, and then, because people I didn't like refused to accept that my life and what I think is valid. Yet they validated a medium in which I could challenge their assertion: poetry.

All writing, for me, is the expression of angst and is a reaction of hope and defiance in the face of that angst. This particular collection represents the noise of my friction as I grind along the terrain of my being - embracing some aspects, rejecting others.

Asserting that the particular circumstances of my existence do not encompass my being, do not limit my being in definition. This idea is also played out in the Dream Catcher short story and another metaphysical poem Valkyre

Starfield was written for another woman, it doesn't really fit here exactly. It reflects the angst at dealing with some of the people in this village, and others, dreaming of this woman and, more generally, a new life.

The themes of this poetry are also explored in Stella and Sortini, Urban Legends and both parts of the Microsoft saga.

As the fly batters itself insensible against the glass, Chris Treadway is reading (and writing). Chris sent me you give me my smile

And thus, outside reaches a within and the spirit of Rainbowed Passions is fulfilled.

The homeless spirit reaches a home in Stalingrad.

To be continued ad inifinutum...

Charlie Chaplin Great Dictator speech | Writing allegerocially about isolation