JAM TOMORROW by Huw Parsons and Friends

BIRMINGHAM SCREWDRIVERS:
There's some great rhymes in this, plus a nice twist at the end. But this poem is more than just clever construction and ingenious wordplay, there's real pathos here too.


THE PAST I CAN'T STOP SHOWING:
Huw wrote this after a particularly depressing visit to Hereford in December 2015. It was a bitterly cold day and he was dismayed at the number of homeless people in the city's streets, so here he takes on the persona of such a person in an attempt to give voice to their plight and sense of helplessness.


THE FOX AND THE GOOSE:
This is a very old poem and a copy of it from about 1450 survives in The Bodleian Library in Oxford. It's beautifully read here in Middle English by Gordon Wilson and then Huw and John Eyre sing it in its present day form as a popular children's song.


DRIVEN:
'Dear Sting,
As winter draws nigh I've dug out my gloves - and these are not just any old gloves, no, they're a pair of brown suede string-back driving gloves bought by my father, for himself, back in 1965. I'm sure you know the kind of thing. They're the sort you'd have worn on a frosty morning in your E-type, though, I hasten to add, my father only wore them behind the wheels of a succession of rusty old bangers.

Anyway, I'm very attached to these gloves as my Dad wore them religiously every winter for the last thirty years of his life and I've worn them likewise since. They represent two of my father's many weaknesses, his love of clothes (he was a bit of a dandy) and his love of cars (if he could have afforded it he'd have had a Ferrari sitting out on the drive, even if it meant us kids were starving!)

So, thinking about all this has led me to write this little ode.

Rock On, Huw.'


BLACK SNOW:
'Black Snow' is a tribute to David Bowie. Huw's said that this is the first time that he and David have tried to use words just for their sound rather than the way they might fit into a story. 'A valiant effort too' he added, 'and one we'll be trying again in the future.' When asked to elaborate further on the piece he told me that he wrote it in about half-an-hour in the tea-room of Hereford cathedral, and when he'd finished it felt it didn't need to be worked up into structured rhyme or rhythm. What do you think?


WINTER'S RISE AND FALL:
Huw's diary entry for the 23rd December, 2015:
'I feel like some sort of animal in semi-hibernation which, thinking about it, I suppose I am! I've decided that today should be the beginning of the New Year, as today is the first day of the year when the sun starts to climb higher in the sky again.

From my armchair I look through the window out over the village. The scene's almost devoid of colour, so I see grey roofs and brown trees under a waterlogged light-grey sky. Only the lawns below have any real colour, an unadulterated, unnatural-looking, bright green. The wind howls and the clouds scud in from the west. They are so densely packed that there are no gaps between them to let in the blue of the sky, let alone a glimpse of the sun.

The road is eerily quiet, as there are none of the usual lorries rushing back and forth and only an occasional car breaks the silence. The brightest thing I see are the festive twinkling blue lights hanging from the eaves of 'Wild Thyme Cottage.' So, certainly not a spectacular view but one which, on this day of reflection, is in perfect keeping with my mood.'


BLACK:
Huw wrote this poem immediately after doing jury service in Hereford Crown Court. Needless to say it was a troubling experience and one which he's nicely captured in this short piece.


SHOW ME:
A poem about excess that has the line 'In a porticoed Roller, I'll drink champagne mixed with supermarket Cola.' Nice!


POLISHED TIN:
One evening in late September Huw climbed to the top of The Begwns, a range of high hills near his home in Clyro in the Wye valley. He'd gone to see the moonrise. He waited and waited and eventually it rose over the distant Malvern Hills to the east. At first it looked very sinister with its pink mushroom-cloud shape, but as it rose it gradually became recognisable as the familiar friendly moon. This great natural spectacle is one that can only generate wonder and 'a kind of madness' in all who see it.


YOU LIFT MY HEART:
A short poem in celebration of summer's first three swallows. Huw tells me that he saw these birds just as he describes them here, and when writing this piece had in mind too the very early medieval poem 'Sumer is a-cumen in.' Nothing changes does it? Such things are an eternal joy!


WHO IS SHE:
One night Huw went along to an open-mic and like a fool read out this poem he'd just written and was pretty chuffed with. However, as was he was reading it he noticed several people cringing with embarrassment and others tut-tutting with barely concealed disapproval! Ah well, some people are wise and others are otherwise - and he's one the latter!


LORRIES:
How beautiful is the English language and here Huw finds such beauty in the names of passing lorries on a busy road.


NO MORE BLUES:
Huw often writes about vicars. Most are invented characters based on those he knows, but the one in this song is purely imaginary. Huw thought about a man of the cloth suffering from depression and what would cheer him up as he became better, so this song is essentially a list of such things - for example, 'The rise and falling swell of a William Byrd motet, or syncopated thrust of a swinging jazz quartet. Then there's Early English, proof of God's pure grace, weight defying gravity, suspended stone in space.'


WHEN ONIKA SINGS:
Onika Patterson is a lovely Jamaican girl with an astoundingly beautiful voice. Huw reads this poem about her in The Globe in Hay and he tells me that the line towards the end “When I hear a voice say “Come!” is taken from the Jimmy Cliff song 'Johnny You're Too Bad,' which of all the songs Onika sings is his favourite because it really shows her Jamaican soul.


THE SOUND OF ENGLISH LUST:
Huw tells me that sometimes his best poetry is gifted to him by the muse in the middle of the night. And so it was with this piece, as when half awake at three in the morning the lines 'Chain-mail knights lie in alabaster, Likewise ladies sleep in stone, Anathema to the city Rasta, Underwhelmed by his English scone.' mysteriously formed in his head. Thus the scene was set for an imaginary afternoon tea in an old church, where the one thing that unites a random group of diverse people is their love of Elgar's music.

Huw Parsons was born in 1954, grew up in Llyswen, near Hay on Wye, and educated at Brecon Boys’ Grammar School and Chelsea College of Art.

He feels neither wholly English nor particularly Welsh, with his life’s diversity a social impostor and a cultural chameleon.

His influences: the poems of John Betjeman & Phillip Larkin, the novels of Leslie Thomas, the song lyrics of Sting & Jake Thackray.

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