The Old School House Boscombe Blue Plaque Ceremony

I originally wrote this in March 2012 as a contribution to the struggle to keep the Old School House Arts Centre in Boscombe from being demolished.  The campaign was partially successful and today a blue plaque was installed to comemorate the work of Sir Percy Florence Shelley (son of the poet Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley of ,Frankensttein, fame) who gave the building to the people of Boscombe.  Percy Florence was a great supporter of the arts  and of theatre in particular.  I have updated the poem tofit a happier time.

Rededication

Let us rededicate this building to the arts

Let us drive out the shadows of utilitarianism

Of Mediocrity, of settling for second best

Let us protest

That this is a place of striving

And creating

And trying for something just out of reach

Because that is what the arts are.

Let us rededicate this building to

Photography

To sculpture

To painting

To poetry

To theatre

To story telling

To writing

To knitting

To singing

To sewing

To dancing

To remembering

What happened here

To thinking of the future

To living in the now

Art is choice because

“Choice defines and expresses individual identity”

What we choose to put in or leave out of an artwork

Is What we choose to put in or leave out of life

Art is movement.

It is the spinning of the potter’s wheel

It is the drawing of the bow across the strings.

It is the dancer pirouetting in the sunset,

It is the painter’s brush

And the mime artist’s hush.

And because it is movement

It is of the moment.

It is ephemeral and gone in an instant

To live on as a memory

And as a moment of change.

Let us rededicate it to children covered in paint

That they may go home gloriously happy

Ignoring their parents’ and carers’ tutting.

To those who have no other voices

That they may sing out loud and be heard

To those who have no other family

That this may be a place where they may sit and spin yarns

Let us remember here

That without arts

We cannot grasp the past

And, by running our finger tips and lips over it,

Understand it and ourselves;

That without arts

We cannot draw the future and try to dance with it

And understand what we and the world could be;

That without arts

We cannot mould the present

And hold it to the light up so that we can say

“That is good”

And when good people

Ask us whether

We would rather have the arts or houses, or the NHS or Social Services

We must answer boldly

“We need both”

Because without arts

There will be no point in having the others

Let us rededicate this building to the arts

Let us drive out the shadows of utilitarianism

Of Mediocrity, of settling for second best

Let us protest

That this is a place of striving

And creating

And trying for something just out of reach

Because that is what life is.

Paradise Retailed

For a bit of fun we were challenged by the Bournemouth Poet Laureate James Manlow to write a glosa.

The glosa is a poetic form developed in Renaissance Spain. The opening quatrain is taken from the work of another poet that we want to acknowledge.  This is followed by four stanzas, each of which is generally ten lines long, that elaborate or "glosses" on the cabeza chosen. Each ending line (10th line) of the four following stanzas is taken from the cabeza.  I’ll leave you to guess which poet I am paying tribute to. (The spelling is as in the original.)

Paradise Retailed

The World was all before them, where to choose

Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:

They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,

Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

That dewy morn among the endless shelves

Of Tesco, ASDA or that other one,

That adamantine chain with carpark dire

The dismal Situation waste and wilde

No light but rather darkness visible

Each hell more sulphrous than the other ones

As far remov’d from God and light of heav’n

As any fruit flown in from Afric’s shore,

They took the easy path through racks of booze

The World was all before them.  Where to choose?

Then pausing, sought a respite from the crush

But found Another hell with queues that stretched

Nine times the space that measures Day and Night.

The pimpl’d youth, he with his horrid crew

That witness’d huge affliction and dismay

Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate:

Allowed them precious little time to choose

Designless from the list and thus they sate

And contemplating Eden side by side

Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:

Then back among the throng in effort wide

A struggle Just to snatch an apple from the shelf

Among the jars and jaffas and the jeans

Our parents’ parents struggled with the lines

For all the world like serpents at the tills.

They stood enrapt by horrid writhing scrums

With hundreds and with thousands trooping came.

They shook their heads and headed for the door.

Whilst others pushed and shoved just anyhow

They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,

At last had gain’d the portals of that place.

The outer world seem’d now a beauteous park

Like  paradise regain’d In contrast stark.

The gleaming chariots in lines array’d

To carry off the booty from the store.

Our Adam and his Eve from seeming hell

Had ’scaped th’eternal madness of that place,

Eschewed the driven path that others took,

Envelop’d in the blessed aer of day,

Through Eden took thir solitarie way.