Matt Black writes poems, and occasionally fiction, for adults and children. He writes for publication, as well as for performance, and lives in Sheffield and Leamington Spa. He was Derbyshire Poet Laureate (2011-2013) and since then he has continued to explore Derbyshire through commissioned work on the Changing Landscapes project, based in Ilkeston; which has inspired poems exploring industrial heritage, particularly of the canals, and the landscapes and people of Erewash. His work delights in finding ways, with seriousness and with humour, of celebrating and reflecting people, issues, and places, that are often overlooked, unsung, unrecognised. His most recent collections areFootsteps and Fuddles: Laureate poems (Derbyshire County Council, 2013), and The Owl and the Pussycat and the Turtles of Fun (Two Rivers Press, 2014). He has won awards and commissions, and has toured in Germany, U.S.A., Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic.
The story of Matt’s work for First Art
Matt was one of the first artists commissioned for the project. First Art asked him to travel our areas and interpret the landscape and its people. Here is the story of that journey, in his own words...
"These poems are inspired by visits to a wide range of locations in North Nottinghamshire and North East Derbyshire. I walked the countryside, spent time in villages and towns, dived into cafés and pubs, chatted to people, and looked at local history attractions. My aim was to be inspired by landscapes and people, and to reflect the past but equally to look at the present. I was keen to write about the mining landscape and history, still visible in so many ways, but also grew aware that whilst mining is in the DNA of the people and the area, it is not of equal significance to everyone, and there are many other features to be reflected. As well as landscape and history, which are the conventional first-calls of interest, I also wanted to find the telling detail from current lives, how people talk, and how people’s characters are reflected in buildings, shops, leisure activities, occupations, conversations etc.These, for me, are often the treasure troves of real warmth and connection with our loving, struggling and most human selves, and show what is distinctive to the people and the area.
My method for doing this was to take pen and paper, dictaphone and I-Pad on planned wanderings - otherwise known as field research outings! I made notes, some of which were quick writing sketches, which turned into haikus and short poems. Other notes instantly shaped themselves into the beginnings of longer poems, which I developed at home later.
On these travels, I visited the old Viyella mills, met a group of men in a pub who knew the famous England cricketer Harold Larwood, came across Byronic Bingo, snooker halls, Bulgarian plate spinners, and watched Mansfield Town play York City. I talked to dog-walkers, lovers, ex-miners, taxi-drivers, charity shop workers, pub landlords and listened in to conversations. I was struck with how busy lives are, and reminded of how smaller communities have so much culture and activity quietly going on. I was frequently moved by how in these communities, villages and towns, people look out for each other, and look after each other, and warmth, wit and resilience are such strong and distinctive parts of the local character. "
Clay Cross
Clay Cross folk, second
To none. Two pounds in their pockets,
They’ll give you one
Smedley’s bright bobbins
Still whirr, wind, hum. Galaxies of
Cotton nightshirts spun
Near North Wingfield
Too big for a village, too small for a proper town,
We’re the backbone of England, so please don’t put us down.
We’ve plenty going on, it’s just that you don’t read it
In the papers, so somehow don’t believe it.
With new builds, a Coop and a railway line,
Allotments, two pubs and a closed-down mine,
We’re in commuting distance of bigger towns with jobs.
With quiet lanes, and perfect for walking the dogs
Across shining fields, and under midnight moons,
We’re too busy for sleepy, too small for a Wetherspoon’s.
Not as pretty as a village, or noisy as a proper town,
But we’re the backbone of England, so please don’t put us down.
Teversall Miners Monument
Risen from hundreds of feet below,
To the highest point in the County,
In a stone circle, an ancient hero,
Mud-black, buckled, booted, helmeted,
Snap-tin, tool-tin, knee-pads, athletic.
He wears a bronze shirt, thick and warm.
Against clear blue sky, one knee earthed,
His left hand holds up a miner’s lamp,
Which he looks at with tunnel concentration;
As if through dark, remembering lives, and wives,
How the pit-props collapsed,
And 65 listed Nottinghamshire pits.
He stands on a pile of loose coal;
on a block of stone to weather any storm.
Teversall Ponds
Across the surface, upon these calm ponds,
Where they mined coal, now float swans.
Where they used to dig, delve, plunder,
Silver birches grow, tall and tender.
Huthwaite
Memorials to mining
everywhere we go
the buried half-wheel from the pithead
and what’s missing is below
if we could pull these wheels up
up from earth and see them whole
let these pasts roll into the future
let them rolllet them rolllet them roll
Field near Grassmoor
Go on, cross this field,
It is waiting for your footprints,
Your warm breath,
Like a promise stretching
To the gate in the far corner.
It will hold you safe
For another five minutes
Of your busy, moving life,
And its million insects will whisper
Nothing and everything,
As you cross to the other side,
As the sky tilts to your eye.
Clay Cross
Na then, Bill, where’s
Nearest fishing tackle shop?
Probly Skeggie
Ey up, my darling,
Are you keeping well? Not bad.
Alright sugar. See ya
Dave’s had his knee done.
Can’t drive to work, but he’s reet
For getting rabbits
How is she? Better?
Not bad. Hasn’t been out much.
Tell her to lie low
This pint’s a good ‘un.
Half ten? Think I’ll paint her door
When it gets wermer
A Pair of Lovers in the Pilgrim Oak, Hucknall
We chat and kiss in a booth in Wetherspoon’s
Under pictures of Carnival Queens and Byron’s History.
We’ve met in this spot, with these beers, for centuries
And life’s a crazy, bloody mystery.
Sutton
You might worry, now there’s a Gregg’s in every town you see,
That we’re all eating the same thing, becoming just one style,
But the man at the next table, with his Gregg’s cup of tea,
Has a knowing, crooked, wise and ancient Sutton smile.
Kirkby
Kirkby barber, t-shirt, crew-cut, clean hard jaw,
He looks tough to me, until he says -
Round here? Place I like is Selston,
You can walk your dog, it’s more set in its ways.
Hucknall
This town is proud, quirky, full of characters, independent, piecemeal, untidy, modern Britain, truthful, rundown, resilient, charity-minded, looking out for each other, humourful, a bit ragged, busy, plodding, striving, hopeful, self-deprecating, deep with history, soft, tough, angry, full of love, tired and enduring.
Pleasley
Lost down the hills, three quiet mills,
Where wool and cotton from America
Intertwined, like husband and wife,
In the lost valley of Viyella.
By the Dye House, and the Grease Works,
She used to wait, so tired, for her fella,
But loving and wild as the white garlic
In the lost valley of Viyella.
A different world, where the waters swirled,
Where children toiled for long hours labour,
Berries red as the blood of workers
In the lost valley ofViyella.
Mills tall and grand, built of stone,
Where millstone lives were turned by water,
The tall chimney still rises through the trees
In the lost valley of Viyella.
Where the Meden flows, the ivy grows
On the oak, in all weather,
In the bluebell woods, where the owls fly
In the lost valley of Viyella.
Shirebrook
Cold top of the world,
Wind sharp, flat; old goose-bumps sing
North-east Derbyshire
Grand, wide Market Square,
Lift clouds, blaze sun, and you’re in
Shirebrook, Italia
Café de Linda,
No questions asked, they just put
Sugar in your tea
Old farming ways, cold
Days require gravy, mash, big
Hot steak pie dinner
That fill the gap, duck?
Yes, sure did, if my wee gap
Is size of a barn
Warm humour, pie, chat
Keeps out cold, sharp wind, fights off
Current lack of jobs
SherwoodForest
Old Sherwood Forest -
good Robin Hood, still busy
in local Food Bank.
Byron Bingo in Hucknall
Don JuanNumber One
Little Boy BlueNumber Two
Augusta LeighNumber Three
Number FourDebtors at the Door
Number Five’sWatch out for your Wives
Rhyming TricksNumber Six
Drunk and in HeavenNumber Seven
Number EightShelley’s Mate
Number NineHad a Good Time
Or if you don’t fancy Byron Bingo
You might prefer Lovelace Lotto
Ada Lovelace
Teach her mathematics! Her mother cried,
Scared that Ada might inherit
Byron’s barmpot Romantic condition.
Abandoned by her Dad (too busy
With rhymes, crimes and women,
And being a Russell Brand for revolution),
Aged 12, Ada studied how she might fly,
Observed the method of birds, considered if
Her wings should be feather, oilsilk, paper.
She chose the wings of sums,
Was named the Enchantress of Numbers,
Soared to the summit, scribbled notes
For the software that took us, later,
From one kind of revolution to,
Equally barmpot, another.
First Art Speaks Through A Horse Near Tibshelf Services
No, contrary to human mythology, I am not
A nay-sayer, and I wish to welcome First Art
To my field, and to this whole area
For my nostrils are tired of motorway vibrations
And I firmly believe, from my fetlock to my horseshoes,
That First Art offers a positive and welcome antidote
To the corporate offer, cheap rooms at Days Inn,
Or a frothy cup of dodgy Costa cappuccino,
For I have been harnessed too long to the human condition
And look forward to First Art facilitating me
To run free again, the wind blowing through my mane,
In this wild field of creative expression;
And if you are in doubt about anything
I strongly suggest you might consider leaving
The washing-up behind you, join this party,
Head back fifty thousand years
And try channelling Wild Horse.
Creswell
Creswell Cave, First Art,
Fifty thousand years ago –
Wild horse carved by Ug
Ug’s First Haiku
UzEreMakFirst Art
MudBludSingYipiYo
YuSkyWyMiUg
Skegby Manor House, 1207
No roof, half-walls, trees.
Skegby lives flown to cold sky –
Wild green hellibores.
Grassmoor
In soft October light,
Where the headstock once rose like a helter-skelter,
Where the grass-snake now spirals
Along the Five Pits Trail by Grassmoor,
By carefully combed brown fields,
Sheep bobbing busy-with-grass heads,
Lonely houses, full of untold stories,
Bask nonsensically in the blowsy heat
Of this strange October sun.
Grassmoor Pond, swamp-green,
Still as late summer,
Where invisible fish create ripples, in rings,
Like silent waves of radar,
Like the promise of a prayer.
Sutton Time (a fantasy)
Overheard remark “How can you tell time when it’s raining?”
In Sutton we’ve a splendid sundial,
But since it’s often raining,
We’ve learnt to live without time,
Manyana, not complaining.
We stand and chat at bus-stops
Because Sutton buses are never late,
Like Sutton taxis which just arrive
Since we don’t know what it means to wait.
Sutton pubs don’t need lock-ins
Since Sutton landlords don’t call time,
Every day’s holiday, no school, no work
Since we don’t have Ten Past Nine.
Sutton shops open shortly,
Supper is when hunger calls,
We only die in Sutton when we’re ready,
Not when sundial’s shadow falls.
In Sutton sex never ends,
Though some say it never starts,
But Sutton love is forever,
Never broke, our Sutton hearts.
So bless our sundial, on sunny days,
When time arrives with ice-cream,
And bless her doubly, in sweet rain,
At none o’clock, our timeless dream.
Yellows (Mansfield)
On a cold March Mansfield evening,
High balls rise into the sky.
Quiet as a wood, terraced houses look on
As the Stags play by starlight.
The teams hug each other at corners,
Smart lads, noisy hairdos and gel.
Proud stags strutting, rutting in the park,
Is this Chile versus Brazil?
No, it’s Mansfield Town versus York City
At One Call Stadium – Yellows, Yellows,
And the ref’s a bit of a bounder,
Is almost what the man behind me bellows.
The ball flies and lands in the poplars.
Beer, pies and roars keep us warm tonight.
Goalies outstretched fingers reach for sky
As the Stags play by starlight.
Harold Larwood (Kirkby and Nuncargate)
stands centre stage, Kirkby Market,
chisel jawed, wind-swept hair, leaning back,
one foot on the ground, his other leg lifted high,
as if rising from the pits, where he worked,
his shirt stretched in tight folds, head
thrown back, his free hand high and uncurled,
opened out, as if releasing Kirkby,
his other hand finding the power to unleash
this black circle through the English sky
down the hill to the Cricketer’s Arms, Nuncargate,
where this greatest ever fast bowler learnt his art.
Not tall, but he outplayed them all.
How Bradman ducked and dodged,
refused to play him the second time,
and the old man at the bar, voice defiant with pride -
Worked in the pits first he did. Only five foot ten.
As a young un he played on pitch out back,
made a gap in the hedge so he could get better run-up.
Used to practise by bowling at one stump.
Outside, the cold pitch, still in use,
with three wooden benches for spectators.
No Heritage sign here, but a shiver of greatness
across these open fields where coal was king,
where Larwood bowled with fiercest fire;
under the hill where three old horses graze,
oblivious of mid wicket, or leg before.
The Rainbow (Holmewood and Huthwaite)
Let us not underestimate the hidden,
The industrial estates beside the M1,
Holmewood, Huthwaite (car-park Market Square,
5 takeaways, 1 Post Office, 2 small supermarkets),
These estates of pale blue steel warehouses
With shutter doors, lorry parks, loading bays and logos
Are pitheads of the present, with better health and safety,
Busy centres of what remains of post-industrial industry.
Here you will find motorway favourites,
Norbert Dentressangle, James Irlam, Potto’s of Preston,
On Lorry Fuel Bunkering , tired pitstops and overnights,
And small firms, Galvanising, Utopia Tableware,
Pallets, Mallatite, Advanced Accident Repair,
And suddenly a rainbow appears
Behind Palletised Storage and Northern Lights Lighting Solutions,
An arc of Victorian hope bridging
The M1 and Extratherm Main Gates.
Newstead Abbey
On the shimmering lake the swans are looking good,
Wild, lonely and romantic, that way that all swans should.
The house is Gothic, ghostly, battlements and Byrony,
Tall and serious, before the world was overrun with irony.
Waterfalls and walkways, willows with hanging hair,
Curving paths and peacocks, and love-trysts in the air,
The perfect landscape for a Lord with a Soho tendency,
Bowers, nooks and arbours, and all so rhododendrony.
Politics and passion ruled, but he was drunk, and young,
Mad and bad maybe, but he made a fabulous Don Juan.
Bolsover
Lanterns like cupcakes, ladybirds, rockets,
The Samba band in white suits with headlights,
Daleks, stars , musical notes, Minions,
Fiery castles made out of milk bottles,
Up here is where we celebrate sky,
And a flock of glowing Lantern birds takes flight,
Slowly out of the Castle, the crowds are waiting,
It’s a peace parade, a magical armistice day,
The Town Crier leads, Santa, drummers,
And all the lanterns follow, down the hill,
They spill out of the Cavendish, dancing
Because it’s Lantern Parade day,
In Bolsover town, where the people look up
And the castle looks down,
The birds of prey frown, and the children
Wear long-eared hats down to the ground.
Our Bo’ser
“Hardwick is rich, Welbeck is fine,
Worsope is stately, Bols’er divine.”
Richard Andrews, 17th century
The Normans came and had some hassle
So in Bolsover they built a castle
The Domesday Book came and went away
But Bolsover was here to stay
Castle built by Robert Peveril
He first built one and then built several
From Castle walls the town was planned
Magnesium limestone dressed by hand
William Cavendish was good on a horse
Till Civil War stopped his course
Chorus:We all knows her, that’s our Bo’ser
Tunnels, subsidence all round town,
Another world, underground
Abel Sykes, farmer, but even finer
Enabled the finest housing for the miner
Where pitmen used to dig and hew
Now only sculptures left to view
From Coalite came the toxic smell
Made people’s lives a living hell
Chorus:We all knows her, that’s our Bo’ser
But more recently than Abel Sykes,
Dennis Skinner, the beast who bikes
The beast who’s ageing but not dormant,
He’s the Tories constant torment
From Castle to Church with a spire,
Twice destroyed by disastrous fire
Weddings, christenings of all town members,
All records lost in the embers
Chorus:We all knows her, that’s our Bo’ser
Our Norman town, with Market charter,
Where people used to come and barter
It’s true that Bolsover has lost a lot,
Pit, Plaza, baths, but not the plot
The future of Bolsover now looks bright,
As European funding sets us alight
With markets and festivals in the pipeline
And Bols’er - once more - will be divine.
Written by the Bolsover Poetry Group, May 2014
We meet at Beans Coffee Shop, are a very friendly and welcoming group, and open to new members.
Snooker Club Haikus
Young fresh Steve Davies
Peers, innocent, over bright
Flashing fruit machines
Two wide men carry
Long thin snooker cases, like
Elephants with guns
Plush red seats, flowers,
Fine roast dinners, fast talkers –
Noone speaks in haikus
Always same drinks, food,
You see them, when they park car,
You could write it down