Those who are visit these pages will know about my one time aspirations as a poet, my publication of a chapbook of poems a few years ago, and my performing /reading my work at such events as Wordfringe, Per-Verse, Lemon Zest and the Books and Beans poetry evenings.
I suppose I have always liked poetry of various styles throughout my life , but the poetic influence sunk in indelibly when I was at school, back in the ’70s.
I was in second year, and our teacher, an older man, possibly coming up for retirement, and very ‘old school’ in his attitude , set us the homework to read ‘ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge .
It does make you wonder, given the passage of time since then, how could a 12 year old possibly connect with such an antiquated, lengthy piece of poetry?.
I skimmed over it, I had my Armada Ghost Book to read so that would take priority, Coleridge could wait, but I did get that the poem rhymed , and would sound good if read aloud, I had read a few verses in my bedroom, to myself, so could appreciate that.
Anyway , as I said, the Armada Ghost Book came first, and I was reading a story by H.G. Wells called ‘The Red Room’ tonight , and that , to me, was more interesting at that moment in Time.
The following day, at the English period , our teacher, a tall gaunt individual, who evidently had been an amateur actor in his younger days, read some of ‘The Ancient Mariner’ to us, or more accurately declaimed it, in a stentorian, dramatic voice, those of us in the front desks noticed that as he read, his eyes rolled up into their sockets, leaving the whites of his eyes visible!. He was performing this piece from memory , that was really something else! That helped the poem lodge in my mind for years after though, I couldn’t recite it from memory in a million years, but could recall sections of it if asked to do so.
It also helped me appreciate poetry, which I later encountered through reading , and listening to song lyrics, some of which are poems in themselves. Coleridge would appear in my life later in 1979, when my brother bought the cassette of Rush’s ‘Farewell to Kings’ , we would listen to the lyrics of ‘Xanadu’ which issued from the little speaker of the Grundig cassette player, and hope that the cassette wouldn’t spool out.
There was a bit of Coleridge in there, I told my brother, references to ‘Kubla Khan’, ‘The River Alph’ and so on, not surprisingly, he slagged me off for being a smart-arse.
Years later in the early ’80s, Iron Maiden wrote a song ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ for their ‘Powerslave’ album, ‘ it quoted from the poem, and gladdened me to know that it had been given credibility being ‘covered’ by a rock band.
At that time, I began to gravitate towards some music and singers who wrote ‘poetic’ lyrics, the likes of Bob Dylan, The Doors, Patti Smith and many many more , come to mind.
Later , I tried my hand at poetry, with varying results.
All this this started as they say , back in the day, in that English class in a school in Aberdeen.
The Eclectic Audio Lab 