According to The Echo, having just completed their online test, I am 100 per cent Scouse. This is heartening, in many ways, because it tells me that despite all the wanderings in my life, I will always have this place which roots and grounds me. But when I took The Echo's Scouseometer Challenge I had to guess at a couple of answers (eg, I've never been called, or thought to call anyone a 'lid', but I guessed it meant 'mate') and felt a bit wobbly in parts, because I really don't feel 100 per cent Scouse these days. To the extent that in my latest bookshelf-purge-before-house-removal I've bundled up a large collection of books on Liverpool's history and culture* – it's time now to immerse myself in Somerset life and lore.
I'm also working on a possible book collecting together my writings from over the years, and in the process I've uncovered this one, which is perhaps too Scouse to make it into a publication aimed at a general readership – but for the initiated, here's my Liverpool Poem (my entry into the Liverpool Poem 800 competition in 2007, first blogged here and revised slightly today)….
If I were to write a Liverpool poem
It would have to contain the compulsory
word play
flipping syllables
juggling syntax
being wittily ironic.
It would probably pay homage to the city fathers:
Drummond, McCulloch, Cope
And the city mothers:
Kitty, Casey, Simey.
It might reference a famous saying by John Lennon:
“Gerrard's a concept
by which we measure our pain”
or do something involving Batman appearing on Canning Place
dressed like Adrian Henri.
If I were to write a Liverpool poem
It would celebrate the excellence
of our two great football teams:
Everton and Marine.
It would stand on Crosby beach with those metal men staring out to Wales;
It would stand on Upper Park Street mourning the demise of the lovely Welsh streets;
It would repent of something
Then do it again.
If I were to write a Liverpool poem
I wouldn’t do it now.
I’d have to do it in the sixties
when I could take it to a Happening
and let it happen,
Or in the eighties
whilst seated at a table at the Armadillo
as a pained Erics punk
on my lunch hour.
If I were to write a Liverpool poem
I wouldn’t publish it, of course:
I’d have to perform it
whilst standing on a node of esoteric power
(Not the manhole on Mathew Street, that’s been overdone: Everton Brow's my preference)
Or seated on the original Superlambanana
Wherever that is now.
If I were to write a Liverpool poem
It wouldn’t be over sentimental
And it wouldn’t have many regrets.
*This collection is now for sale on the secondhand shelves of News from Nowhere. I'm selling other titles through My Amazon Storefront.
