It must be only the most vain of us that look ourselves up on the internet, a habit for the C21st Malvolio.
I do, yes, but not all that often because there's rarely anything to find that I don't know about. But today I found that the Poetry Library has added more magazines from its archives to its website, including The Chair, no. 7, from 1978 and from it not only And I Still Forget, a poem by the 18 year old me but also Afterwards by Detroit Jackson. That was me as well but we won't dwell on that.
And I Still Forget
I'm not going to make any claims for it. It has a lot to be modest about. In mitigation, I'm going to stress the 18 year old-ness of the author at the time.
The two stanzas attempt to imitate the form of My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn, which I was always likely to do then and for some time after. The ABCABC rhyme form and seven syllable line is what he did and thus so did I. Looking again, 40 years on, I realize that Gunn took his syllabics more seriously by rhyming on words like in, and, a and to, which are less obtrusive than my silence/violence pairing.
It is vaguely post-apocalyptic, attempting to be downbeat but turning out to be portentous. But I dare say I was glad to be in print there as well as other sixth-form efforts appearing in Sepia and Sandwiches, magazines that might have regarded themselves as 'underground' but were run by enthusiastic amateurs at a time when the counter-culture was considering and sometimes uneasily shifting its position, from 1960's Beat to Punk, 'for reasons/that no longer matter'.
It took no time at all to find my copy of this issue, which is a tribute to my diligent librarianship. It's interesting to see the other names in it. Among them are Ian Caws alongside Blackie Fortuna, who was uniquitous in such magazines at the time; David Ward, whose Smoke is still with us, and regulars like George A. Moore, Graham Sykes and others. They remind me, distant now.
But, out of the poems that might have been added to the Poetry Library's website archive, I might have nominated something else had I been given the opportunity.
Still, there we are.
