In this episode, Pete Green reads and discusses Chapter Eight from Louis MacNeice’s book-length poem Autumn Journal and how it played a part in the writing of their own long poem Sheffield Almanac. In the programme, Pete talks about their own long relationship with MacNeice’s poem, how it ‘works’ as a poem, stitching together contemporary ‘pinch points’ of late 1930s history and the author's own autobiography. In a wide-ranging (roaming) conversation Pete talks about how the form of MacNeice’s poem influenced their own approach to Sheffield Almanac. They also explore how MacNiece brings together high and low culture to discuss notions of privilege, politics, and the state of the nation. Pete goes on to reflect on the first and second editions of Sheffield Almanac, and how their own work as a song writer has informed their own poetry writing skills. Pete talks about conflating the personal and political in Sheffield Almanac, and 'the predicament of the city of Sheffield' that is interrogated in this extended lyrical narrative. The edition that Pete reads from here is Autumn Journal (Faber, 2012). Pete Green is a song writer, musician, and poet. They have published two pamphlets with Longbarrow Press - Sheffield Almanac (first edition, 2017 and second edition, 2022), and Hemisphere (2021). Pete’s first full-length came out with Salt in 2022, entitled The Meanwhile Sites. from Chapter One of Sheffield Almanac (second edition, Longbarrow 2022): And we were timeless
As the empty afternoons when we would settle In for desultory shifts at the Fellow & Firkin Unprepared to take one more step Toward the millennium’s unmapped plains Without a pint of cloudy ale and a doorstep Sandwich loaded with fat chips. Some seminar on Woolf and Joyce just finished, We might stay put, we might loose happenstance With suburban wanderlust undiminished — Let the current bus us to Cotteridge or West Bromwich, Let the bondage of deadlines unravel Free in time and space, at least within the bounds Of an off-peak pass from West Midlands Travel. Suede supplanting Blur, Blair succeeding Smith: Tumbleweed days. None of us paused to cherish Carefreedom since we never knew — or just Suppressed the knowledge — that it could perish While the ink dried on our dissertations. Weeks were some abundant currency one borrows At deceptive interest rates, pays back At breakneck terms, in repossessed tomorrows And when the time came to consolidate Sheffield was our redemption, our second Bite at adulthood’s sour cherry; And when it’s done, when the tallies are reckoned And we feel the slowing of the birthdays zipping Past like the exit signs for junction 33, will we have come this far Only for the settled life itself to seal our dysfunction Rather than those years of frenzied chasing? We thought those threadbare rented rooms, curtained With frost and damp, would be the time the Low tide turned amid the hurt and
Searching. What if they prove instead the High water mark? These kids have 4G, streaming media, wi-fi, Colossal debt, jobs pre-empted by machines; We had payphones, typewriters, a dust-strewn, scratchy hi-fi, Student grants and jobs that worked us like machines And all of us austerity, austerity and ISIS,
Seas that go on rising through each summit, Refugees, and leaders somehow baffled by a crisis Every bugger else could spot a mile off Just as, this time last year, we watched the occupation Of Central Office while they pricetagged hope and knowledge, Surprised by the moral pluck and spunk of a generation
Dismissed as dismal materialist go-getters. Equally Wrong-footed, the coppers made a kettle,
Flung kids from wheelchair seats, performed the miracle Of raising a new cohort to its feet and on its mettle To pick up where we left the poll tax off. This time, beyond London’s hall of mirrors, every region Saw insurgent youth again And round Coles Corner marched a stoked-up legion
Of sophomores and schoolkids side by side. We know any Booming cogwheels will surely crunch and seize up Should we live to see recovery, we know the rest: Clegg and the Tories put the fees up —
But now we know the nature of autumn’s bonus hope: Despite the cost of learning going treble,
The spirit that radiates as halls of residence revive Is the spirit not of the entrepreneur but the rebel. Let’s go again: Psychology, Landscape Architecture, Biotechnology, East Asian Studies: An occupied theatre hosts a free lecture — From barricades to trending topics I followed the movement online while tending The baby: one feed for the jaded, one Feed for the pure. While we’re expending Reproductive ...
