Slowly up the Mersey
 

This was the gorgeous East to us:
a place accessible by sea,
a sea much given to choppiness,
as we learned as we sat in a heaving lounge
that pitched and plunged.

Past the lightship, things got better.
The estuary took us in,
shutting the door on the storm behind us,
stilling the restless poltergeist
who'd made so free with the crockery.

It was like recovering from a fever,
walking on unsteady legs,
teetering past the sick-room smells,
the louring ghosts
of undigested breakfasts.

We took a turn on deck.
The wind chilled our sweat-wet brows
while New Brighton passed like a dream.
Further up, the mythic towers
shimmered in the haze.

Then it was getting the luggage
and the excitement of the gangplanks.
It was like arriving in the world.
The Beatles were on Tango cans,
the ferries crossed the Mersey,

and our Great Auntie Cilla knew George’s mother.
Everything was fab and gear,
it was a very good year,
it was 1965
and we felt fine.

Very sharply focused snapshot of a particular and memorable time and place. Are you coming across the Irish Sea to Liverpool from Dublin or Northern Ireland? The sounds are very skillfully managed. Fine work, David.

I like how you use the imagery and sense details to narrate this remembrance the narrator has of a trip.

Once again this is home-ground for me. Lovely details that bring it all back (excuse the pun), especially "the louring ghosts of undigested breakfasts". Excellent. I never took the ferry to Isle of Man but I did visit New Brighton, another long neglected seaside resort. I also still shudder to remember that same pale pasty sweat of a long rough trip on the ferry to Jersey. "I wanna hold your hand" was the first record I ever owned.

David, this is the kind of poem I’m always trying to write—a vivid snapshot of another time. It’s far from my home ground, but I’m there. Another of yours on the cusp between met and non (largely iambic tet), but it sings, as your poems always do.

I love it that “the gorgeous East” was Liverpool. I wonder if you’d like to play with the exoticism even more by calling it something like “the storied East.”

A gear ending. (Can I say that? We used to call things “bad” when they were good, but I’d never heard “gear.”)

I'm thinking that "George's mum" would be better.

Glad you like it, Glenn. Where am I coming from? I have disclosed that, rather coyly, in my location.

Thank you, John.

I think you and I have very similar pasts. Joe, although you may just be a few years ahead of me. My first record was not so creditable as yours, although we didn't actually get a record-player until much later. Up until then it was all radio and - once a week - Top of the Pops.

Thanks, Carl! That is a very pleasing comment to read. I like the idea of the singing.

Would "storied" be better than "gorgeous"? I'm very happy to consider it.

"Gear" is something I think I remember from those days - Liverpool slang, I think. I've always thought it was an adjective, but now I wonder whether I've always been wrong. However, I found this headline in the WSJ, but the article is behind a paywall ... When the Beatles Were Fab (and Gear).

Cheers all

David

Hi David,

I'm suitably swept up in the gently wry nostalgia of this and have no complaints. I can feel the sea and the rocking ferry and the innocent joy of the protagonist in the details. I quite like Carl's idea about "storied".

I do wonder about the end and whether it hammers the point home a bit too hard with an overload of cultural references in rapid succession: Sinatra, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Merseybeat slang. I wonder if you might trim and combine those last two stanzas somehow. Maybe like

Then it was luggage, the thrill of the gangplank.
It was like arriving in the world.
The Beatles were on Tango cans
and our Great Auntie Cilla knew George’s mum.
It was 1965. And we felt fine.

But better. Or alternatively something to extend those last four lines beyond their telliness. I can see the appeal of the ending's simplicity but for me it felt a bit easy after the lovely, resonant details of the other stanzas.

Hi David,

I had a similar response to Mark. I enjoyed the journey poem takes me on, but the close doesn't quite do it for me. I think maybe it's because we go from the personal history of the N, to the very public, shared history of the Beatles etc. Maybe another way of saying that is that I couldn't have written what leads up to the last stanza, but even though I wasn't alive in 1965, I could have written the last stanza, I think, if that makes sense?

Maybe, as Mark suggests, it's just the overloading of those references that's the issue. I do prefer Mark's dialled-back version works. And/or maybe there's a way to keep with the personal while referencing the Beatles.

best,

Matt

Thanks, Matt and Mark. (Sounds as though you should have your own show on BBC Radio 6 Music.) Oh heck. I thought my ending was okay. (And I'm impressed you got the Sinatra, Mark. I thought that might have slipped by almost unnoticed. Well maybe it did, until you got to it.) Perhaps there is an overload there, but I was hoping that would be the shock of arriving in the world. Maybe not. But I would miss "fab and gear" - wrongly, perhaps.

I know what you mean about the last stanza too, Matt. There may be something to be said about dialling it back. I will have a play around with that. Thanks both.

Cheers

David