A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

Name:
Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Monday, 6 September 2010

No Storybook Hero + In Praise of Sea Thrift (2 Poems)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

[Update Dec 1, 2017]: A reader (from Cornwall) has emailed to ask what inspired my fantasy novels, Mamelon 1 and  2 . Well, the plain and simple answer is that there in me - as quite probably in most if not all of us? - a Peter Pan character likely to spend the best part of a lifetime trying to get out and hoping (usually in vain) that no one will notice. Anyone interested will find my Mamelon novels on my fiction blog where a brief synopsis precedes each:
Meanwhile...

As requested by ‘Jane’ (also in Cornwall) I am repeating a poem (the second below) and some comments I posted on my gay-interest blog back in June which prompted protests from several readers in Cornwall. No offence was intended. I simply wrote how it is, for me personally at any rate. Much as I love visiting what has to be one of the most beautiful parts of the UK, I have never found it very gay-friendly.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when Cornwall held its first ever Gay Pride march in Truro, August 2009, I emailed the organisers to wish them well, only to receive a nasty reply telling me to stay away as they wanted no truck with gay activists. I hadn’t intended to participate or so much as implied that I might…and replied that I am no activist, just a poet.

I had friends in Cornwall once but - surprise, surprise - they have moved away.  I wouldn't mind betting that no one among the gay community there is anywhere near as as intolerant and insensitive as it would appear are the heterosexual majority. Fat chance of a gay poet making much of an impression there! Only recently, a reader emailed to say they had offered a Cornwall library one of my poetry titles after receiving one as a present but had already bought one. The library declined to accept and it appears that a member of staff made a point of referring to the fact that my collections include gay material. As a librarian working in public libraries for many years, I was quite upset. I guess this just goes to show how the UK has a long way to go before it is united against homophobia. While I won’t be put off visiting beautiful Cornwall, I won’t be popping into any of its libraries either…or engaging with the locals in any gay-interest debate.

No gay activist, me, honestly. I’m just an Ordinary Joe who also happens to be a poet who, in turn, also happens to be gay.

NO STORYBOOK HERO

When I listen to the waves,
they always tell the same stories
told by leafy choirs
long, long ago…how one day
I’d be riding a white horse
to fame and glory….
Only, life never took me that way,
but in other directions
despite objections from alter ego,
friends and family;
I wasn’t meant be a hero of the kind
that rides out storms, surfs
giant waves, climbs snowy peaks,
charges to the rescue,
bugles blaring, just in time to save
the goodies from the baddies
the way they manage it in movies
and all-time best-sellers

Life, it found another role for me,
an Ordinary Joe in the street,
trying to make the best of things,
struggling to make ends meet
nothing to lose, everything to prove
because I’m gay 

I was never cut out for the kind 
of grand heroics
found in lively tales of derring-do,
though knock me down
and l will bounce right back
like a smiley clown,
(better applause than tears)
get on with my life as best I can,
take it on the chin
like a ‘real’ man, play my part,
from the heart, for who I am,
no hero leapt out of fantasy fiction
but an Ordinary Joe fighting
old prejudices, siding with the trees
against a world feeding myths,
lies and stereotypes
to its children who, in turn, hopefully
know better than to listen

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007, 2010

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, 2007] 


Sea Thrift

This poem is a villanelle:


IN PRAISE OF SEA THRIFT

Guardians of our history,
looking out for us
among rocks by the sea

Shadows once the enemy,
now protectors,
guardians of our history

As natural as we to nudity,
rising, falling waves…
among rocks by the sea

Lovers, like fishes set free
from glass cages,
guardians of our history

Witness Apollo frantically
planting kisses …
among rocks by the sea

Careworn, fickle humanity
tearing out its pages,
guardians of our history
among rocks by the sea

[Cornwall, June 2009]


Copyright R. N. Taber 2009

[Note: This poem appears in my collection Tracking the Torchbearer, Assembly Books, 2012]]





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