Letter from London: poet, leader, bishop and creator of post-punk

Photo source: gnomonic – CC BY 2.0

An early love of poetry began after listening to Bob Dylan and reading Wilfred Owen. But there has always been the Penguin Contemporary Poets series, which brought together three poets in each of the 27 books. I once even rescued a copy of Penguin Modern Poets 25 with Gavin Ewart, Zulfiqar Ghose and B.S. from a charity shop. Johnson, and I immediately loved Gavin Ewart’s line: “I rode the hearse back at 70 miles an hour / My worries went away.” “The capacity for loss,” I thought as I read this. As it happens, Capacity for Loss is the title of friend Adrian Dannatt’s new collection of poems, presented last week at the Miguel Abreu Gallery on Eldridge Street in New York. Didn’t Dylan say that we should take what we can learn from coincidences?

Former Sudanese Prime Minister Dr. Abdalla Hamdok was in London. “Of course, we can arrange a meeting,” he replied generously. We’ve been discussing this for over a year since my interest in his country was piqued next to the giant pelican in St James’s Park. (I was walking with a friend who worked in and outside of Khartoum.) Dr. Hamdok is a true man of the world to me. As the president of the Sudanese civilian movement Tagadum, which most see as the only way out of the ongoing fighting between the SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces) and the RSF (Rapid Support Force), the man appears to have no ego. Along with Dr. Hamdok in London were fellow delegates Takaduma Ahmed Toud, Omar Manis and Khalid Omer, one of whom I had already met in East Africa, and the other of whom I subsequently met during this trip.

A smart Brit I know who lives abroad has no intention of coming back here. He’s so upset about Blighty that I’m starting to feel sympathy for him, which is unacceptable patronizing behavior towards me. “Great Britain is thirty-five thousand feet in the middle of the Atlantic and one engine has failed,” he wrote to me. I noticed the “we” going on. “Will another engine be able to keep us in the air or will we begin to descend?” he continued, later saying: “Remember that it is not the prime minister, the king or the military that is the highest authority in this country. This is the bond market. If the bond market is not willing to cooperate, it’s game over.” Frankly, the bond market has not cooperated. At times he is so hostile to the current state of the country of his birth that I find myself oddly protective of it as a result. After the recent Budget, he said: “So what has happened today is a petrol burn that is making the country completely uncompetitive. Anyone who knows anything about business and finance knows how this movie ends.” Perhaps he’s right. I don’t know. But I will work hard to maintain our friendship.

Friendship was the theme of my father-in-law at the memorial service for his oldest and closest friend in autumnal Warwickshire early last week. “Keep a friend under the key of your life,” as William Shakespeare of Warwickshire once wrote. It was an emotional event. As it happened, friendship was also the topic of a fascinating one-on-one conversation in the House of Lords with the senior bishop the next day. A big Liverpool football fan, he stood at the entrance like a goalkeeper. After strict security checks, we walked into a room full of incredibly tall cabinets that contained the clothing of the Lords Spiritual of the House of Lords. From there, we crossed the red carpet to chat over coffee while the stormy sea loomed above us in the form of a weathered oil painting. The voices of older people rose like smoke from other tables. (“I think it’s a good testimony to life after death,” said Lord Soper of the House of Lords, whom I regularly watched in Speakers’ Corner.) The Bishop is a remarkably radical man, working in some of the most dangerous parts of the world. This January he is traveling to the Middle East. I am always surprised by the extent to which pragmatism must work for faith to work.

I was grateful for the opportunity to meet musician Gareth Sagar, whom I first met while following his avant-garde post-punk journey with bands Rip Rig + Panic and Float Up CP in the early 80s. (Gareth also founded the post-punk, dub and free jazz group The Pop Group.) When I first saw Rip Rig + Panic, it was the first time I heard their singer Neneh Cherry. I’ve mentioned Gareth here before. He roamed the stage like a London Scottish tiger, keeping everyone on their toes and progressing. Bassist Sean Oliver, who became another friend, was one of the coolest guys on the planet. Tireless drummer Bruce Smith was also part of The Pop Group, and I heard Sarah Sarhandi solo on viola not too long ago at the O2. Pianist Mark Springer, with whom I worked on a one-off revue at Norrie McLaren’s studio in Brixton. Saxophonist David “Flash” Wright, whom I met again in the final days of the Colonial Room (Gareth performed “Trance Laments of the Ghost Ship” with Flash last year), and singer Andy Oliver, Sean’s sister, is now a successful TV chef -chef and charming book reviewer. . How did Gareth do and do this? An underrated master of ceremonies with a real talent for talent if ever there was one, he even wrote some of the late poet Jock Scott’s best work, and I’m a big fan of Gareth’s solo piano work ’88 Tuned Dreams’.

I ended up attending the keynote address by Dr. Abdalla Hamdok. “Stopping the war is what drives me,” he told those present. – Nothing more. My mission will end the day we stop this war.” Independent political institutions in the West are very good at providing important platforms worthy of visiting by dignitaries whose countries are in flames. Western governments, I’m afraid, to a lesser extent. Not unless you think it would be profitable to move them to large country houses in the middle of nowhere. Let’s see how the UNSC fares this month under the British presidency. It must be said that Dr. Hamdok’s speech took place on a suitable autumn day. Even boots on the ground and no-fly zones were discussed. But the mood remained one of missed opportunities and fallen leaves. One of the reasons I wanted to make a film about Sudan is to fill the huge vacuum created by the almost complete lack of information about the viability of a civilian alternative to bloodshed, but people are not interested in Sudan. They say there is, but there is no evidence of it. Meanwhile, as I left, supporters of one warring side gathered near the conversation with their expensive printed banners. I squeezed through their many green camouflage shirts. That same day, online, a Sudanese policeman put a gun to someone’s head and ordered that person to read their demand on camera. If the man’s family had not cooperated, the kidnappers were going to kill the man. And so it is.

Finally, I returned to my rescued copy of Penguin Modern Poets 25 and was just studying the 1978 handwritten dedication on the inside first page when I suddenly realized that it had been written by none other than the poet himself, Gavin Ewart, one of the book’s three poets. . He personally dedicated this copy to someone named “Charlotte.” I wondered if “Charlotte” was still with us, since I knew the poet had died in 1995. In fact, as I studied his sharp, life-filled handwriting, I felt for a moment as if I was riding a hearse backwards at 70 miles an hour.