Scots Poet Brian Whittingham is Teaching Poetry at SU in Spring ‘11

Good news for everyone planning to take poetry this Spring—Glasgow poet Brian Whittingham is coming from Scotland to be the Distinguished Visiting Poet, and to teach Narrative Poetry, ENGL 393.

Brian’s seven books of poetry cover everything from Clydeside dockworkers (as he was in his youth) to a collection of children’s poetry, Septimus Pitt and the Grumbeloids. A prolific and popular poet in Scotland, Brian is also a playwright, photographer, and talented teacher. We’re delighted that he has been able to leave his teaching duties at the Glasgow College of Nautical Studies (sailors need their poets!) to join us for a term this coming Spring.

Brian’s most recent collection of poems is Bunnets n Bowlers: A Clydeside Odyssey (Luath Press Edinburgh, 2009), a reference to the hats worn by the dockworkers (“bunnets” is Glaswegian for “bonnets” which is Scots for “hat”) and the managers—whose bowler hats characterize the men who don’t work with their hands. These poems showcase Brian’s special skills as a labor poet: dialect writing, storytelling, character building, and conveying a complete world to the reader.

Here's a link to his website: http://www.brianwhittingham.co.uk/

Below are a couple of poems from Bunnets n Bowlers:

THE NIGHTSHIFT MAN

He downed a few halfs and half-pints

in the Seven Seas public bar.

His nightshift chaser

for the shipyard that never slept.

And inside the fabrication shed

dimly lit

like a Stanley Spencer cathedral,

the half-cut nightshift man,

Lilliputian against the funnels 

that seemed to touch the shed’s roof,

he shaped and formed the cold creaking steel.

And in between showers of spraying sparks 

and blinding flashes of light

a fill of rattle hammer clatter screech and whine,

the nightshift man

played midnight darts,

munches three am makeshift meals,

and stole forty in the cardboard box beds.

And when the job went wrong

her cursed long

into the wee small hours.

And in the mornings going home

to his bed he passed

newly risen nine-to-fivers

with faces as dreich

as the clouds above their heads

blotting out the blue of the sky.

INDUSTRIAL DEAFNESS

In the QUIET comfortable waiting room

of the private hospital

a guy comes through the door

exclaiming to his colleagues

that both eardrums are perforated,

his claim is looking good

and we murmur our approval,

we’ll screw the bastards

out of every penny they’ve got

we think as we grow more deaf by the minute.

(And if all else fails

there’s always bronchitis

                        asthma

                        vibration white finger

                        or asbestosis.)

and I am acutely aware

it’s too late to understand

the implications of

            ‘Right enuf, wi thae big feet

            yi could get a joab in the polis nae bother,

            Ach, bit therr’s nae tae worry,

            ah’ll get yi a joab in the yards,

            yi’ll be fixed  up fur life, so yi wull,

            fixed up fur life.’

It’s strange: in my head

I can still hear these words being said.