Looking out the window above where I am writing there is a sheet of grey sky on this August day in 2017. Thank goodness then for memories of other summers.

Having just moved to Ipswich, Suffolk from the USA in 1967, I was an all-American boy more in tune with the Beach Boys and a 13 year old’s inherited Nebraskan patriotism than the hippie movement of San Francisco.

I have written elsewhere about this, but my record collection then was essentially two greatest hits albums by The Four Tops and Wilson Pickett. It wasn’t until later in the year after alt-left thugs [as Trump today would no doubt ascribe them] at my secondary school had turned my head from supporting the Vietnam war and God that I purchased Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced and life changed for me forever, even if English summers have from then to this day continued to be variable.

I am prompted to this brief reminiscence having posted my poem about Kentucky and the KKK two days ago. Taken from its initial collection Years, I thought it timely to also share another poem Purple Haze from it that celebrates the year 1967 as we now – well, some of us – celebrate the 50th anniversary of that seminal if ultimately doomed, in terms of realising all its aspirations, Summer of Love.

Forty years ago today I was in my kitchen in Ibstone having lunch when I heard that Elvis had died.

I grew up in the States with his music everywhere and liked in as much as it was so popular at the time, and there are obviously many songs of his I do still enjoy today. Return to Sender is my favourite – not the rock’n’roll of his genuine prime – and when I was a small boy I used to pretend-play my guitar, sing You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog, and shake all over for my family, probably mainly my mother who will have seen my potential – for something other than guitar playing. That could have been an E chord if I’d been a few frets down….

From my collection Nearing the Border, 1998, I originally wrote the poem prior to this as part of a sequence titled Years, recollections of personal experiences based on the years in which they occurred and each prompted by a song of that time.

Even in 1974 on a visit to my family then living in Lexington, I hadn’t expected to encounter such overt racism, nor to see the KKK on a rally as I passed by in a bus. Writing this poem some years later, I was still surprised/shocked by the racism continuing, as sadly I and so many others are here in 2017 amidst the racist tragedy in Charlottesville.

Big Ben rings on the hour.
Big Ben rings on the hour.
Big Ben rings on the half hour.
Big Ben rings at midnight with traffic in background. Exterior perspective.
Big Ben rings on the quarter hour.
Big Ben strikes at midnight.
Big Ben strikes at noon.
Big Ben strikes at six.
Big Ben strikes at three.
Big Ben strikes on three quarters of the hour.
London distant city by the River Thames. Distant Big Ben chimes in background at end.

London distant city by the River Thames.

[found list poem from the Big Ben Sounds site – where if you need to you can still hear – with only one manipulation]

I’ve tried today to write a meaningful observation on Donald Trump’s language over the past few weeks and days, but I have discarded many attempts because others have done so demonstrably better than me – today’s Guardian Opinion, for example; also US Republicans and Generals – and they have a significant voice and audience.

The importance for me stating something personally relevant here is to recognise there is one kind of language/expression of his that is dangerous and disturbing yet it can and should be ridiculed and satirised. I try to do this most often through a found poetry that appropriates the words he uses and then randomises and rearranges these to highlight what I see as the dumb reality of their original form. Obviously not on my own, but I harbour a thought that such ‘creative’ reflections can have their own contribution to play [acknowledging the pun] in sustaining a commentary of why this man is unfit to be President of the USA [acknowledging the platitude].

Trump’s most recent many sides observation doesn’t seem to me to bear this kind of creative playfulness as a method for exploration and exposure. Indeed, its existence means my idea for further creative working on his recent war rhetoric is redundant: I certainly can’t be playful with that after the impact of what the President has spoken, and also not said, in response to events in Charlottesville.

Of course my decision-making on this is of little importance, but it is the most meaningful comment I can make on Trump’s recent language when I cannot find anything else to say.

Donald Trump took to the witness stand for the first time today in his lawsuit against Kim Yong-un, claiming the North Korean leader goaded him into behaving like a complete asshole.

The North Korean leader has filed a counter-suit against the President of the United States stating that Trump’s war rhetoric was in danger of making the American sound more of an irrational despot than Kim has been for years.

Both claims are being considered at the trial.

On the third day of testimony, Trump said that his current, definitely still current Press Secretary, had witnessed the goading in a secret Skype conference the two world leaders had had recently regarding who was the bigger twat.

‘He goaded my ass,’ Trump said. ‘He goaded the bare cheek of my ass right in front of my Press Secretary and the other mindless sycophants who were in the conference room with me,’ he further asserted.

The lawyer of the North Korean leader questioned Trump about the possibility of any goading making him look a bigger asshole than he already was.

The trial was later suspended when the Judge ruled there would need to be time to reconcile differences of linguistic interpretation of the words asshole and ass as well as establish the size of such whatever the epistemological conclusions and to seek specialist advice on when exactly either Trump or Kim Yong-un could be considered to be irrational and bereft of reason and whether this had anything to do with innate assholeness or if this could be a goaded-into proclivity.

Pleased to have my poem Fire and Fury up at ‘I am not a silent poet’ here. So good to have a forum for, among a full range, immediate and political poetic commentary. Thanks to Reuben.

There is an interesting report in yesterday’s Schools Week here about the Standards and Testing Agency’s refusal to release details of this year’s KS2 SATs marking guidance.

Rejecting a request for this to happen [read article for full details] the STA apparently argued that to do so would cause students and teachers stress [?] and would be highly likely to be misunderstood [??!].

One could have an easy go at the cruel irony of any government agency of any testing regime being concerned about teacher/pupil stress levels, but the deeper irony is surely the observation that such guidance would likely be misunderstood.

It wouldn’t’ take a KS2 student too much trouble to extrapolate that this also means those who did the actual marking will have been stumped by the guidance. These of course will be teachers – I can understand the need, but I’ve always thought it shameful – but if teachers who administer the tests cannot follow the guidance, then…..

That was the extrapolation. Full marks. One of the few aspects of a KS2 English GPS that would so easily get a full score, especially if it was alternatively the guidance on the shape of any semi-colons used, which abject nonsense this year led to the request for publication of this guidance.

I’ve retained a trenchant and sustained objection over the years, and on this blog, to the KS2 English GPS and previously SPaG testing because its discrete focus on language elements does little to promote and then test [assess] effective writing, but also because by that very discrete nature the marking guidance becomes prescriptive – where elements of language cannot be so defined, in most real-life situations – and therefore, by extrapolation, punitive and brutal.

Whilst never having had to teach the KS2 SATs, I did teach and then consequently have to challenge on a number of occasions the English KS3 SATs before they were rightly, if belatedly, scrapped. These too had marking guidance which was fundamentally flawed because it gave definitive answers in mark schemes for markers to employ. To state the obvious: this meant that rich diversity of possible answers which evidenced that rich diversity of totally accurate alternatives could not be credited.

The fact that English teachers as markers allowed this barbed-wire enclosure of answers to restrict and contain what should be their broad professional acceptance of the infinite variety of meanings is…..

Extrapolate.

I received this sweet chapbook today containing four poetic vignettes from poet Jim Burns.

Without being overly nostalgic for someone my age, I think this is exactly how poetry should continue to be published, circulated and read: carefully prepared and presented stapled chapbooks wherein fine poetry speaks simply and honestly.

Something like that. Any expansion and then overstatement would be anathema to the fine work of Jim Burns. The following bio, taken from this chapbook, sums it up perfectly:

The following link here will take you to Adrian Manning’s site where details of this chapbook and others can be found. There’s more about Jim Burns from me here.

1. Saxon Rhyming Kings

Egbert was the first Saxon King,
ahead [wait for it] of four Aethels – that’s
wulf
bald
bert
and red
up until the first Great,
who was Alf-
red,

and each King had to wait
for the preceding to be pronounced led
off from their mortal bed.

Next was Ed, or Edward
as his name’s
longer word,

then it’s the fifth Athel-,
this time stan,
yet another man,
and then the symmetry of five more Eds,
or Eads – that’s
mund
red
wig
gar
and ward;

when not quite ready as he hadn’t
read the script,
back comes a sixth Aethel-
red II,

then one more, though second time around
to make six,
Edmund II Ironside
who would divide
his kingdom with

Canute

who cleverly ordered the tide to stay away
knowing it would roll back later that day
and make him a man [rather than a god],
his crafty nod
to normality.

Harold I was the next king for a bit
[a nasty joke if you look into it]
then Harthacanute until he made toast,
or a toast to be precise,

then Edward the Confessor
is the next kingly dresser
until Harold II was the last
Saxon successor.

2. Norman Kings Haiku

Four Kings are your lot:
Williams 1 and 2, Henry
1, Stephen the Nought.