The Europeans

David Clarke

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781911027690
• eBook ISBN:
  9781911027782
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

David Clarke, winner of the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2013, returns with his second collection, The Europeans. Simultaneously close to home and looking outward beyond these shores, these wry and perceptive poems revel with form and encompass journeys, ideas of nationhood and national identity, and the optimism of a time when Europe and the UK enjoyed a quite different entente cordiale. They are a warning against nostalgia, a lucid and prescient exploration of how we see ourselves and how we are seen.

"A document for our times. A protest against bigotry and smuggery. A thesis for open borders and equality. In its cumulative effect, The Europeans is a comparative cultural analysis, a social satire and political commentary, a portrait of us and them, here and there, home and away." Paul Stephenson

"Clarke's authoritative new collection offers profound pleasures, and deepening regrets, in a poetic continent where every reader must confront 'your own untruth'. The Europeans is certainly a book for the present. It is also a book for our uncertain future." - Alison Brackenbury
"It includes the best gathering of found Brexit similes I expect to see in my lifetime, and a poem on stately homes that needs to be broadcast before every re-run of Downton Abbey. With targeted humour, an eye for the mobile and the sedentary, repurposing the mundane, David Clarke takes us to estates of all kinds, to both Leeds Central and Milano Centrale."– Alistair Noon

Letter to George Gordon Byron

Dear G, I think you may forgive my cheek

as I address you without that lordly title

and shake you rudely from your embalmed sleep.

I hear you’re well preserved, so the fright will

not do too much harm, I hope. We keep

on coming back to you, we scribblers, entitle

ourselves to your estate of rhyme. My weak

effort’s more a sideways way to speak

of troubles you would no doubt recognise.

A puffed-up England sneers again at all

that’s foreign, toffs are cheered by plebs they despise.

Schemers promise the mob to ‘send them all

back’, but smirk as they betray. Each vies

to unseat pale Mrs May. Her downfall

will seem small to you, yet who recalls

your Castlereagh? In short, the scene appals.

And I’ve not even mentioned our free press,

the voice of England’s bigotry and smuggery.

You’d not fare too well with them today, I’d guess.

(They’ve not lost their old distaste for buggery.)

They’ve hate for all the joy that they repress

and screeching you’d dismiss as verbal thuggery.

Wits like you are monstered for daring to be

an offence to journos’ propriety.

And still you’d find that freedom’s not a cause

for which the English like to stir their bones.

They flog their bombs to those who’ll pay, of course,

then put high fences right around their homes,

vote to make a fortress of the borders.

This land loves fear, yet reckons that the groans

of the oppressed are just put on, disowns

the fate of its own far-off conflict zones.

Agreed – so far my song’s not very fetching.

Verse should be subtle to reveal its truth.

This is just a complex form of kvetsching,

ineptly done (that last rhyme is the proof).

What’s more, these stanzas are proving rather vexing.

You’d knock out endless cantos in your youth.

Some critics claimed your manner was perplexing,

but you had talent – and looks, which are the main thing.

Nobody reads you now, it’s sad to relay,

save undergrads who slog through their exams.

One writes, ‘he was a big noise in his day.

When he croaked he still had many plans –

to liberate the Greeks and do away

with foreign despots. Such inspired demands

suit our own age. What would he likely say

to Brexit? If he were still alive today

he’d cheer, despite extreme old age.’ This student’s

Young Conservative or worse – a bater

of his right-on profs, for sure. Imprudent

he may seem to pen such guff, yet cater

to all views his teachers must. Impudent

rascals who earn Thirds cry foul and later

sue for breach of contract. Their alma mater

would prefer them to become donators.

That student has a point, I must admit,

on your beloved Greece. You’d weep to see

it coshed by men in suits who seem legit,

but have a banker’s taste for liberty,

i.e. not much of one. And what won’t fit

the markets’ needs is ripe for pillory –

jobless Greeks are supernumerary,

just like quaint notions of equality.

Right-thinking folk will overlook these faults

of European peace. Besides, they travel

widely and love Paris well. Assaults

upon their right to shop in Rome, then marvel

idly at St Peter’s gilded vaults,

are not well received. They curse the rabble

who queered their cushy pitch, but what revolts

them most is that the revolting dared to revolt.

And who can blame them? After all, they’ve got

those tabloid-reading troglodytes to thank

that their kids will miss out on that spot

with the Commission or (better) Deutsche Bank.

Truly, you can’t envy them their lot –

the most their darlings can hope for now’s a think-tank

or a civil service job. The rank

injustice of it all is clear. I drank,

dear G, a toast to you the other day.

Can you guess, deep in your tomb, the cause?

The date of your arrival at Missolonghi,

in 1824. I’ve seen those shores

where you alighted to acclaim, away

from home yet finding home in others’ wars.

I’m too much a coward to choose your way,

but let my poem mark that anniversary.

Station to Station

Zoologischer Garten

The dawn comes pre-soundtracked –

shimmers of Moog, the plosive tick

of a drum machine. Pigeons are analogue,

scatter across the opening pan of this travelogue.

Nottingham Central

Tea too hot to drink in cups too ho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Invitation
• Letter in March
• An Exchange
• The Europeans
• To a Black and White Portable Television
• The Tarot Reader Shows Me the Hierophant
• Museum of Lies
• To a Public House
• In the Snug
• Let Me Be Very Clear
• The Defence of Bureaucracy
• The Towns
• When my mother worked in the asylum
• To a Mellotron
• The Villages
• To a Stately Home
• The Wreckers’ Prayer
• The Chicken Catchers
• To a Telephone Box
• The Girl with the Golden Voice
• England, I loved you
• Night Porter
• Hotel Stationery
• To a Petrol Station
• For the Traveller
• Auden at Kirchstetten
• Laudatio
• To a Small Audience
• Linguaphone
• To a Photo Booth
• Lingua franca
• The Clock
• The Amber Room
• Sugar Town
• To an Airmail Letter
• The Numbers Stations
• The Natives
• On Choosing a Piano
• Letter to George Gordon Byron
• Station to Station
• Apparition
• Land of Rain
• The Vision of Albion
• Notes and Acknowledgements
• About the author and this book