Chamber of Fools
Š 2016 expresseum poetics press www.expresseumpoetics.org.uk
Authors retain sole copyright of their individual poems. Images: Nikki Clayton
The poems in this pamphlet are the produce of a subterranean poetic exploration of Willoughby House cave in Nottingham. The exploration was part of a Writing East Midlands’ Write Here Residency series of location-focused creative workshops facilitated by poet Mark Goodwin 2015/16. This particular adventure was also inspired, informed and facilitated by artist Jo Dacombe.
Funded and supported by: Writing East Midlands, expresseum poetics, Nottingham Writers Studio, Paul Smith.
THE CAVE – a factual description A circular space, with a stone pillar at its centre, the curved column of which resembles a tree. Carved into the pillar are the initials - PL NS 73. Cave floor of trampled earth, dusty, marked by footprints. Around the edges of the circular space are brick divided compartments. There is a cold, earthy smell. Light is a large globe to side of where pillar extends onto roof of cave. Some of us illuminate our own space. Above and beyond the light is darkness Light shines onto a face, hands scribble on pale oblongs of paper. A tunnel leads off. A bag lies half in shadow. Another bag is red and grey. It is a rucksack, lit by the ceiling light. A semi-circle of different footwear can be seen, anything from boots to trainers. Some stand. Some sit. Someone takes a photograph. There is a low mumble of sound, but there is also a silence, broken by coughs and shifting of bag. We were asked to choose objects within this space, and lie about them.... Myths are born from imagination. Imagination is born from atmosphere. Down there we were wrapped in atmosphere, and thus within our imaginations. We were eager to grasp at the idea of lies. Lies tell stories. My stories were born from the stone pillar, and initials carved into the stone pillar. Glints in the earth floor; a tiny mark in the wall of the cave; a door lying sideways; a broken form/bench, and a piece of polythene. PILLAR Once this stone pillar was a sturdy oak in Sherwood Forest, until a woodcutter (his name was Robin), fleeing from the Sheriff of Nottingham, felled it, and brought it here under cloak of darkness. He carved out a stone covering for the tree, day and night, month, year and decade. He gathered others around him, who sat and plotted in a circle of dim light. They are long gone, but I still sense their presence. GLINTS AND INITIALS There are glints in the brick enclosed spaces, and on the floor of the cave. Diamonds, and gems, left where the smugglers who once used the caves, discarded their ill-gotten gains. Peter Larkin and his lover Noelle Saintclere (a French woman) came here with the smugglers in 1773. An illicit love flamed in the darkness. They never left, these glints in the darkness that glimmer beneath our feet, are maybe the last fragments of their bones, long crunched underfoot.
MARK In one section of the curbed wall there is a mark, almost like a doll’s, a tiny human’s, or a fairy’s footprint. I heard of tales told long ago, of tiny subterranean beings heard and felt here, sometimes even seen above where we sit, in rooms and dark city streets and gardens. INITIALS In times long gone, an old man lived here. He was older than we can ever imagine, he was bent over like a weak sapling. No one knew his name for certain, but it is rumoured that these are his initials, PL, for Paul Lovage, and that 73 denotes his final year in this space. There were animals here, then. PL had care of them. Stunted, ill-formed ponies they were, carrying loot, pillage, ill-gotten gains. Some people once saw the old man and his ponies. They never slept without the lights on thereafter. DOOR The door lies sideways. It once formed a barrier to the outside world, shielding the gentle people of the house above, from the noises below. The smell of the cave is now, largely, earth, but around the door there is the lingering aromas of tobacco and brandy. One Excise man, was braver than his colleagues were. He shot at the door, and broke it down. You can still see the musket hole. There is a lingering acrid smell of gunpowder. He carved his initials NS ( Nicholas Simms). 1773, it should have been, but he was tired, and 73 was all his fingers could manage. POLYTHENE Many years ago, a poor young girl came down here, under cover of darkness, stealthily, clandestinely, holding a bundle wrapped in polythene. She unwrapped the bundle, dug out a shallow grave for the still, small baby it had contained, buried the body, and swept the dusty earth over its final resting place. She went home, her secret held inside the polythene transparency of memory. She told me much, much later, needing the comfort of confession. I didn’t believe her, then, but now I recognise these dark stains are long spilt blood. FORM This broken wooden form was the Master’s. He brought it here long, long ago. His followers were glad of it. Their scribbles were, for them, no innocent pastime on those cold winter nights, recording, as they did so, upon the yellowed paper, the sums of ill-gotten gains. The initials were their prospective customers, the columns pounds, shillings and pence. They wrote as they sat beside the walled partitions, One for brandy, one for bales of silk and satin, one for tobacco, one for coins, gold and silver and the others for?
STONE TREE Stone tree looms above us, a vast trunk springs from cold earth A canopy anchors the roof We sit, each alone enveloped in the falling leaves of thought IN THE DARK In our isolation a massed choir of thoughts sings through our souls here we are not really shielded. Here we face mortality for the cave wraps us in shawls of nurturing or shrouds colder than cold CAVE DWELLERS We go down, drinking in the darkness Biting into our innermost reserves Swallowing negative thoughts and fears, digesting emotions Dissecting the depths, uncovering arteries carrying imagination Lifeblood of the universal poet It is dark within and around, inside and out Only fitfully illumined by conscious thought Above us windswept streets are the city’s own arteries Of shops, of selling, of the power of persuasion Here, below, beneath Here now, wrapping itself around us there is only the dark A smothering shroud or a mothering shawl Dependent upon the flow of our imagination CITY STREETS We thought those streets held everything that mattered Those august buildings, those architects, solicitors, attorneys at law, Those shops selling dreams, those restaurants promising full-filment Those cars, trams, taxies promising easy travel We were seduced, enthralled, did not believe, could not conceive of anything else We entered through a front door, exited through a rear door Walked down steps and entered the world of the cave Only now do we realise the true worth of those city streets FAULT LINE (title of book in bag at The Writers Studio) Streets away, fault lines lay waiting to be cracked apart Our feet initiated seismic activity A pulse beat again, an ancient pulse, out of the darkness
TANNERY WENCH Into the cave’s pits she places the hides still streaked with scarlet where blood once flowed Her hands ache, her fingers tingle, her sweat is sticky around her breasts Her cheeks are chapped She runs her fingers through her hair, strands stick to her forehead The grease has hardened between fingers where the scabies mites burrow All around her is ammonia’d air, dust, bricks, earth, clothes, skin It is dark here, humid She knows her labours will put bread in the mouths of her children Clothes on their backs, shelter from the cold North winds The skins flap as she moves amongst them The slap, slap of the pelts in the pits echoes the throb inside her chest She knows that the city streets above will be cold tonight She swallows bile, shivers, and dips another pelt into the pit RUSTIC CHIPS What exactly are “rustic chips”? They sound almost royal in their olde-worldliness Are they made from King Edward Potatoes If so was he Edward I, II, III, IV? (if Edward VII did they stop serving them briefly when he abdicated?) Or does rustic mean their shape - crook-backed as Richard III Or the recipe - are they basted with boars fat or goose grease? Or served on wooden platters to eat with greasy fingers I must come to The Cross Keys one day, if only to sample them And depart, with my appetite, and curiosity, satisfied MYTHS AND LEGENDS I remember, back in those radio days listening to Quatermass And The Pit, Reading and being read old tales about subterranean passageways, buried pirate gold, trolls and troglodytes, and giant arachnoids, and the myth of Persephone, I half expected to discover an ancient Crusader still guarding the Grail, but saw nothing of these and, instead, formed my own myths SHOP FRONTS Snow, surf, skate Like the Ibis wading through the Nile steeped in imagination’s flow I walk A stone cross stands opposite in splendid isolation The Cross Keys – a holy symbol? holds a promise of “rustic chips” My mouth waters BLUE How oddly blue has impinged upon this day From the umbrella, a bright circle beneath dark rain clouds The blue case trundled behind a hunched and hurrying back The blue hat upon wind tousled hair The blue curve of modern architecture Mismatched above blue graffiti Amid red brick, stucco facings, multi-windowed facades
Then back inside, to blue, red, yellow crisp packet and blue mug So much blue that I almost taste its shading from navy to azure Almost feel a bitter sweet melancholy born of blue CELLAR/CAVES Deep down, underground Arteries leaking, bleeding thoughts and feelings Stone pillars supporting upper stories branching out into lofty emotions Dusty earth is marked with footprints, blackened by dark imagined deeds Rucksacks carry imagined necessities - all that we think we need? The space around us is supposedly empty Yet it fills, fills with old imagined myths, is peopled, not just by us But by phantoms resurrected by the darkness The smell is cold, the coldness of earth Smothering us as a shroud in the finality and finiteness of life A hook hangs empty where once hung an unidentifiable carcase A glint is neither diamonds nor crystals but mundane glass, brown bottle glass echoing alcoholic nightmares Amongst myriad marks is a singular small shape, a fairy footprint The cave is my, our, womb THE BUILDING ABOVE US Triptych of levels Carousel of coloured ties Shirts impeccably pressed and piled Belts buckled against The stresses of city life Two gilt chairs embody togetherness Art Deco ceiling lights One is bottle blue echoing the blues of the city outside Umbrella, suitcase, cycle frame, woolly hat, blue scribbled graffiti But here, here is Audrey Hepburn – Hollywood Legend Here is Treasure Tours photograph of smiling faces in an echo of forgotten eras of innocence, of elegance “Twenty Five Flowers” portray delicacy a smaller room has “Hello Kitty” a childlike ambience and - ruled upon the stair treads – counting down the decades Earth Cellar House Emporium Museum Shop GARDENS City gardens Distantly distinctive dwindling worlds of black railings Black bricked paths and ivy from black loam springing Civic spaces commemorating forgotten aldermen Watered by status, celebrating respectability Privet impressing with glossy pomposity Impressing upon us That those city dwellers of old Were, in reality, growing aspirations Alongside the aspidistras
CAVE/HOUSE SPLICED Deep down, underground A triptych of levels Of arteries leaking, bleeding into carousel of coloured ties Into thoughts and feelings Stone pillars supporting upper stories branch out into lofty emotions Shirts impeccably and pressed piled Belts buckled against the stresses of city life Dusty earth is marked with footprints, blackened by dark imagined deeds two gilt chairs embody togetherness rucksacks carry imagined necessities - all that we think we need art deco light fittings – one is bottle blue echo the blues of the city above Umbrella, suitcase, cycle frame, woolly hat, blue scribbled graffiti The space around us is supposedly empty Yet it fills us Fills us with imagined deeds Is peopled by not just us, but by phantoms resurrected by the darkness Here, here is Audrey Hepburn Hollywood Legend Here is Treasure Tours Smiling faces in echo of innocence and elegance The smell is cold - the coldness of earth Smothering us as a shroud In the finality, the finiteness of life A hook hangs, hung a carcase “Twenty five flowers” portray delicacy a glint is not diamonds nor crystal but mundane glass, brown bottle glass Echoing alcoholic nightmares A singular small dark shape is a fairy footprint And a smaller room has “Hello Kitty” a childlike ambience The cave is my, our, womb and - ruled upon the stair treads –0-29 is counting down the decades Earth Cellar House Emporium Museum Shop
Cave You seduced me With your velvet darkness Your whispers of secrets long gone to earth From your womblike ambience I emerged To the bustle of the City’s theatre Reborn and slapped to life by an Invisible midwife
Cave voice
Your voice is a murmur A distillation of dust A whisper of air A sighing intake of breath Listen! and it will awaken memories of other times Listen! and it will set alarm bells ringing inside Your mind For here you think that you are alone But you are accompanied by the unseen
Arteries
Arteries exist beneath the city’s grey skin Arteries furred by long centuries of sulphurous abuse They spread out unseen Except when we dig beneath Eager to get to the city’s heart Eager to see what dark blood boils and seethes
Sheila Sharpe
In Praise of Sandstone
There's a space under the pulmonary aorta brain.
left of the
right of the
Like that cave under Paul Smith clothes shop in Nottingham city centre, long thought to be a Druid temple, but, in fact, a gentleman’s wine-cellar. The crumbliness of its walls tells me there is always a gentle negotiation between fact and fiction, sandstone and air. There's a lacuna between the hemispheres of the brain left of the right of the pelvis. A vacuum, a silence, like that snow-cave in Annapurna. The last Yeti sat at the entrance to it & chanted a sutra. There's a grotto even Freud can't reach, where you run out of the words to cure yourself. You spin the same story till the point of it wears a hole in the universe. You're a spider, creeping near the plughole, near the vortex of scummy water. Call it the vertigo of Subatomic Space. Or the indigo of Deep Space. Or Emptiness. Or Wordlessness. Or the freefall as you step off the precipice, the edge of the delusion of language, the edge of the delusion of Self. To
the
place
which
is
no-place,
which
Lightning once cracked out of it, left of my
is
everywhere. right of my
Like that rock-shrine under Nottingham Castle, sealed in 1535, where an alabaster Virgin weeps tears which may or may not, which may or may not, be milk.
Rich Goodson
Paul Smith Cave Man Real cave men Don’t drink smoothies or Eat sun blush tomatoes After dark They devour Sushi And beef Carpaccio Drink red wine And double shot Expresso Dressed to kill With finely Manicured hands They are cut throat shaven Sharp suited and Hairy chested under Graffiti print shirt Slashed with Bright silk tie In abstract pattern Nailed with shiny Cuff link skulls Real cave men sport Hand-stitched brogues Stripy nonchalant scarf Mark their territory With leathery woody scent Notes of citrus Cardamom and Smokey Gauloises.
Susie Fletcher
Caves under Paul Smith’s The air moves as a circle of voices utter, each making a claim on the space, each changing the cave, resonating within the walls, the floor, the gentle surf of dust. Traces of these voices may thrill the shades of those gents in cuffs and wigs quaffing study ales in the gentleman’s aged cellar as time bends with the pitch of our speech. Above, roos in the garden gathered centrally. All is fresh to new Joey. The surface of his mother is his realm Three delights in his world – breathing, climbing, then suffused with rich food. Roos in the garden, ears up, tails firm, sentries ever. All eyes on them, they on all eyes, lassoing our lenses, rousing our retinas, causing us to ignore the depth of the butterfly, the charm of the mole.
Tony Challis
Beneath the floorboards There’s nowhere I’d rather be Don’t go down there Amongst those things of beauty Unless you really need to Read the meter for the gas man A visual feast Colour, shape, pattern Watch your step The light is broken Strictly Come Dancing seeping Through cracks in the floor Savour the rows Thick walls absorb Drink in the beautiful Sound of Woodbine cough A chink of too little Stench of Albert’s corpse Push chair or shopping trolley Thundering past Shaking the foundations Of the precious Undiscovered for weeks Stroke pools of water Where nobody knew The floor slopes away And nobody cared Remember silky garment fondle What if they see me now
Susie Fletcher
Soul Excerpts I want to process, to wind To turn and meditate To mill The daily grind To stir, to cogitate, to chip away The weight of the world and go below ** Impermanence Our shoes Tool marks Constantly redrawn Erased Corrected No hope of a legacy underfoot ** The guts of this cavern The bowels of the earth Place of the lowly, the guilty, the filthy and the lost There is no air whilst those bricks prevail Closing, covering, coveting and preserving lives lost in the dark **
A new life came forth Spat sound into words Encrypted script and Intrepid introspection was Outed, exposed Naked thoughts stumbled in black space Soaked into sand, preserved Each grain a consonant ** In that chamber That chapel of souls Dark pressed down On enlightened beings who proffered Words, clicks and sounds As currency of perception To illuminate the space and Commune in sacred script **
Beauty hung in the air Reverberated around the Chamber of fools Offering sounds to the dark Swirling and twisting around the column That milked our words A verbal soup Nourishment for the earth **
The cat smelt a rat As I sat At home When I got back From that spat Underground **
Karen Francis
Cellar Dreams II Enter first The cellar Inside the earth I’d rather be Broken shapes To hear Sounds to feel Breathe A visual feast Seeping through The cracks Thick walls absorb The noise of silk Reflective glow Just enough Light to shake Off the past Stroke the foundations Of the precious Mercury pools Slope away a chink Of light from Pavement above Behind the hopeless Glass pull back The fabric And dream once more.
Susie Fletcher
A Museum of Clothed Cellar & Shop House down the stone stairs into the hollowed head resting in the mouth of a planet’s house the drip off the round ceiling the drips off the flickering lamp buzzing in the cellar’s aching cranium take the bottles of upland light down into the wet silence under the kitchen feel the cooking’s vibration pulled down by the storage-place of sayings forgotten crack open the gleaming bottles let the bright contents bleed away into the spongy walls of a world’s surrounding a beastly cavity the cave where the bear slept is wet with the wine the bear squeezed from each grape of fear the wine from roots creaking down from plants above the juice of the white blind searching feelers the furry rugs right in the bottom of the cellar where damp collects the rugs rise and fall as something ancient breathes its last to begin the darkness of knowledge
on the round table the ties are clock-arranged the chandelier is pulling in light the reverse museum gleam is gracious each measured step up the staircase requires each foot to cross a measure inches are left to starve on each step’s lip by the ground window-eye mullioned with ligaments a row of jackets hangs as outside the garden breaks down singing leaf-green kangaroo-tones I step on the bare board its creak transmits some god’s infinite impatience as the roof somewhere floors above takes this signal and rolls interior space away and up to clouds holding the gathering wealth of rain the dryness in here is creeping up each corner in each room the warm dryness of in-here-ness has spread across the neatly folded-&-stacked shirts to be sold I dwell in a costume my house is on clothes-hangers to be bought
down the stone stairs off the round table ties to the hollow head are clock-arranged resting in the mouth chandelier pulling in a planet’s house light the reverse museum the drip off the round gleam is gracious ceiling the drip off the measured step flickering lamp buzzing staircase requires each in the cellar’s aching foot to cross a measure inches are left to starve the cranium take the bottles’ upland light down on every step’s lip into the wet silence by the grand window-eye under the kitchen feel mullioned with ligaments the cooking’s vibration pulling a row of jacket hangings down by the storage-place as outside the garden saying forgotten breaks down singing crack open the gleaming green kangaroo tones light the bright contents bleed steps on bare boards away into the spongy walls creak transmits some gods’ world surrounding infinite impatience beastly cavity the cave roof somewhere floors above the bear slept wet in rolling signals the bear squeezed from interior space each grape of fear up to clouds holding wind from roots cracking down glittering wealth of rain from plants above the juice the dryness in here the blind searching feelers creeping up each corner the furry rugs right in each warm room rise and fall of something folded stacked shirts the darkness of knowledge is a cost ume like my house on a clothes-hanger to be ought
Sneinton Cellar Tale Peer through The letterbox Of number Seven Over the mountain Of Domino’s pizza Take away menus Gas bill reminders And Notes of Intent To put up the rent Frames a still life Of Albert Dames Who lived here And died In the sitting room Playing The waiting game Passed before The gas fire flame And endless repeats of You’ve Been Framed Albert seeped Through the cracks To rest gracefully In the cellar To this day entombed With treasure Faded sepia snaps Old newspapers Stamps, and Kwik Save Carrier bags Gramophone records Diamond White empties And cigarette cards Shopping lists Letters of invitation Love, attrition, hate Decree nisi.. They say He never threw Anything away As he’d lost so much He never gave Anything away As his pride Forbade
His passing noted On Valentine’s Day By the absence Of his cough
Susie Fletcher
Cave Voice #1
Womb of Mother Earth Bore Life Creation of mankind #2
Pox marks Scar Hard stony face From the Pick Pick Pick #3
Reading Between the lines Of strata Stories encapsulated In time and space Layer upon layer Earth reveals A Journey Ad infinitum Its Odyssey Beginning Before All that has ever And will ever Exist
Maria Maxwell
(Re)Sting in the Mouth repeated chisel marks thousands scattered half a centimetre to one cm deep ✣ sink in a swirl of un said un said’s suction pulls you feet first in to a sent ence smashed on g asp ✣ ½ cm to 1 cm deep sand grains stick ing to fin gertips chisel marks repeated scattered thou sands in a headtorch beam sandstone glints specks of reflective mineral a rotunda stippled
with chisel cuts each a half centimetre or so deep the sandstone seems to be v slightly damp-&-yet yet also dry he or was it she said an odd dry damp ness scattered hands 1 sand grain caught between 2 finger print ridges held up to spot light glows people’s voices are ab sorbed by the stone scattered thousands deep voices are muf fled down the passage the diff use yel low light of the lamps
raises brown sha dows of chis el slots marks & pock ets & peb bles foot prints in ruddy sand on that floor âœŁ thou sands of beating wingtips a stipple of slots along curving walls all across the rot unda âœŁ each chisel slot is waiting for the tongue it lost each pocket in the sand stone watches each fat round pebble em bedded is an or
gan of pat ience a tin y bod y part of ground ✣ poets’ foot prints in the sand are dis carded man gled letters from an old holy horrible lull aby’s ho llow alph abet ✣ the hum of the generator falls slow ly down the stairs into the cavern thick as syrup yet by the time it reaches the bottom the sound is as thin as a silk sheet tightened be tween stones and spread over with damp sand the arc haeologists’ two powerful lamps on stands are sw itched off a conversation unimaginable ✣ a swirl of chisel-slots sandstone rotates around me a whirlpool of stone
Mark Goodwin
Shut me away from the light where my fingernails will break on the walls. Keep the sun from my eyes, whose lids are tawdry and treacherous. Let not men look on me for fear of the darkness eating my soul. I have no soul only crumbs which lead to nowhere. Shut me away from the light deep down where blood is swept away each morning with sand and sweat and slices of skin. Shut me away so the light can spread free over fields and roads and people with souls. Shut the light away and you'll lose everything. Shut away, before it's too late.
Pippa Hennessy
Cave Voice #4
The hole It had been built over The past buried But enquiring minds Delved deeper Probing till the cracks appeared Revealing what lay beneath This dark place had been Sealed Stilled Silenced But now Prised open She was swallowed Whole by the hollow #5
Silence breeds fear in dark places #6
This ornate column was steadfast The weight of the world on its shoulders Maria Maxwell