C ONTENTS Editor’s Note by Lucy Newlyn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Preface by Neil Corcoran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 PART ONE Gerard Lally The Jester and the Professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Tony Hufton “What’s your message, Bob?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Lucy Newlyn Bad Faith Blues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Anon The Proxy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Tom Clucas Stunt Doubles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Tony Hufton Nobody feels any pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 PART TWO Natasha Walker Hibbing, December 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Elsa Hammond The Troubadour, 1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Jude Cowan Montague The Golden Crow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Tom Clucas The Gift Over-Given . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Lucy Newlyn A Friend of Mine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Gerard Lally The Disreputable Undertaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Judyta Frodyma the poem is blue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Bruce Ross-Smith St John’s, Newfoundland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Seamus Perry “Was that some kind of joke?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Alexander Bridge “Entry Level Folk” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Chris Mann A Conversation with Bob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Amelia Gabaldoni The Essential Bob Dylan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Peter J.King Larkin on Highway 61 Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Reuben Woolley some kind of prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 bloodright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Sonja Benskin Mesher Dylan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Keron Winn Sheldonian Homesick Blues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Lucy Newlyn “Everything passes” – a cento . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Dan Eltringham Theme Time Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Simon Armitage Killing Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Adham Smart Doctors of War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 David Braund The Times They Aren’t Quite Normal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Jared Campbell Thin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 William Austin Subcutaneous Phonesick Mood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Song to Bob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Amanda Holton From the fre whelyng Sir Thomas Wyatt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Stewart Lee An Unknown Quantity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Darrell Barnes, David Braund, Lucy Newlyn, Jared Campbell Four Limericks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Stuart Estell Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Lucy Newlyn On the doorstep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Neil Corcoran Encomium for Bob Dylan, on the occasion of his receiving a Doctorate for Music at St Andrews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Notes on Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Editor’s Note The materials about Bob Dylan collected in this pamphlet are mostly written by members of the Hall Writers’ Forum, an international online community of writers associated with St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Poems and songs began to emerge on this forum in response to discussion about Dylan as the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016; and from there the creative process gathered momentum. To be true to the origins of this project, contributions appear in the order in which they appeared on Hall Writers’ Forum threads, or were later sent to me. (I have re-ordered them slightly where it made sense to do so.) Part One contains poems and songs that relate directly to the Nobel Prize. Part Two begins with material concerning specific aspects of Dylan’s life, then fans out to include interpretations and commentaries on his work, as well as poems that are inspired by particular songs. Lucy Newlyn, Oxford, 2017
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Preface Many contributions to this pamphlet celebrating Bob Dylan in the wake of his Nobel Prize focus on the writer and singer as jester – trickster as well as humourist. In the songs, the joker appears explicitly in both the headlong imagistic glissade of “Jokerman” and the spare parable of “All Along the Watchtower”, where what he says to the thief is, “There must be some way out of here”. Disappearing has always been Dylan’s suit, and his work extensively presents us with stuff anyone might wish to get out of – ethically, sexually, politically, spiritually. Humour sometimes offers an exit – into alternative worlds of affection, licence, satire and good spirit, and into the chaos of carnival. I always crack up when I hear Dylan laughing while he sings some Basement Tapes songs, however often I’ve heard him at it. Their sublime nonsense is earthed in an unaggressive masculine bonhomie in which the buoyant, sometimes licentious craic seems a natural extension of the pleasure these musicians take in just sharing the common air, in respite after exhaustion (and after a great deal of masculine aggression, given as well as received). In some of these songs Dylan’s humour is intimately related to his narrative gift, as it is elsewhere in his work too – in “Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat”, for instance: Well, I asked the doctor if I could see you, it’s bad for your health, he said Yes, I disobeyed his orders, I came to see you, but I found him there instead You know, I don’t mind him cheatin’ on me, but I sure wish he’d take that off his head Your brand new leopard-skin pillbox hat At a symposium celebrating Dylan’s 70th birthday in 2011 Mark Ford brilliantly isolated the significance of Dylan’s “vignettes”, a feature of his art recurrent through many of its phases. In this one, the comedy develops incrementally with the tale: from the doctor’s self-interested duplicity to the narrator’s display of an oddly concessive value system in which being double-crossed is one thing, dismissed easily enough, but the wearing of the eponymous hat something else altogether, not so readily accommodated. What else, though, on a scale that might run from mild sartorial disapproval to paranoid fetishistic envy? The ratcheting incrementalism seems a dangerous comedy, as it does in that other dark jester Richard III (“Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so / That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven / If heaven will take the present at our hands”), although in Dylan the raucous, relished delivery mitigates the threat. -5-
The desire that the rival should take the hat off his head in fact invites speculation on how he manages to keep it on when exercised like this, since it’s just been intimated that the song’s addressee finds it hard to retain it at the best of times: “You know it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine” – a line which would be hypermetrical in a poem but which, in a song, with Dylan’s voice teetering tipsily over three notes on the monosyllable “wine”, perfectly mimics the balaning – or unbalancing – act it describes. One of the reasons Dylan’s work is so attractive to literary people is that it constantly – sometimes, it seems, almost by reflex – offers subtle narrative and psychological implication, tantalisingly inviting us back. Humour and narrative may combine less obviously too, as they do in “Went to See the Gypsy”, which initially seems so evasively slight as hardly to be there at all, like the narrated encounter itself: I went to see the gypsy, staying in a big hotel He smiled when he saw me coming and he said “Well, well, well” His room was dark and crowded, lights were low and dim “How are you?” he said to me, I said it back to him The song has been thought to commemorate Dylan’s putative meeting with Presley, about which he’s been oddly coy in interview. If so, it coolly collapses the potentially momentous into the banal when the conventional reception and greeting are all we get of the encounter. The narrator immediately leaves for the lobby, returning to find the gypsy gone – which makes for a teasingly enigmatic hole where the anticipated story might have been. There’s more than just banality, though, in “I said it back to him”. The deadpan phrase makes it seem that the query “How are you?” is not merely casually repeated in the usual way of salute but voiced more challengingly in return, as if in a kind of phatic tennis match. It wittily highlights the absurd unconcern of the usual call and response. Saying it back, rather than just saying it, might mean that you mean it. Eventually though, the song’s comic play with the banality of the commonplace yields to the piercingly solitary epiphany of its repeated final line: So I watched the sun come rising from that little Minnesota town From that little Minnesota town. The location must carry some biographical consequence for this son of Hibbing, MN; it’s one of only two occasions when the state’s name figures in Dylan’s
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lyrics, which construct an extensive American gazetteer. Like further detail of the meeting between narrator and gypsy, however, information is withheld. Wittily alluring lyrical incisions like “I said it back to him” are frequent in Dylan, making his lyrics alive with local (and vocal) suggestion; and the balance of revelation against restraint generates the provocative obliquity of some of his finest work. Beginning in banality and ending in epiphany: not a bad arc for a song to trace. ****** The doctoral gown at the University of St Andrews seems more ecclesiastical than academic, and when he received his honorary degree there in 2004 Dylan had to stand patiently while he was slowly buttoned into his by an efficient, if slightly officious, lady who had little idea who he was: “Arrums oot!”, she commanded, and Dylan instantly obeyed. I had the sense that he greatly enjoyed this; and his quiet amusement then consorts well with the figure often conjured in what follows. Praise be to Nero’s Neptune, then, and praise also to Lucy Newlyn for so capably organising and editing this pamphlet of (sometimes sceptically qualified) praise. Neil Corcoran
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PART ONE
The Jester and the Professor for Neil Corcoran
The jester and the professor Sat with their entourage, But the jester’s eyes were glassy, Though the audience was large. Why do you stand there burbling? Cried a Scotsman, in a rage, Your words can have no meaning For that joker on the stage. I think you are mistaken, Said the speaker, to be kind, This man is a Picasso His imprint is on our minds. I see the gnashing of your teeth And the hatred in your eyes, Though my honored guest is noble, And deserves the Nobel prize. But the crowd were getting restless As the speaker burbled on, When the jester suddenly awoke And said “I must be gone”. So making his excuses He ran out into the rain. He opened his umbrella, And departed with his train. Gerard Lally
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“What’s your message, Bob?” When he was young they called him the mouthpiece of his generation, and demanded he provide interpretation. Now he’s old they want to hang a lump of metal round his neck, and of his silence demand an explanation. Tony Hufton
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Bad Faith Blues Composed in anticipation of the Nobel Prize ceremony. To be sung as nearly as possible to the tune of “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”.
He dreams that he’s in Sweden – all the winners they are feedin’ in the hall. Some are livin’, some are dead, their words whirlin’ in his head – he’s not sure he gets the drift of them at all. “Could you kindly tell us, mister, just what you mean to do ’bout this million-dollar prize that’s offered now to you?” He wakes wond’rin’ how much longer he can stall... The committee they have spoken and the whole wide world has woken to the sound. Hungry journalists are prowlin’ and an eejit wind is howlin’ so the jokerman is hidin’, gone to ground. “Could you briefly tell us, mister, just why you might refuse this world-renowned award, that even you could use? The silence is a-growin’ most profound…” The commentators blather while excited fans they gather in the park; you can hear the hound-dogs bayin’ at the songs they are a-playin’, their lone tunes strayin’ nightly through the dark. “Could you please just tell us, mister, what it is you plan to say? You’re invincible now, it’s been your lucky day. This most mysterious silence, it’s stark.”
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The jokerman he’s pausin’ and the puzzle he’s a-causin’ helps him think. He hears the rooster crowin’ and the winter wind a-blowin’; knows he’s in deep - any deeper and he’ll sink. “Could you please soon guide me, misters, as to what I need to say? This prize, yes, sure - it’s dynamite, it’ll blow us all away much sooner than you’ll see a blind man blink.” The séance is now endin’ and the Nobel Dead are sendin’ their advice – But their messages they mumble in fumblin’ words that jumble so they need repeatin’ loudly, at least twice – “I can tell you clearly, monsieur, just what you need to do: Jean-Paul Sartre here, I’m trying to get through…” (He fades on “that’s good faith” and “sacrifice.”) Several weeks have now been passin’ while the Whitehouse has been assin’ around. The President’s been callin’ but a hard rain’s been fallin’ and the joker he’s still nowhere to be found. “Sincerely, brother, tell me, just what you’d like to do. If not for your country, please accept it - just for you!” (The blackmail text arrives without a sound.) The joker’s silence is now broken and his words are clearly spoken, not in jest. Yes, he’s speechless, but he’s proud to tell the crowd (and tell ’em loud) that he’s likely to turn up, so what’s the twist? The hippies are dispersin’ in the dawn, he’s filmin’ his own shadows on the lawn, he’s choosin’ his best top-hat for the feast. -13-
He’s the guilty undertaker, the century’s shame-maker, and he prowls in these videos he’s makin’ on the lonesome bad faith road he’s a-takin’ ’mong the tombs he’s now forsakin’, with the owls. “Could you please remind us mister, just how you mean to spend the million dollar blood-money, of which there is no end?” He just shrugs into the camera and scowls. And now he’s there in Sweden – all the winners they are feedin’ in the hall. Is he livin’, is he dead? There’s a whirlin’ in his head, he’s not sure he gets the drift of this at all. “Could you kindly tell us, mister, just what you mean to do with this Nobel prize that’s coming now to you?” He winks and points toward the writin’ on the wall. The joker he sits hummin’ as the ceremony’s comin’ to an end. The audience starts a-cheerin’ as the speech-time is a-nearin’ – but he’s speechless and not plannin’ to pretend. “Could you kindly listen, misters, as I sing you all my song? if you recognise the words, then feel free to sing along.” He smirks and growls out “Blowin’ in the Wind”. The Committee they’re a-starin’ as the last verse is a-wearin’ to a close. There’s surely some mistake and they don’t know what to make of this loser who won’t speechify in prose. “Can you clarify please, chairman, how this pseud can qualify for our million-dollar cheque? He’s just re-sellin’ us a lie. Can we go back to the winner that we chose?”
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Part Two All the laureates have gone, and the joker he lies lonely in his bed. Though it’s dark he’s not sleepin’ for somethin’ has come creepin’ from among the tunes still playin’ in his head. “Could you kindly tell me jester, just what you mean to do if the Final Judgment comes, and you’re stuck inside the blues? Will your songs still plainly speak after you’re dead?” “When the organ-grinder calls and Allen Ginsberg’s shadow falls across your grave, when Walt Whitman speaks to you but Greenwich Village cuts you through, and your ghost is tiptoein’ along the nave, will you reassure me jester that what you have in mind is the comfortin’ of creatures, your fellow humankind, not some cynic’s surreal masquerade you crave?” The questions have been comin’ and his mind’s been numbin’ quite a while. He falls asleep wond’rin’ ’bout the words he’s been plund’rin’ and mixin’ and sund’rin’ with his style. In a dream he sees the man who’s speakin’, and he knows that it’s Woody, come to guide him as he goes on his speechless seekin’ ramble, without guile. They’re not headin’ for the beach, far from the twisted reach of all remorse – Woody’s leadin’ him within to the visions of his sin: Hypocrisy, and Compromise, and worse. “Hey, Mr Troubadour, just what d’you mean to do by takin’ me in torchlight through dark passages with you, where my song starts goin’ jerkily off course?” -15-
Woody’s not smilin’, and all night his light is shinin’ bright, through the doors – which he’s openin’ and closin’ while the jokerman is dozin’ in this house that’s crammed with junk on all its floors. “Tell me jester, please, whose hats are those a-spillin’ from the wardrobes, chests and drawers that they’re fillin’, which are mirrored all in rows, and in their scores?” “Who’s that dandy there, paradin’ up and down? Who’s the sad clown, and why’s he fakin’? Where do the fat profits go that he rakes in for each show? Whose official videos are these he’s makin’? Could you tell me in plain words where his disused conscience hides when he’s porin’ over details that his bank statement confides? Whose songs is he takin’, whose ways is he forsakin’? “Is that his safe under the bed labelled in red, with a bloody stain that’s hid, under the lid, of which he can’t get rid, written in vinyl, for his personal gain? Who’s that livin’ in a room labelled Neoliberal Illusions all day long a-hummin’ and a-strummin’ his confusions, one hand wavin’ free, one solderin’ a chain?” “In a tube station underground when noone is around, you can hear a lonesome hobo playin’ an old song that’s stayin’ fresh and near – the same sad tune, year after year. Can you please teach us, mister, his tune we’re forgettin’ in this house someone’s been lettin’, where the sun is settin’ and all the singin’ will soon disappear?”
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The dream-vision has ended and the ghost has wended on his way. The joker’s still weepin’ as sunlight comes creepin’ across the bed where his tired old body lay. “Can you kindly tell us, mister, just what you mean to do ’bout this Nobel Lecture that’s expected now from you?” A Statement will be shortly on its way. Lucy Newlyn
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The Proxy The jester was too busy to collect his Nobel Prize so someone else stood in for him, with starry starry eyes. In front of many thousands in their spangled frocks and coats she sang the best of all his songs and won the people’s votes. But she lacked a teleprompter to remind her of his lines and her nerves they proved too shaky so she stumbled several times. Like a scared kid in a school-play, her way she couldn’t find and when she asked to start again the audience clapped – how kind! The media were active spreading news of her mistake: “Oh, what a fool to fluff his song! What a stupid mess to make!” The moral of this story is not very hard to guess: If you’re terrified of crowds and half-shamed by your success Then get a willing woman to suffer all your fright; you can stay at home and watch if you’re not busy on the night. -18-
There’s no better kind of proxy than an ageing female star who’ll break down for you, dear jester, coward-genius that you are. Anon
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Stunt Doubles “I could not help thinking that he had two strong women in his corner. One who faltered and one who did not, yet both had nothing in mind but to serve his work well.”
He’d set it up for her, a band and everything, how could she refuse? Except the song he chose required her to abseil solo down the twelve misty mountains, no safety and a trip in every line. She knew it, couldn’t quite construe it, but the fall was hers from the beginning. I’ll know my song well: such knowledge was a stumbling block, memorising every crevice, every foothold in the lyrics. No irony was lost and meanings multiplied; she came onstage with each rehearsal echoing in her ears, her mind a scree of implications, the media greedily filming her peril. The weight of expectation shuffled memories, lyrics like loose stones tumbling down the precipice. Vertiginously, she faltered—raw scrutiny: in that moment, she saw at once why he declined. At dinner, she graced the twin humiliations: apology and forgiveness, meeting the eyes of her counterpart. Alone in togetherness, two women as substitutes for the same man’s fall. Tom Clucas
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Nobody feels any pain Nobel No way! No brainer! Nostalgia!* No comment No respect No show Nobs No pressure! No words No laughing matter No hard feelings No big deal Nobel * “I’m a Dylan fan, but this is an ill conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies” (Irvine Welsh)
Tony Hufton
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P ART TWO
Hibbing, December 1960 First Hanukkah’s kinda like a whore: Dad shuffles up on sticks behind the door, then Beatty sighs and opens it with her kiss. This greyhound’s coughin’, makes me miss my Harley-Davidson knucklehead Twin – no blacker streak in coal-soaked Min. An echo of Echo behind that barn, fingers strummin’ on her bare arm. To bed in that old blue two-seater ford – Elvis on my mind. She’s just bored. Elston Gunnn gone up in Gunsmoke, Bobby Vee had me clappin’ – my joke. Bonnie’s hopes down. Words unfurled: “Can’t see us goin’ anywhere, girl” No one here gonna understand my fight – rage, rage against this Holiday of light. Cheap bulbs cringin’ behind the sign – no way I’m joinin’ Abe to make it mine. I flunked out. Couldn’t stay in one place, read wrong stuff and carved my face to fit the road to join Little Richard. But first tell the folks they got a bard, or bastard, hooked on Kant, folk and rye, who’s headin’ east, with Jimmy Dean’s eye.
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In Hibbing, eatin’ cherry pie à la mode, wrong names, wrong parents, like a code to smash, led on by Hollywood trash (This is the land of the free). I’ll stash a bunch of bucks from grandma Flo, and leave to where the wise winds blow. Natasha Walker
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The Troubadour, 1962 Just another Tuesday night and just another man with a guitar: a man who’s pale and young and slight – ramshackle like the others never are who come over here to croon from Old New York or Philadelphia. Soft, he slipped into the room a wordless shadow with a mass of hair, skirting ‘round the stage spotlight – just another kid who drifted in here with the rest of them tonight. Later, with a nod he took the floor – played Pretty Peggy-O and other folk tunes that we knew before he turned and asked us straight how many times must a man look up before he can see the sky? Something happened to us then – a silence or maybe some slight shift, carving out for us this night, the Troubadour. Elsa Hammond
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The Golden Crow for Suze Rotolo
I knocked on the door of spring but they changed the locks. I heard the rasping of broken strings in the circle of tambourines in the token rain, slid on the rocks up to the top carrying my love in my mandolin. I was faster than breath and climbed to the beat of kings in constant pain, oh thunder boy, thunder boy, from the pits to the heights of despair. White on red, I saw the battle on the plain, you couldn’t tell who was going to win, back then. I’m not a girl any more, raging in joy at the TV cops and the bath cleaner lady selling me shine and scents of lemon pine. I’ve had enough of that old guy’s winter, the fags the flares, and the fat-filled benches. Jesus, bring me a sign all the flowers aren’t dead. Bring out your head on a platter, I said this to him when it mattered, but he didn’t listen to a schoolkid. My brain hurt morning bad, the birds had fled too so it was just me and my dogs in the desert blues. Nowhere to go, ’neath the stars barking bright, barefoot in Gaza on the wind in the night. Jude Cowan Montague
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The Gift Over-Given Jewish boy from Minnesota, shades his eyes, posing with his new guitar, the prodigal prodigy, alto voice, precocious signs of rakish looks: dimples, dark circles, that distant expression, waiting for a crowd. He sang in Hibbing, drew a crowd of twenty schoolkids, but saw shades of greatness, a day not distant when they would broadcast his guitar. How did he spot stardom in his looks, hear hellfire in his untaught voice? At first, the airwaves shook his voice, lyrics bottleneck and notes crowd together. In interviews, he looks for the lens, lost without his shades, but he had manna in his guitar which he bestowed, cool and distant. See the spendthrift genius, distant on stage, over-giving of his voice, bleeding the strings of his guitar to sate the sleepless, leaderless crowd. Soon, he sought anonymous shades, away from their expectant looks. On the never-ending tour, he looks resigned to public loneliness, distant from reality, conjuring shades of a past self and past age, his voice an echo chamber that binds the crowd, tuning memories on his guitar. -28-
Then they say: put down your guitar and receive this laurel, the world looks to you for magic, the gathered crowd awaits a prophecy, the distant wisdom of your ageing hands and voice, the seasoned sight behind those shades. Fame shades his poetry; despite his looks the boy with the guitar grows distant, his voice, his gift depleted by the crowd. Tom Clucas
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A Friend of Mine for Gerard Lally
“I dreamed I saw Bob Dylan alive as you or me He was rising from the roadside where he’d wrecked his Triumph T but his vision it had altered his fiery breath was gone. When he came back from Striebel Road his protest days were done. Was this the man who’d sung to us of human slavery who’d shone a light into our souls and taught us to be free? Or was this just some substitute whose former self had died, now come with his disclaimers to show us how he’d lied?” My friend he spoke in sadness a long long time ago when the world was full of madness and a cutting wind did blow. Oh! When we are very young, it’s hard to understand that a posthumous existence is the best there is to hand.
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“I dreamed I saw Bob Dylan lying stretched out on the road. Another man rose up from him to bear his weary load. And all his life thereafter to placate the bourgeoisie he camouflaged his anger in fine shades of irony.� Lucy Newlyn
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The Disreputable Undertaker To be sung Bob Dylan-style, to the tune of “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”
Captain Thomas Jeterman died in the fall of 1862, Being shot near Bristoe Station in a film and soulful song by you-know-who, In ’64, at Petersburg, the Yankees laid a mine Which blew a massive crater there, but what they used that time Was 8000 lbs of gunpowder, bar assistance from the King of Bombs. In that same year a brother made his sorry way up to the gates of heaven, But dynamite still had to wait as late as May of 1867. In the factory explosion, Emil Nobel he was killed, But the crater down at Petersburg was never ever filled A monument to war, not to the memory of the King of Bombs. The Swedes in their Academy accepted him in 1884, But when another brother died this sparked a wild newspaperly furore “The merchant of death is dead” they cried, but it was a mistake, He died in 1896 not 1888, And did not wish to be remembered solely as the King of Bombs. Before he died he specified a tidy sum that he would leave behind, To honor the outstanding ones whose work is for the good of all mankind, Since then there’ve been explosions such as he had never seen, And y’all know who got the prize in 2016, The one-time protest singer now praised highly by the King of Bombs. Gerard Lally
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the poem is blue wrong names wrong parents the land that you live in has gone on its side. you talk the surreal talk nuclear disarmament and civil rights, as if sandpaper could sing. black crow, undernourished cockatoo making medicine in a coonskin cap always keeping a clean nose. jesus christ was just judas the radio station was in louisiana and ukranian jews were from minnesota. what did you hear my blue-eyed son? with god on its side this is the land of the free. Judyta Frodyma
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St John’s, Newfoundland Bob Dylan at 67, May 24, 2008
The sea goddess Ran knew her way around your voice, at least here hard as rock on your big birthday night, “Spirit On The Water” to “Rock of Ages” from a church perched nearby. At the back Leonard Cohen taps his foot to himself. The Vikings were here once striking their nets to “High Water” or so it could seem in a dream or by rite, “Highway 61 Revisited” just about right. But this is overcooked, a memory of “Shelter From The Storm.” Then I remembered you share a birthday with Queen Victoria, not much this in a cold dominion, her statue a few strains away from “Lay, Lady, Lay.” At the back Leonard Cohen starts to play to your lead, silent of course in his need. Later, muted, you wish each other well, far, far, from the fisherman’s empty shell. Bruce Ross-Smith -34-
“Was that some kind of joke”? “[A]ll the bad poetry of the moment is written with words”, said the young William Empson; “I believe myself poetry is written with the sort of joke you find in hymns”. He didn’t go on to elaborate, but you can guess what he meant: the immense mysteries of Christian doctrine, artfully woven into coherence by theologians, stand out in cartoonish incongruity once cast into the hearty plainness of a hymn. The intricacies of the Trinity are especially challenging to get across without sounding ludicrous, particularly the paradox that the bringer of forgiveness is simultaneously the deviser of the suffering from which we seek relief. The contradiction is particularly fraught in the predicament of Jesus (“The Law’s great Maker for our aid / Obedient to the Law is made”); but anyone might find it morally perplexing to be granted the freedom to obey by an Omnipotence who will punish you eternally if you don’t toe the line. Dylan gets one of his very best jokes out of that perplexity: Oh, God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son” Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on” God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?” God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but The next time you see me comin’ you better run” Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?” God says, “Out on Highway 61” Abraham’s initial response to this abrupt and extraordinary request is wholly to his credit, and it is a nice incidental touch that he should invoke the idea of “Man” while spontaneously objecting to the doings of a God. The folksy colloquial ease (that’s Abraham to you) is part of the pervasive spirit of mischief; but the observation is a good one. “You can do what you want Abe, but…” and the emphasis of the rhyme, which Dylan brings out on the album, duly draws that “but” into its proper prominence. Dylan writes poetry, but he does not write poems: he writes songs; and songs are not only written with words but also with music. In the Playboy interview with Ron Rosenbaum, Dylan spoke jointly of “the sound and the -35-
words. Words don’t interfere with it. They—they—punctuate it”; and one kind of punctuation can be effected by the words dropping out and leaving the music momentarily to work on, on its own. In one important respect, my quotation of that verse from “Highway 61 Revisited” is wholly misleading because one of the most remarkable things about it is impossible to capture on the page: between “The next time you see me comin’ you better run” and “Well Abe says” Dylan falls silent and the music plays on for (I count) seven seconds. How would you put that in print? (“. . . . . . .” ?) The effect is brilliant and tragi-comical: the unsung bars dramatise Abraham’s silent turning-over of the unthinkable and his world-weary acceptance of the inevitable. (The effect is then reworked in the context of different anecdotes in the succeeding verses.) Poems can invoke ideas of wordlessness, and the gaps between stanzas or at the ends of lines can be put to work, but they cannot really utilize, as a song can, passages of purposeful wordlessness. Opera can, of course – as in the succession of thirty-four chords in Act II of Billy Budd that wordlessly dramatise Vere’s communication of the court’s judgment to Billy. Dylan’s songs work with the effect in all kinds of manners, not always funny: the instrumental penultimate verse of “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” conveys a great unutterable brewing of pity and incredulity that bursts out into words in the magnificent final refrain. But the sensation of hanging-on for the words to come back again naturally lends itself to the comic. Of course, comedy can come in different shades: as in “Love Sick”, a song full of bitter self-conscious amusement at the whole business of being infatuated, at once love-sick and just sick of it. The ambivalence of his feelings towards the love object is wonderfully caught in a darkly droll lyrical pause (five seconds, I make it) between “I think of you” and “And I wonder”: Sometimes the silence can be like the thunder Sometimes I feel like I’m being plowed under Could you ever be true? I think of you And I wonder
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And, while the words are on hold, there is he, thinking of her. The moment of cogitation draws out the wit of Dylan’s mixed feelings: “You’re so amazing I sometimes can’t believe you’re for real: when I think of you, I am lost in wonder at you”; “Could you ever be faithful? I think of you and what you’re like and, frankly, I have my doubts.” Seamus Perry
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“Entry Level Folk” lone explosions in the record static blame not those ill attended stores where cds lined in automatic abcs limit offended omnivores descriptors like “pop”, “blues”, various “folks”, literal black and white plastic dividers dissembling Bob’s masterstrokes, the post-generic supercollider undeniably influential off-centre, noble, blonde, brown that fuzzy, shady quintessential forever spinning round atop an insistent turntable sealed in beetle-black grooves managed by a man unable to acknowledge, approve different circles, or hurtful suggestions that Dylan might be just one down a long-line of purple patched, string-matched minds Alexander Bridge
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A Conversation with Bob Bob Dylan’s songs have been part of my imaginative life ever since I was a teenage schoolboy in Cape Town. I remember with particular affection and admiration “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times are A changin’ ”. I bought a folk guitar and began to teach myself how to sing a number of his songs, as well as others by Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary and the Beatles. One by one, I learnt the classic songs of the civil rights era and the peace movements, songs with resonant and poetic lyrics such as “Go tell it on the mountain,” and “Where have all the flowers gone.” These were inspirational for a growing number of people in South Africa. I can remember strumming away in a smoke-filled folk club in Johannesburg to a small crowd who joined in enthusiastically as I reached the chorus of “This land is your land”. A change came a few years later when I teamed up with Abel Ndlovu and started a Zulu-English cross-over band. We composed our own songs and performed together at a time when mixed-colour concerts were banned. A tension within me, between expressing dissent in art and actually doing something to further the struggle against apartheid, grew more intense. The band’s popularity grew as did the community-based NGO where I worked. Funds poured in from overseas, the range of activities escalated and as one of the directors I eventually had to make a choice, brought to a head by the birth of our first child. Saying goodbye to “Zabalaza” was painful, for me as well as the musicians. We had done well on a national TV show as segregation began to ease and seemed to have a future. I’m convinced that the decision was the right one, though. It clarified for me that the arts cannot be a surrogate for direct socio-political action. More significantly, our team at the Valley Trust, as the NGO was called, innovated pilot projects in primary health care and labour-intensive public works which were taken up by the incoming government and have become national policy. Vision, poetic vision, often prompted by a melody pushing its way up of the subconscious in the evening or the early hours of the morning, remained -39-
part of my imaginative life and continues today. I take a show on the road a couple of times a year and perform primarily at schools, universities and churches. The melodic line, and the resonant words that emerge during these small epiphanies became the songs in the selection that follows. I chose ones which link to and sometimes differ from songs by Bob Dylan on similar themes. I leave alert readers to spot the resonances and reactions. Paradise Road I The winds of change were blowing hard the day that I left home, I drove down to the old stone pier and watched a rough sea foam. I loved to jump right off that pier and swim the river mouth, a barefoot boy in khaki shorts in Africa’s deep south. Old folks ate ice cream in their cars parked by the beach cafÊ, like them I thought those stormy skies would one day blow away. A man held out a fish to me beside the public phone, but I was driving out of there into the great unknown. I turned up the radio, the music overflowed, I had started yearning he had started yearning I had started burning he had started burning for Paradise Road.
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II I drove right through the backveld where I had been born, I lived a while in cities feeling lost and torn. I met so many drifters, dreamers old and young, all trying to make an Africa where they could belong Some talked of rights and power, and some of sacrifice, they were also crying for, they were also crying for, they were also dying for, they were also dying for, the road to Paradise. III I lived a while in suburbs then took a shack-land track, I met a wandering prophet a green cross on his back. He said he’d seen the rainbow across a burning lake, he could have been Isaiah, or even William Blake, He beat a goat-skin drum and sang to ease his load, he was also yearning, he was also yearning, he was also burning, he was also burning, for Paradise Road. -41-
IV I’m right back where I started in small town Africa, a troubadour still on the road, a song-poem in a car. But I’ve heard the dove of heaven inside a pepper tree, I’ve seen the holy fish swim a troubled sea. And I know in every heart there’s a dream to be expressed, I know a bright-haired angel can dance in every breast. I’ve watched Mandela fade, so many hopes explode, but who’s not still yearning, who’s not still yearning, who’s not still burning, who’s not still burning, who’s not still crying for, who’s not still crying for, who’s not still dying for who’s not still dying for Paradise Road. The Funfair of the Damned The flags of every land on earth are fluttering on the poles where Mephistopheles has come to gamble for men’s souls.
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He waves a wad of bills and laughs and spins his ivory dice, ‘Roll up,’ he says, ‘I know each land, each business has its price.’ The prophets at the carpark gate are being pushed aside, the poor-land leaders of the earth can’t wait to get inside. So caucus in the conference halls, vote for the promised land, help MegaMammonWorld transform the funfair of the damned. The horses of Apocalypse snort carbon in the sky, the coal men on the golf-course say, “Tree-hugger talk’s a lie.” Dead frogs and methane in the reeds adorn the leisure lake where front men for an oil cartel sign up a smiling sheik. But media saints are filming graphs, great leaders talk on phones to airbrush what folk owe the earth by funding loans with loans. Be hip and hop with Nero’s band that’s rocking on the stand, help MegaMammonWorld transform the funfair of the damned.
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It’s poker, power and politics inside the weapons tent, each chip’s a nuclear missile, each war a cash event. The hands are hot and sweaty, the lips and mouths are dry, whoever wins the blind man’s bluff will send war bonds sky high. But you and me and everyone and no one is to blame when nothing’s sacred in the world except the money game. So caucus now to make the earth a green and sunny land, help MegaMammonWorld transform the funfair of the damned. The air is hot as hell inside the VIP’s marquee where banks and presidents cut deals below the Judas tree. The money shoots as fast as thoughts around the global mall and booms and busts the businesses inside the banking hall. But financiers and engineers are working double shifts to fix the speakers in the mall, the air cons in the lifts.
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So cash your carbon credits in and buy a solar brand, help MegaMammonWorld transform the funfair of the damned. When Mephistopheles has bought the last soul in the bar, when acid eats the funfair flags and rain steams off the tar, When Lazarus the janitor has put away his broom and limped off coughing to the hills and climbed back in his tomb, The prophets at the gate will wake to septic lungs at dawn, and lift their limp placards and groan, “What could we do but warn?” ’Cos no one stops the rock ’n roll when money owns the band, and MegaMammonWorld puts on the funfair of the damned. Be Merciful When folk say times are a-changin’ they peddle snake-oil lies, The horses of Apocalypse still gallop through the skies. And Lazarus the beggar man still groans at Dives gate, He wears the wounds of centuries holds out his old tin plate. -45-
The croupier spins the wheel of chance, the game is still roulette, Times keep changin’, stayin’ the same, you work with what you get. Xolelani! Oh, be merciful! I’m not givin’ up on lovin’ yet, I’m not givin’ up on lovin’, lovin’, lovin’, I’m not givin’ up on lo…vin’ yet. There’re dust-clouds of delusions a-swirlin’ in each mind, With fashions, fads and fantasies, cruel thoughts and kind. I wish I knew a neighbour who had no fault or stain, There’s a mean old reptile lurkin’ in every brain. Some say blame the system and blame is surely due, But when you point a finger three point back at you. Chorus: I’ve roamed the restless planet, seen dark thunder clouds, I’ve heard the crack of rifles, the shouts of angry crowds. I’ve seen a shimmerin’ rainbow come and go in the sky, It’ll glimmer in the mist ahead, if not now by and by.
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The croupier spins the wheel of chance the game is still roulette, Times keep changin’, stayin’ the same, you work with what you get. Chorus: Chris Mann
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The Essential Bob Dylan My dad had been trying to teach me guitar, so he had some CDs that we played in the car to understand patterns of chords and to tell me about all of the bands that knew’d go down well: Stone Roses, the Strokes, the Smiths (Johnny Marr), The Essential Bob Dylan was favourite by far. The playing was going ok but I listened far harder to words than the chords underneath, and before I was ten I recited near perfectly Hurricane, Tambourine Man (and at least a few more, but I can’t recall certainly.) My school had the idea that all the year sixes take part in a day to learn poems by heart, to pick something cool that we wanted to say and so what my parents and me thought was smart was to take up the words that I’d sung in the car and to speak them instead, but my teacher who so far had not been supportive of anything out of the ordinary said: “It’s Mr Tambourine man play a song for me, not say some words for me, it’s not a poem, it’s a song – the list was prescribed and you just had to find something that fitted in nicely” she whined. So she told me no, that I shouldn’t take part and to go to my seat and don’t be a smart arse and sit there, as classmates half-heartedly rattled off Tennyson, Carol Ann Duffy and Larkin and Auden and stuff they’d been told by my teacher was proper and normal, words to make children adhere to the formal and no one was bothered cos poems were boring and English was totally so worth ignoring. Though, we’d all loved the lesson we’d once had on rap -48-
and performance, with focus on music we’d clapped out the rhythms, we’d listened to rhymes and to beats and we’d gone away chattering, sounding repeats, echoing patterns and making up new ones, all our own stories and jokes were recounted – this isn’t to say that a poet or poem we looked at that day should be shunned or discounted, just why shouldn’t Dylan be listed among them? Amelia Gabaldoni
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Larkin on Highway 61 Revisited I poached Dylan’s curiosity — found myself rewarded: cawing unintelligible rock and ballad to derisive desolation enchanting and half-baked... Peter J. King
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some kind of prologue “Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount But nothing really matters much, it’s doom alone that counts”
they came with the geese the grey & the rose they danced their bones for dead judges.it wasn’t a step for an instant of occasion & the moment was a breath a possible a shout in a tired street & what do we do with an empty cup.the last drop swallowed for a memory of song it was shadows in streams for silent choirs.a peeling of hours & the braggarts take the shine.they bring us by claw wearing cleaner faces a hard palate & a sweeping hand Reuben Woolley
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Bloodright “All these people that you mention Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame I had to rearrange their faces And give them all another name”
here / paint me this in red.you know it is alive the night & breathing i’m hanging from branches & expecting answers it’s a river just so fast / no more brings other land the judge & the priest don’t work for free.bleed for them now they ask for more waiting for delivery.i’ll rip me free the veins this is no sunday feast.a bare provision for ravens clipped & starving my wounds are not invisible.come spin me a tale where nothing is black.the killing colours of old hours i’ve seen them before where even the soil is foreign Reuben Woolley
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Dylan the photographer, the writer, and gatherer. there you are, i have been looking for you. may 24 1941, the times.
older than me, much older than you.
could be changing. and pretty then.
we were young
I have seen your photograph. these faces are changing. * he plays a guitar and sings into a microphone. we are writers. we are witness. one while others fail and die. talk of other days are . .changing. we are * he plays a guitar and sings to a microphone. llanw. Sonja Benskin Mesher
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elder is recognised .these days. listening.
Sheldonian Homesick Blues Bob Dylan’s Honorary Doctorate of Music Great expectations Congratulations Going through the motions Champagne is a potion Feel I’m being archived Deep inside a beehive Wobbles over cobbles Feeling maybe half-live Look out Dylan Those peaches are fillin’ I’m a long way from home As we drift into a dome Like a skull made of stone Then to add some tone Many words in Latin Think I need a statin Welcome to ancient Rome Feel I’m here all alone I’m hunching like a savage No locusts ravage Heavy privilege Feel I’m on a windy ridge Legs curl, shifty I’m in the golden city A man says, ‘I’m head Of the wine committee’ Look out Doc They’re venerating rock I’m in a front Quad Of legendary Oxford Narrow eyes nod nod -54-
Oddball with a tripod Drilling us like a squad My bonnet is slipshod No sir I’m not a god Maybe a lightning rod Kieron Winn
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“Everything passes” – a cento It’s not dark yet but it’s getting there. Strike another match, go start anew. I just walk along, I stroll and I sing – I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to. Bird fly high by the light of the moon: everything passes, everything changes, freedom’s just around the corner for you. Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune, Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in, Blowing through the flowers on your tomb. Seems like I been down this way before; we just saw it from a different point of view. Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard? Lord only knows I’ve paid some dues. I’ve been down to the bottom of a whirlpool of lies; sometimes my burden is more than I can bear and every one of them words rings true. Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune, Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in, blowing through the flowers on your tomb. There’s an evenin’ haze settlin’ over town lotta water under the bridge, lotta other stuff too. I’m locked in tight now and I’m out of range on the avenue, tangled up in blue. How long must I keep my eyes glued to the door? I just gotta pick myself up off the floor: everybody’s going and I want to go too. Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune, Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in, Blowing through the flowers on your tomb. -56-
People talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations but with truth so far off what good will it do? Dreams never did work for me anyway so I just grew tangled up in blue. I see better days and I do better things, I know there is no help I can bring, and anyway it didn’t ring true. Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune, Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in, blowing through the flowers on your tomb. I’m lost in the crowd, all my tears are gone, don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through. Everything I touch seems to disappear like a bird that flew tangled up in blue. Some day maybe I’ll remember to forget – the evening winds are still, I’ve lost the way and will. There are no words but these to tell what’s true. Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune, Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in, blowing through the flowers on your tomb. Lucy Newlyn
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Theme Time Time Night time time in the big city. Dreams, schemes & themes. Around the world. Look up in the sky, it’s a bird. Jail. Got his nickname from his middle name. Police & thieves ah yeeaah in the street Look up in the sky, it’s a bird. Most likely it’s a bird. Christopher Columbus/Set sail without a compass A loch is a body of water The wind comes down an’ I can’t stand the chill The greater the number of laws & enactments my wine-headed baby took everything I have with a rocking left hand to imitate the rhythm of the train on the tracks. You might want to gather up some twigs, some little bits of yarn, almost any kinda material you might find. Drinking. Keep your hands on your wallet & your ears to the radio, you won’t find that name on the little licence plates you can buy for your bicycle. Scotland is about the size of South Carolina. This idea centred on continents moving across the face of the earth. Two sailors get out of the cab. The more thieves contemplating the Iron Horse, Liquid Libation, the truck driver runs a red light. Cold. Be Careful. Ride like Paul Revere. Look up in the sky, it’s a bird. Trains. A woman realises she is no longer in love, the batteries in the remote control are dead. The rich man gets an apology, the poor man gets 10 years Prison, the house of many doors. Cops & Robbers. Aint got no money to pay for this drink/boy I need it bad Why, they could percolate the ocean in Brazil You know all this talk is making me thirsty He went from Rags to Riches, by Having Number One Hits, right on the bleeding edge. Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise My girl rides in a Model-T Ford/But she gets there just the same…Coffee. Stay in a heightened state of awareness, build yourself a little nest, a guilty man goes home to his wife His grave looks mighty cold an’ I got a cold, cold feeling/it’s just like ice around my heart. Birds. State police, state troopers, militia, highway patrol swing into action, Why, they put coffee in their coffee in Brazil Some of my favourite Get Rich Quick Schemes include Pyramid Schemes I also like Robbing Peter to Pay Paul but I hear it was a pretty common name, down by the Bayou. The mercury’s dropping & there’s frost on the window Sound the claxon, put up the yellow perimeter tape & Kansas gets bonanzas from the grain There was an old lady from Houston/whose hens dont lay like they used t’ (aint that a shame). Shot a man in Reno. Rich Man, Poor Man. -58-
Deputies & constables, lawmen, marshals, that’s just one side of the law, bandits & buccaneers, burglars & cheats, stickupmen, swindlers, conmen & crooks, looters & marauders In the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred & six…Get youself out of the roundhouse & hop aboard, it’s time to make the donuts. If you’re rich don’t worry, but the poor must give up hope, & by ‘audience’, I mean, Jail. A bird’s-eye view of the absence of heat. Spied a señorita there,/Wind blows through her long black hair but fraught with danger. She lost a helping hand. The poor know all about poverty, only the morbid rich would find the subject glamorous. He’s as much dead as them all an’ I don’t intend to die in Egypt Land So button up your overcoat & make yourself a mug of hot chocolate: maybe even flip ya the bird. Time. Dan Eltringham
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Killing Time Time in the brain cells sweating like a nail bomb, trouble with the heartbeat spitting like a sten gun, cut to the chase, pick up the pace; no such thing as a walkabout fun-run, shoot yourself a glance in the chrome in the day-room, don’t hang about, your running out of space, son. Red light, stop sign, belly full of road rage, ticket from the fuzz if you dawdle in the slow-lane, pull up your socks, get out of the blocks; twelve hour day-shift grafting at the coal face, turning up the gas brings blood to the boat race, strike with iron or your sleeping in the stone age. Don’t dilly dally or the trail goes cold, sir, don’t hold back till your mouldy old dough, sir, sprint for the line, turn on a dime; sit tight, hang fire, I’m putting you on hold, sir, too late, snail pace, already sold, sir, blame it on the kids but it’s you getting old, sir. Short cut, fast track, trolley dash at Quick Save, four minute warning, boil yourself an egg, babe, crack the whip, shoot from the hip; close shave, tear arse, riding on a knife blade, twenny-four seven in the brain drain rat race, finger on the pulse but you’d better watch your heart rate. Cheap thrills, speed kills, pop yourself a pill, mate, thumb a free ride on amphetamine sulphate, run with the pack, -60-
don’t look back; pedal to the floor when you’re burning up the home straight, her indoors doesn’t want you getting home late, love’s in the freezer and your dinner’s in the dog-grate. Ten to the dozen to the grave from the carry-cot, bolt like a thoroughbred, talk like a chatterbox, oil the wheels, pick up your heels; ginseng tea turns out to be tommyrot, reach for the future with a hand full of liver spots, fuse-wire burns in the barrel of a body-clock. Cut yourself in half doing life at the sharp end, meet your own self coming back around the U-bend, get with the beat, turn up the heat; sink like a stone by going off the deep end, fifty quid an hour for a top flight shrink, said start killing time, it’s later than you think, friend. Simon Armitage From Travelling Songs, 2002. With the kind permission of Faber & Faber.
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Doctors of War You’re knocking down men with anchors and chains. You’re building them up with flies in their brains. By the docks and the airfields you’re filing them in. As they pass through the door you’re branding their skin. You fill up your planes and you hand out your guns to the young and the old and the hard-done-by ones, and their chattering teeth is the music of war, and the devils they smile behind Hell’s open door. This song has been written and heard many times but we’re deaf to the words and don’t heed the rhymes. The fire in your hands that shoots and devours is the doorman of Hell, he’s the eater of hours. We’re holding him down and smothering his face, we’re breaking his nose and he’s red and disgraced. We’ll bury him deep when he’s silent and dead then we’ll stand on his grave and we’ll fill it with lead. Adham Smart
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The Times They Ain’t Quite Normal Now listen you people No matter your home And ‘fess up that the aggro Around you has grown And wise up to it soon Nothin’ll be what you have known And if a peaceful life is worth saving Then you better start saying or your views will be gone For the times they ain’t quite normal Come teachers and thinkers Your thoughts are on the line And keep your minds clear Or thought’ll be undermined And best speak up soon While confusion still reigns There’s no telling where chaos is goin’ For the top dog now may yet prove he’s insane Cause the times they ain’t quite normal Come leaders and statesmen And women and all Don’t stand up for mischief Don’t hold us in thrall For history will judge Who was true, who a fool There’s a side goes back, a side goes on So you’d better decide just which side you should call For the times they ain’t quite normal Come genders and races Faiths of all kind And don’t segregate First of all in your mind -63-
They’re brothers and sisters They’re your kith and your kind Ain’t no aliens on this whole planet Please get that lesson learned while we’ve all still got time Cause the times they ain’t quite normal The truth’s on the line The facts thrown in doubt The teaching now Lies with those with clout As what’s normal now We once thought far out The debts that we owe just keep rising Being free or a slave is what it’s about David Braund
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Thin How’d you learn to do it, are there classes to begin? Did you start with swords, or did you work up from a pin? Does it hurt more when you draw it out or put it in? Could you give me a quote? A sentence will do. Something is happening here, and I don’t know what it is. Do you? Is this for pleasure or something you’d like to promote? What’s the plan for these chickens? Is that a goat? Somebody’s gotta ask questions, and somebody’s gotta take notes, whether this is a circus or only a zoo. Something is happening here, and I don’t know what it is. At least I admit it. Do you? A naked man walks in and says “how dare you intrude and wave around your pencil and spoil the mood?” Well, if you won’t make copy, you can’t eat food. It’s not an original thought, but nothing is new. Something is happening here, and I don’t know what it is. Do you? Your outfit is a joke or just a costume or disguise? Your answer, is that prophecy or bullshit? Or lies? Here’s your throat back, can I borrow your eyes? Could you tell me which bullshit is true? Something is happening here, and I don’t know what it is. Do you? Jared M. Campbell
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Subcutaneous Phonesick Mood Get born, buy quorn, come out, fallout, Learn to shout, digress, get stressed, Better be a success, be her, be him, try this, Conceal, do it, twenty years of schooling And your B.A. doesn’t pay shit, Look out kid, your footprint is big, Better jump down a loophole, snoopers in Whitehall, Coming out this Fall, Kendall makes a phone-call, Don’t wanna be a bum? “Secure an outcome”, The state don’t pay cause we sold it to a blue-jay.
Song to Bob Hey hey Bob Dylan I wrote you a song For all the hard places you’ve been and returned, Out on the old 61st Highway, you learned; Your ragged reels sound for the soul in the throng. I came and I heard all the things that you saw, The crab-footed congressmen, shots in the night, A smile on the shore and a Sun that won’t fight, A rare blue-eyed son breathing in the twilight. And what will I do with the things that I heard? I’ll rail at the walls of the siege in the desert I’ll claw at the web in a drawer of dead spiders I’ll fuse and I’ll boil and I’ll roll and I’ll roil; My dawn is Johanna, my friend and my foil. William Austin
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From The fre whelyng Sir Thomas Wyatt In vayn thou sekest to know why swete if / as I thinck / thou diddist not know or now in vayn thou sekest to know why swete naught suffiseth god wot how when thou doest away thy sluggardie this may morn to the straunge desert forrest I will have flown, thou makest me from compayne to live alone but thinck not twice all is right In vayn thou stalkest in my chambre swete gentill tame with naked fote in vayn thou stalkest in my chambre swete for I ame gone / there is no bote where is thy true meanying heart alas where thy faith thy stedfastnes there is no more but all doeth passe but thinck not twice all is right It is vayn to utter plaisaunt wordes swete as I faine ons would have herd it is vayn to utter plaisaunt wordes swete nor mine eare nor hert are persed I ame hasting through dyvers regions could ons loved I a lady a child I ame tolde I gave her my hert but she would have reft my soule but thinck not twice all is right Adieu my dere and cruell swete where I ame bound I cannot tell goodbye is a new fangil word swete therefore I say fare the well I say not that thou wert unkynde thine is the fault / but I leve that behinde wasted hast thou only my precious tyme but thinck not twice all is right Amanda Holton -67-
An unknown quantity I first saw Bob Dylan at the Glastonbury festival in June 1998, which still feels recent to me, but is suddenly nearly twenty years ago. (Why am I visibly aged and yet Dylan seems unaltered?) I’ve seen him be much better since, and much worse. But back then Dylan was an unknown quantity. Time Out of Mind, the album which restored his reputation, was released later that year, at the end of September. It’s hard to imagine now, but in the ‘90s Dylan was regarded as something of a has been, a wayward figure to be found committing terrible acts of violence on the treasures of his back catalogue, and one who, silent for seven years since the disappointing Under The Red Sky, was offering nothing new to match them. I hadn’t set out to watch him, in his non-prestige mid-afternoon pyramid spot. I was performing stand-up at the festival and probably stumbled across Dylan as I stumbled between other stages. I can’t remember much about the performance, but my expectations were so low they were easily exceeded. I chatted to a gaggle of middle-aged Dylanologists beside me, all beside themselves with joy at what they considered to be more than acceptable readings of songs they hadn’t even expected to hear, and first airings of the new songs that were soon to remake Dylan’s legend. I decided I ought to find time to familiarize myself with the complete works of Bob Dylan, this oddly forgotten figure, whose stock, if the diehards around me were to be believed, was quietly rising again. But I didn’t. Less than a year later I had fallen out of a near marriage, and spent six months or so sofa surfing the living rooms of friends and acquaintances. The most desperate period was the few weeks I slept on the floor of the filthy one room flat, deep up country in pre-gentrification Hackney, of the comedians’ comedian, raconteur and sometime Bob Dylan impersonator Simon Munnery, the Peter Cook of our generation, but unencumbered by Cook’s brief dalliance with fame and wealth. One night, exhausted from a long and poorly paid round trip to do twenty minutes in some far off Midland city, I tried to doze off, surrounded by cigarette ends and discarded beer cans full of sputum. But Simon did not -68-
believe in sleep, which he saw as a waste of time better spent arguing with people. His task that night, he decided, was to convince me that Bob Dylan was a genius and this he did, not by carefully persuasive use of selections from Dylan’s entire oeuvre, but by playing the unfinished outtake “She’s Your Lover Now”, over and over again, and acting out the vignettes contained within, through the endless small hours and into the morning, until I was a broken believer. I’m listening to “She’s Your Lover Now” as I write this, the 6.10 fragment Simon tortured me with, and I still know every sneer and slur and sudden unrehearsed surge of drum clatter and lead licks. And I remember Simon, a man I admired above all others then, young and full of energy, in straight leg jeans and bushy Bob Dylan hair, waving a beer can around, years before cancer knocked the wind out of him, back when we all seemed to have everything all before us still, and him dancing around indefatigably in front of me as the dark gave way to the light, conjuring up the scene of the song as he saw it, again, again, again. Dylan’s first person narrator is at some terrible party, where his ex is the belle of the ball, and a succession of babbling idiots commandeer his attention. He can’t quite tear himself away from observing this vivacious woman and her new and more pliable partner, even though he finds himself magnifying all her faults. “Yes, you, you just sit around and ask for ashtrays, can’t you reach?” That was the line Simon kept barking through brown teeth in hysterical disbelief at how hilarious and apposite it was. And that, from all the amazing lines and astonishing performances in Dylan’s catalogue, was the one that sold me on him. And by the time Simon let me sleep I was smitten. So I now I do see Dylan, when I can, and I buy everything as it emerges, even if I can’t buy the time to listen to it. But “She’s Your Lover Now” is still my favorite song. And that night was still one of the best nights ever. And whatever Dylan does, he can’t undo it. Stewart Lee
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Four Limericks The Nobel Prize is all very fine, and for some it is clearly a sign to protest is OK. I agree, but must say the man has a tedious whine. Darrell Barnes
He was born as Zimmerman, Rob but preferred the names Dylan and Bob. He protested a lot, twanged, sang, blew and got the Nobel from the Literature mob. David Braund
He’s a singer song-writer, God wot. He sings, and his songs mean a lot. But a poet’s a poet and don’t we all know it, whether he’s singing or not? Lucy Newlyn
Readers and critics run amok. The singerwriter’s likewise stuck. “Where’s commerce end? Where’s wordcraft start?” “Is this a piece of folk, or art?” The poem doesn’t give a fuck. Jared M. Campbell
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Haiku Dylan in heaven: “Goddamn, this ain’t no harp, it’s a fucking lyre!” Stuart Estell
On the doorstep Three droplets of rain hang from a crumpled trefoil of summer jasmine. Catching the light, they tremble like tears. A jester’s wintry cap and bells. Lucy Newlyn
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Encomium for Bob Dylan, on the occasion of his receiving a Doctorate for Music at St Andrews In one of his first concerts in New York in the 1960s Bob Dylan said that he’d recently been asked to contribute to a book about Woody Guthrie, the great folksinger, songwriter and political activist. He’d been asked to say “What does Woody Guthrie mean to you in 25 words?” and, Bob Dylan said, “I couldn’t do it”. So instead he read “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie”, a tender poem about Guthrie and the spirit of American idealism. I feel similarly incapable when I’m asked to say what Bob Dylan means to me in a few minutes. In fact, what I’m here to say isn’t really what he means to me, but what he means to the University of St Andrews that we should have offered him the honour of a doctoral degree. It goes without saying that his acceptance of our invitation deeply honours us, and I really can’t say what a great privilege and pleasure his presence here is today. Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941 and grew up in Hibbing, on the Canadian border. He briefly attended the University of Minnesota, and then made what’s become an almost mythical trip to New York to visit the dying Woody Guthrie, and to begin the career that he continues still - writing, singing, recording and performing his songs. Performing is what he’ll be doing once more tonight; and not the least of Bob Dylan’s claims on our attention is his mercurial, devoted and exceptional commitment to the constant renewal of his work that performance involves. It’s as true now as it ever was that ‘no one sings Dylan like Dylan’. Bob Dylan’s life as writer and singer has the aspect of vocation, of calling, and his is an art of the most venturesome risk and the most patient endurance. He’s spent a lifetime applying himself to such long-sanctioned forms of art as folk, blues, country, and rock music. And, partly by transfusing them with various kinds of poetic art, he’s reinvented them so radically that he’s moved everything on to a place it had never expected to go and left the deepest imprint on human consciousness. Many members of my generation can’t separate a sense of our own identity from his music and lyrics. He’s been for us an extension of consciousness - a way of growing up, and a -72-
way of growing more alive. And his work acts like that for succeeding generations too - witness the eager younger people who attend his concerts, which still sell out as soon as they’re advertised. Bob Dylan possesses, in several senses of the phrase, staying power. He keeps on keeping on. His magnificent songs will last as long as song itself does. There are the early songs of political engagement, songs like “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”, songs inseparable from the history of the American Civil Rights movement. There are the revolutionary songs of the mid1960s, songs that seem to well up out of nowhere, an electric nowhere of American turbulence, songs like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Mr Tambourine Man”, “Desolation Row” and “Like A Rolling Stone” - songs that made their time as much as it made them. And then there are, always, the love songs - songs of longing and desire, of hope and hopelessness, songs like “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “Lay, Lady, Lay”, “Tangled up in Blue” and “Lovesick” - songs that make Bob Dylan one of the great writers of the drama of human relationship. And there are so many other songs and other kinds of song: devotional songs like “Precious Angel” and “I Believe in You”, and poignant songs of older age such as “Not Dark Yet”, songs of resilience, songs of what it means to have come through. Bob Dylan’s work has been one of the places where the English language has extended itself in our time, sometimes with epigrammatic force and wit. Where would the language be without “He not busy being born / Is busy dying”; and “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”; and “When you ain’t got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose”; and “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”; and “I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul”? “What are your songs about?” Bob Dylan was once asked. “Oh,” he said, “some of them are about three minutes, some of them are about five minutes, and some of them, believe it or not, are about eleven minutes”. It was a joke of course, and a good one, from the man who broke all the rules about how long a popular song might be. But songs are about time – about passing the time and keeping the time and filling the time; and maybe, if they’re truly good, about fulfilling the time too; and about doing these things well. -73-
Bob Dylan has passed our time very well. Chancellor, it gives me great pleasure to present Bob Dylan for the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa. Neil Corcoran
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Notes on Contributors Simon Armitage studied Geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic, and was a postgraduate student at the University of Manchester. He is now Professor of Poetry at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford. His new collection The Unaccompanied is published by Faber & Faber. William Austin is in his second year reading English at St Edmund Hall. Darrell Barnes lives in London, and studied Modern Languages at St Edmund Hall. On leaving university, he worked for Barclays Bank in East Africa and Europe before escaping the tyranny of the salariat for the more enduring pleasures of voluntary work. With a small group of friends, he has self-published a small collection of short stories and poetry. Sonja Benskin Mesher lives in Llanelltyd. Wales. She is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. A Small Life, her chapbook of poetry and art, was published and distributed by take-it-to-the-street-poetry. David Braund lives in Burgess Hill, Sussex. He studied Geography at St. Edmund Hall, and is now a retired computer software consultant. He has contributed two poems to the Oxford Magazine. Alexander Bridge is in his second year reading English at St Edmund Hall. Jared M. Campbell is a corporate lawyer in New York. He studied Philosophy at the University of Richmond and law at the University of Virginia. Tom Clucas read English at St Edmund Hall, and lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he has worked as a Postdoc, Lecturer, and most recently Deputy Professor of English and American Literature and Culture at Justus Liebig University. Neil Corcoran lives in Oxton on the Wirral in the U.K. He read English at St Edmund Hall, and is now Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Liverpool. His book Reading Shakespeare’s Soliloquies: Text, Theatre, Film will be published in January 2018. Dan Eltringham lives in Sheffield. He read English at St Edmund Hall, and is now a poet, academic and editor. His poetry and translations have appeared in numerous journals and his first collection, Cairn Almanac, will be published by Hesterglock Press in Spring 2017. He co-edits Girasol Press and co-runs Electric Arc Furnace, a new poetry readings series in Sheffield. Stuart Estell lives in Birmingham. He read English at St Edmund Hall, and is now an Enterprise Architect with Uniper. In his spare time he is a pianist, performer and music reviewer as well as a novelist and poet. His first book, Verucca Music, was published in 2011. Together with Lucy Newlyn, he founded the Hall Writers’ Forum. -75-
Judyta Frodyma is a poet and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in English and the environment at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. She completed her D.Phil. at St Edmund Hall and St Catherine’s Colleges, Oxford. She currently lives in a cabin. Amelia Gabaldoni is in her second year reading English at St Edmund Hall, where she is currently serving as JCR President. Elsa Hammond lives in Oxford, where she read English at Regent’s Park College. She is completing her Ph.D. on the poetry of Coleridge and Tennyson at the University of Bristol. She is an award-winning travel writer (The Wild Guide to Southern and Eastern England) and is currently writing poetry about her 1,000 mile solo rowing expedition on the Pacific Ocean in 2014. Amanda Holton lives in Oxford, where she studied English and was awarded a DPhil for her thesis on Chaucer. She currently teaches at several Oxford colleges and at the University of Reading. With Tom MacFaul, she has edited Tottel’s Miscellany, which features many of the poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Tony Hufton is a freelance writer living in Norwich. He studied English at St Edmund Hall. Peter King lives in Churchill near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire. He read Philosophy at Middlesex Polytechnic and Brasenose College, Oxford. He is now Lecturer in Philosophy at Pembroke College and St Edmund Hall. His book Adding Colours to the Chameleon was published by Wisdom’s Bottom Press in 2016. Gerard Lally read English at St Edmund Hall (1971-74) and received his MA in 1980. He is currently living in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he taught English until his retirement in 2015. Stewart Lee lives in London. He read English at St Edmund Hall, and went on to become a stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician. He has recently toured with his show Content Provider, and his latest book is Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011-2016 (Faber & Faber, 2016). Chris Mann lives in Grahamstown, South Africa. He studied English and Philosophy at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg; English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford; and African Oral Literature at SOAS, London. He is now Emeritus Professor of Poetry at Rhodes University. Founder and convenor of Wordfest, South Africa, his most recent book is Rudiments of Grace (Grahamstown Cathedral, second impression 2017). Jude Cowan Montague lives in London and St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings. She read English at St Edmund Hall, and worked for Reuters Television News for ten years. She improvises music, broadcasts for Resonance FM, and writes about -76-
international news stories as well as about Alfred Hitchcock as a boy. Her most recent book is Young Hitch in Forbidden Flames. Lucy Newlyn lives in Oxford, where she studied English at Lady Margaret Hall. She is Fellow Emeritus in English at St Edmund Hall. Her second collection of poems, Earth’s Almanac, was published in 2015. Together with Stuart Estell, she founded the Hall Writers’ Forum. Seamus Perry lives in Oxford, where he studied English as an undergraduate at St Catherine’s College. Currently a Fellow and Tutor at Balliol College, he is editor, with Christopher Ricks, of the journal Essays in Criticism. Bruce Ross-Smith lives in Oxford. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Deia Archaeological Museum and Research Centre. He is now a Lecturer for the International Programmes at Hertford College, Oxford. His work is frequently published in the Oxford Magazine. Adham Smart was born in Cambridge and grew up in Cairo and London. He studied Linguistics and Georgian at SOAS, University of London, and is currently pursuing an M.St. in Linguistics and Philology at St Anne’s, Oxford. Among his most recent publications is Six Georgian Poets (Arc Publications, 2016), to which he contributed as a translator. Natasha Walker lives in Heidelberg, Germany. She studied English and Modern Languages (German) at St. Edmund Hall and has her own process consultancy business. Kieron Winn lives in Oxford, where he studied at Christ Church, receiving an M.A. and a D.Phil. in English. He is now a freelance teacher of literature and creative writing. His poems appear widely in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, and in 2015 he published his first collection, The Mortal Man (Howtown Press). Reuben Woolley lives in Zaragoza, Spain. He studied Drama and Education at Bretton Hall College of Education; and is now a Teacher of English as a Second Language and the editor of two online magazines, I am not a silent poet and The Curly Mind. His most recent book is skins (Hesterglock Press, 2016).
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Chough Publications Printed and bound by the Holywell Press, Oxford. Cover illustration by Jude Cowan Montague