Congratulations to John Keane, organiser of Stockport Write Out Loud, who has won the King’s English Society’s quarterly poetry prize with his poem ‘To Shame the Wise and Strong.’ Stockport Write Out Loud meets monthly at Stockport art gallery to read and discuss members’ poetry from technical and creative perspectives. Its unusual speciality is the group's collage poem, created at every meeting. There is also usually a theme for each month.

Here is John’s prize-winning poem:

 

To Shame the Wise and Strong

 

They know the broken kerb,
the spilth of stale pastry, the crumbs
of forgotten bread. They are the grey,
the common, the unremarked. Not
the sky's bold hawk, nor the swift swift
of cottage evenings. No-one watches
their flight for omen.

Their nests shelter in scaffold gaps
behind peeling billboards in concrete
hollows of the underpass. A scatter of straw,
a dropped feather, a place where the wind
does not quite reach. They are urban
dust-catchers, winged symbols of neglect.

They mate, they brood, they scavenge.
Their lives a quiet testament to the stubborn
will of the weak, the uncelebrated,
the persistently foolish. They are the broken
window's loyal tenants, the forgotten
monument's huddled inhabitants.
The ashen guardians of our concrete periphery.

John Keane

 

The King’s English Society competition judge, Dorothy Pope, praised John’s poem, saying: “Here, love is in the form of a tribute to those who are the opposite of wise and strong and whose courage we should admire for keeping going in the face of their being weak, persistently foolish and scavenging on the periphery of society. I endorse this tribute. It takes no courage to be talented high achievers, sky’s hawks, yet they are the praised ones. Rhyme would be inappropriate in a description of the dysfunctional. The extended bird metaphor is very effective in comparing the highflyers to the grey and common. This is a first-rate poem.”

John, pictured, has added some explanation of his poem, and in doing so he also described the general approach of Stockport Write Out Loud. He says: “It has been my great honour to run Stockport Write Out Loud poetry group since 2010. Weather permitting, the group meets every second Thursday in the month at Stockport art gallery.

“Our group has evolved a distinctive stylistic approach over the past 15 years, and many of these features are present in ‘To Shame the Wise and Strong’. The term ‘grim but good’ began to be bandied about in the months leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, serving to crystallise the unique features of our style. This is because negative experiences, bleak observations and disastrous historical events often take centre stage in our poetry.

“Although the following list is by no means exhaustive, these factors often feature in the ‘Stockport School’ of poetry:

• Idiomatic titles that create an arena for the poem and illuminate its contents.

• Clear, terse statements rather than obfuscation and elaboration.

• A strong moral sense that is essentially apolitical and irreligious.

• An intimate conversational style which assumes the reader is (or was) a close confederate in the poet’s experiences, creating a nostalgic or elegiac atmosphere.

• Descriptions of the northern industrial landscape (ruins, wastelands, factories, railways, urban birds and animals) to metaphorise emotions and states of mind.

 

“Most of these elements are present in ‘To Shame the Wise and Strong’, at some level or other. The unusual title, extended urban metaphors, bleak subject matter, strong moral perspective and intimate voice all exemplify the key elements of the Stockport School.

“The poem’s title derives from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, in which he explains that the foolish and powerless are especially blessed in the eyes of God: ‘But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.’ Thus, the title creates an appropriate arena for the poem and its message.

“The urban pigeons serve as metaphors for the marginalised and unsuccessful, scavenging for survival on the periphery of society. Unlike the ‘swift swifts’ and their idyllic ‘cottage evenings’ evoking Keats’s ‘To Autumn’, the pigeons are ‘grey’ and ‘common’. Descended from rock pigeons, they cannot even build functional nests. Peeling billboards, broken windows and forgotten monuments metaphorize their bleak conditions, while the free verse format echoes their dysfunctional lives.

“The poem presents a clear moral perspective without promoting any specific religious or political agenda. The pigeons keep going despite their weakness, low intelligence and peripheral status, teaching us the value of persistence in the face of adversity. Unlike the bold hawk or the elegant swift, they exemplify the virtues of humility and elicit our natural compassion for the oppressed.

“The voice of the poem is concise and relatable, with even obscure words like ‘spilth’ being readily understandable from sound and context. As is common in the Stockport style, an intimate ‘our’ recognises the reader as a confederate in the poet’s observational journey.”