Prize poet John Foggin - and a winning poem that he started working on in 1983
Sir Andrew Motion is clearly a man “of impeccable taste and discernment”, the recipient of two poetry prizes bestowed by the former poet laureate insisted on Friday night. John Foggin, a former teacher and lecturer – and also a mainstay of Puzzle Hall Poets in Sowerby Bridge – was speaking at the launch of his chapbook Larach, publication of which came as the prize for winning the 2014 Lumen and Camden poetry competition. Motion also judged the Plough poetry competition a few months earlier that Foggin also won. “It made me think, ‘Blimey, I can write,’ he said.
Foggin’s winning poem, ‘Camera Obscura’, about the death of the suffragette Emily Davison at the Derby in 1913, also appears in this year’s Forward book of poetry after being highly commended in the best single poem category. It represents a classic case of perseverance; Foggin revealed on Friday night that he completed the first draft in 1983. “It was a sonnet. I wouldn’t show it to anyone. It’s an embarrassment, it’s awful.”
Larach is available from Ward Wood Publishing for only £3, with all proceeds going to three cold weather shelters in the King’s Cross area, a cause constantly promoted throughout the year by the Lumen and Camden Poetry Series organised by Ruth O’Callaghan. She told the audience at Trinity United Reform Church in Camden that the homeless slept where they were sitting every Monday night, and then went on to other shelters in the area.
The title poem of John Foggin’s chapbook comes from the Gaelic word for a place that isn’t there anymore, “the ghost of a place”. A number of the poems are set on Skye, written while he was researching the Highland Clearances, “tramping quite pointlessly to various places, and staring at various piles of rubble”.
Another poem he read, ‘Daedalus’, was much more personal. “The sole reason I entered this competition was because of the charity it supports. At one time one of my sons, I discovered later, was a rough sleeper. He died when he was 21 in a fall from a high building.” Foggin talks more about this in his thoughtful, wise and rather wonderful blog.
He also read the final poem in the chapbook, ‘The fox on the window sill’: “I suppose Ted Hughes is in there somewhere, though he’s not meant to be.” The raw material for another poem in the collection was gathered, he later discovered, on the day of Hughes’s death.
Others who read on Friday night included four of the 10 highly commended poets in the competition – Roger Caldwell, Cameron Hawke Smith, Gillian Henchley, and Richard Westcott.
But the last word belongs to Foggin. Thanking those friends who had made special journeys to attend the launch, he mentioned one from Todmorden: “It’s a strange place. The sky gets very narrow. Ted Hughes didn’t like it very much. But it has the very best coffee in the universe.”
The 2015 Lumen and Camden poetry competition is now open for entries. The judge is George Szirtes, and the deadline is 14 February. More details
Greg Freeman
