Bert Flitcroft, "From Standing Stones to the Stars"

Bert Flitcroft was born and brought up in Lancashire but now lives in the Midlands. He now has four collections of poetry published: Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink, Thought-Apples, Just Asking, and Seeing the Light. Recently he has made available a fifth, a "new and selected" entitled From Standing Stones to the Stars: History and Science: 30 Poems.

He is an Arts Council prize-winning poet, was Poet in Residence at the Southwell Poetry Festival and has performed at a number of leading national festivals including The Edinburgh International Book Festival. He was Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2015–17 and curated the on-line Staffordshire Poetry Collection. 

He has worked as resident poet with one of our "National Treasures," The Wedgwood Collection at the V&A; as resident poet with the prestigious R.I.B.A. exhibition "The Road Less Travelled"; and recently as part of the University of Keele project "Labelling the Museum."

Bert offers a professional mentoring service and has a long and successful history of running workshops and giving readings, not just to local poetry groups but in libraries, arts centres, gardens, galleries, museums. His website is here. 

About From Standing Stones to the Stars, by Bert Flitcroft

This collection  includes a few new poems alongside poems published in Bert’s first four collections. Glancing through these he realised how many of them reflect his long-standing interest in History and Science, and the variety in form and structure this has involved. This collection is designed to appeal to a wider-than-usual audience as well as the general poetry reader. Many readers will find this collection both a pleasure and a rewarding, if occasionally challenging, experience.

From From Standing Stones to the Stars

Re-reading Jane Austen

in the age of quantum entanglement

It is a truth universally acknowledged

that a single heavenly body, in possession

of space, must be in want of a soul mate. 

Between such bodies there is always gravity. 

And who is to say this isn't a form of love?

Whole galaxies may be holding hands, 

finding themselves entangled

at a subatomic level, sharing words of love. 

And, for all we know, causing each other 

both joy and heartache.

Let us imagine two heavenly bodies

and name them Elizabeth and Darcy,

separate them by unacknowledged forces

a physicist might label Pride and Prejudice.

Two planets, mere particles, seemingly 

destined to circle around each other forever.

There is much that is mysterious about love,

but two particles can exist in many places

at the same time yet be connected, 

and, though separate, can influence and refine 

each other's behaviour.

So who is to deny that our two particles,

one in a high-waisted white gown

and one in a tailcoat with white cravat,

could be entangled at this subatomic level,

discovering that they share an affinity

created by a chance encounter at a ball

or an innocent visit with an aunt.

In the light of quantum entanglement

Jane Austen was much wiser than we think.

With such knowledge would the tale

of Romeo and his Juliet, two universal 

star-crossed lovers, have to end as it did?

Or Abelard and Heloise suffer such a fate?

Intensive care

Back from theatre, again, the room quiet 

but for your breathing and the syllables 

of monitors and voices in the corridor,

your eyes closed in opiate delirium 

you whispered, "I’m being chased 

around the room by a mashed potato."

And, after a silence, "Is that you, dad?"

and you squeezed my hand.

To see your pale flesh turn red and swell,

a doctor's pen daily marking out the fronts,

was to witness Life reduced 

to mortal combat between microbes.

If only Love could be a friendly bacteria

we could drip-feed into veins.

But for now at least, thank God for surgeons 

and men of science, and Fleming.

And yes, thank God for love.

Had you gone before your time, the natural 

order disturbed, I would have needed 

your absence, the silences, made bearable; 

convinced myself you were still somewhere:

in the low clouds, your voice in the wind,

your hands part of the warm rain.

Heaven would be good. That’s what it’s for.

Bert Flitcroft, "Seeing the Light"

 

Bert Flitcroft was born and brought up in Lancashire but now lives in the Midlands. He has three collections of poetry already published: Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink, Thought-Apples and Just Asking. His work has appeared in a number of national magazines. He is a prize-winning poet, has been Poet in Residence at the Southwell Poetry Festival and has performed at a number of national festivals including The Edinburgh International Book Festival. He was Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2015–17 and curated the on-line Staffordshire Poetry Collection. He has worked as resident poet with one of our "National Treasures," The Wedgwood Collection at the V&A; as resident poet with the prestigious R.I.B.A exhibition "The Road Less Travelled"; and recently as part of the University of Keele project "Labelling the Museum." He offers a professional mentoring service and has a long and successful history of running workshops and giving readings, not just to local poetry groups but in libraries, arts centres, gardens, galleries museums. His website is here. 

 

About Seeing the Light, by Bert Flitcroft

This book works as a collection from youth through to old age and all points between, recording moments and incidents when life and the world are suddenly seen afresh and with a greater understanding - Seeing the Light metaphorically as well as (occasionally) physically. It contains both serious poems alongside a few light-hearted ones which I hope will raise a smile or two. 

You can see more details about Seeing the Light on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Seeing the Light

Headland

It's a strolling stroll along the rise and fall

of the rolling face of the thrusting cliffs

where well-fed seagulls squabble and swoop

and the Skua threatens to skua its prey

to the mounted weathered whalebone skull

longing out to its long-lost sculling kin

in their deep and wail and the score 

of their song and wave of the waves

to the gap and the cleft where the rock

stands proud defying the rock-and-roll

and the jiving swell of the surging sea

when the winter wind cuts colder than stone

and whistles its wildness and scorns

the clouds that scud and slide down

the black and blue and blustering sky

that roughs up foam-frothed crashing wet

in the caves at the shearing feet of the sheer

rock with its tufted pate speckled with nests

and gaping and gasping and desperate beaks

in the biting squalls of summer storms

and the screech and the swooping turn of the tern

with its stay-away warning scream and dive

that mean what they say to make children scamper

and adults scram from the peck and prick

the stinging cut and rip of razor-blade beaks 

the thump and grip of curled and angry claws 

on windmilling arms and paper-thin skin

from these fearsome sprites of the wild wild.

Bridges

 

This is my uncle Albert - all ginger hair 

and ears like saucers, that cheeky smile

as if he’s pinched the last chocolate biscuit.

"Not a bad bone in his body," I’m told.

"Wouldn't hurt a fly." This was before the war,

before the children he would never have.

 

Killed he was, parachuting in at Arnhem.

A bridge too far for him, he came down 

with a hole in his back the size of my fist.

This was taken outside the mill gates 

on Crimea street. Nineteen he was. A hero.

I bear his name and carry it with pride.

 

My oldest daughter’s settled now, at home

with the kids, with the steep green hill

and dots of sheep behind. She has his smile,

that hint of mischief. And that ginger hair

that’s crossed a generation.

In the end some bridges build themselves.

Bert Flitcroft, "Just Asking"

Bert Flitcroft was born and brought up in Lancashire but now lives in the Midlands. He has three collections of poetry published: Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink and Thought-Apples, and recently Just Asking. His work has appeared in a number of national magazines and anthologies. He is a prize-winning poet, has been Poet in Residence at the Southwell Poetry Festival and has performed at a number of national festivals including The Edinburgh International Book Festival. He was Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2015–17 and curated the on-line Staffordshire Poetry Collection. He has worked as resident poet with one of our ‘National Treasures,’ The Wedgwood Collection at the V&A; as resident poet with the prestigious R.I.B.A. exhibition ‘The Road Less Travelled’; and recently as part of the University of Keel project ‘Labelling the Museum.’ His website is here. 

About Just Asking

As the title suggests, this is a collection in which most of the poems set out to pose a question, either directly or by implication, for the reader to consider in the light of their own experience and feelings. These questions may be about specific situations, or more generally about our own sub-conscious, unspoken attitudes to people, places, events and so on. Bert's poetic voice is clearly evident in the collection but with this in mind there are also poems written in the voices of a range of characters.

From Just Asking

To my friends: just asking…

Some days I have nothing new to say

of consequence. No opinion about the rain,

no forthright view about the latest scandal

or the smell of crusty bread.

But should something startling happen:

an angel threaten to descend

or a best friend lost, or an old love found,

these are surely pearls worth diving for.

We have swum in the same sea for years,

so why, when the water feels deep

do you lapse into awkward silence,

close up your hearts and seal them

as tight as oyster shells?

Why the need to keep a cancer secret,

or treat a shortage of sex as a shame

as if it were a sweet grape

withered to an unspeakable raisin?

Or admit to the heat of unrequited love

that has scorched the heart of all of us?

As if these things were a moral failing

or a sign of weakness.

My life is full of conversations I do not have.

This is a matter of soul.

Some days I might as well be up a mountain

shouting into the ice-blue emptiness,

or in the supermarket buying beer and oranges.

It’s grim...

Have you been, to The North?

They say, up there they have an ugly angel,

a rust-coloured, furnace-welded crucifix

with the wingspan of a stadium,

a man of steel holding up the sky

around the fraying edges of the city.

Like Lear, it seems, he is a challenge

to every storm and bolt of lightning.

And he casts a shadow on our conscience,

yours and mine, they say, like a sin.

Sad, really. I’ve seen a photograph.

They say it is deliberately a shocking sight.

Like celebrating grime, I’d say.

You cannot see love in his eyes,

he has no eyes.

Beauty? It can’t be in his smile,

he has no mouth to smile.

No fallen angel this, they say.

Stand at his feet, they say. Look up

at his thick-ribbed pride,

his barrel chest, the bulging calves,

that muscle out their industrial presence,

as if he is watching over them. As if

he is bolted into the bedrock of their being.

It’s how they stand up in the world,

apparently.

Two Poems by Bert Flitcroft

Bert Flitcroft grew up in Lancashire and now lives in the Midlands. A graduate of Sheffield University, he is an experienced and accomplished poet who for some time has been quietly and unassumingly spreading the poetry word as teacher, mentor, workshop leader, poet-in-residence, and reader. He has two collections of poetry published: Thought-Apples with Offa's Press and Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink. He is a prize-winning poet, has been published in well-established national poetry magazines and performed on several BBC local radio stations.He ran for a number of years residential poetry-writing courses working alongside poets such as Carol Ann Duffy, Adrian Henry, Linda France and others. He was Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2015-2017 and curated The Staffordshire Poetry Collection. In 2015 he was Poet in Residence at The Southwell Poetry Festival. He has performed at a number of national Festivals including the Edinburgh Book Festival, Birmingham, Stoke, Lichfield, Ilkley, Buxton, Stafford, and has performed at The Door at The Birmingham Rep, as well as the CBSO Centre and The Conservatoire in Birmingham. In 2016 he was Poet in Residence at The Shire Hall Gallery, and recently has been Resident Poet at The Wedgwood Museum and The Brampton Museum and Gallery. Bert's website is www.bert-flitcroft-poetry.com 

Waiting for Anna

This Moses basket fresh by the bed
is waiting,
like a promise, like a Truth 
about to come true.
Not for a casting off among the reeds
but for a coming 
home.

To open a door, to enter a room,
is always to begin again.
Already the basket’s empty space,
the very air inside it, 
is sacred.
There is nothing more to say.
Silence has a voice.
Emptiness is eloquent.


Off

Imagine the pent-up energy, 
the violence, of a single electron 
spinning madly around its nucleus, 
unable to break free.
Think millions of them, going nowhere
in the red-hot cauldron of their universe.

Until some outside force charges in
and scatters them, 
or marches them in lines 
directing them to travel North or South.
Imagine their excitement at the thought
of travelling, of having somewhere to go.

There are such moments,
when the world shifts.
Imagine Einstein pushing off his little boat
at midnight across a sea of relativity –
all those ricocheting atoms.
Or Rutherford as he fired his first alpha particles.
All those electrons suddenly weighing up
the possibilities, high-fiving, punching the air.