Martin Figura, "The Remaining Men"

Martin Figura was (some time ago now) described in a hospital referral letter (bad back) as ‘a pleasant 58 year old gentleman.’ His collection and show Whistle were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were both published in 2016. During the first lockdown he began the monthly Zoom event Live From The Butchery with Helen Ivory and Kate Birch. It won the Best Spoken Word Night Saboteur Award. In 2021 he was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence, with a pamphlet My Name is Mercy from Fair Acre Press. Some of this work has been filmed with Olivia Coleman and published in the Guardian. A second pamphlet from Fair Acre Press, Sixteen Sonnets for Care, from a commission for Social Care charities was published in 2022. His new collection The Remaining Men came out with Cinnamon Press in February 2024. He lives in Norwich with Helen Ivory and sciatica. The show Shed is returning to the stage in April 2024, three years after its Covid postponement. Martin has performed his work all over the place from Diss to New York to New Delhi and on BBC 1 Breakfast. His website is here. 

About The Remaining Men, by Martin Figura
The collection is I suppose a reckoning - an attempt to make sense of how we and I got here, from when I arrived on the scene in 1956. It includes just a few autobiographical poems, but mostly looks outward to small human stories. There are some poems about political leaders, that I have mostly tried to reduce to that same human level, whatever the colour of their politics. I realise it is quite ambitious and wide in its range, but hope I’ve manged to pull the threads together in a convincing way.

As the title implies, I have touched on what has been expected of men, particularly working-class men, and how they have been discarded as the world has changed about them. In an age when men are widely looked on in a pejorative way, and with plenty of justification, I hope I’ve managed to do this with some tenderness and understanding. I am not tackling the so called ‘culture wars’ - that minefield doesn’t need another old white man blundering about in it. In addition to my own experiences, I’ve also drawn on residences including a Miners’ village in Durham, the NHS, The Soldiers’ Charity and Social Services. 

You can read more about The Remaining Men on the publisher's website here. You can read a review of the book by Peter Raynard on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From The Remaining Men

The Remaining Men 

When the men surfaced for the last time and dispersed 

some were left over. These men wandered about the town 

until they each found their own particular sweet spot.  

Then they just stood there, looking out over the scarred coast

through red-rimmed eyes to the rough brown sea.  

As the days went by people gave up asking them 

why so still and could they fetch someone 

or something? They became like street signage, 

A-boards, parked prams or tied up dogs; something

to be manoeuvred around. As the months went by 

the men became hardened to difficult weather 

filling their coat pockets with hail. During the great storm 

of Eighty-Seven, their caps blew off and went cartwheeling 

down the streets with bin lids. As the years went by 

the slagheaps faded to green and saplings were planted.  

The men began to petrify into monuments. When 

the new road for the business park went through 

a lot of them were tipped back onto trollies, like the ones 

railway porters used to use, then loaded on to flatbed trucks 

with the traffic cones. Most were broken down for aggregate.  

The lucky ones were sold off as novelty porch lights 

and stood outside front doors on the new estate 

illuminating small front lawns and driveways.  

As the decades went by, saplings became sycamores 

and elms and named Colliery Wood. In autumn

the early morning light on them was glorious 

and cycle paths made their way there. The remaining 

men were defaced by graffiti and badly worn 

by then, many considered them to be an eyesore.  

When children asked what they were, not everyone 

could remember and of those that did, few were believed.  

As the centuries went by, they all but disappeared, 

only the circle in the park remained. Archaeologists 

and historians disagree about how they came to be there 

and what they might have been used for.

Harold Wilson Rows Towards Bishop Rock  

Harold, knees like little moons, bends 
his back, puffs through the clamouring
halyards of the bay. Always six moves ahead 
of the other buggers, be they Old Etonians 
or fellow grammar grubbers.  And where else 
to escape serious concerns, but these Scilly Isles.  
 
The cormorant is attentive company 
at the blunt end of the boat, kinked wings 
hung out to dry, Harold’s words gulped down 
like slippery fish. The oars are worn soft 
in their locks, while he rows he recalls himself
a boy in a school cap, at the steps of Number Ten. 
 
On the slipway, Mary diminishes to the red dot 
of her coat.  The lighthouse lays down her path, 
tugs the glow of Gannex mac and pipe smoke 
through the net curtain of mizzle. Mary turns,
heads up the slope towards the archipelago’s 
clustered lights and their ugly little bungalow.

Martin Figura, "My Name is Mercy"

 

Martin Figura, photograph by Dave Guttridge

Martin Figura’s collection and show Whistle was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Other prizes include the Poetry Society’s 2010 Hamish Canham Prize and runner up in the 2017 RSPB/Rialto Poetry Competition. Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were both published in 2016 and a new edition of Whistle (Cinnamon Press) in 2018.  The spoken word show Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine, was shortlisted in the 2018 Saboteur Awards. He lives in Norwich with Helen Ivory and sciatica. Together during lockdown, they began hosting Live from The Butchery Zoom readings with leading guest poets, winning the Saboteur Best Regular Spoken Word Night 2021 Award. In 2021, Martin was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence, resulting in publication in The Guardian, inclusion on the Poetry Archive and a pamphlet with Fair Acre Press. His next full collection As Far as I’m Concerned is due out with Cinnamon Press in 2023. His website is here. 

About My Name is Mercy

 

The Salisbury NHS Trust commissioned award-winning poet Martin Figura in March of this year to interview staff from across the Trust, exploring how it felt to be at the frontline of the pandemic response. This has resulted in an emotional collection of poems, titled My Name is Mercy, also the title of a poem based on one of the series of reports that BBC’s Mark Urban produced for the Newsnight programme.  

 

The life and work of staff in an out of the hospital form the subject matter of the poems, including experiencing Salisbury during lockdown and using horse riding to help cope with the stress and mental challenges of the pandemic, and the poet’s own experience undertaking this project.

Oscar-winning actress, and patron of The Stars Appeal, Olivia Colman, has read two of the newly-commissioned poems. Olivia Colman reads the poem "Fifth Season" that is based on a patient's true story and "Nightshift," which has recently been chosen by Poetry Archive Now as one of the poems of 2021. The poem "Ridge Line," read by the poet Martin Figura, reflects on the very personal experiences of one staff member, Lizzie Swift, and her horse Drum. You can listen to these poems here, here and here. 

 

Stacey Hunter, CEO of Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust said: "We all truly have been through an experience like no other in the history of the NHS. The emotional and inspiring poems in My Name is Mercy capture the psychological challenges that our staff faced in working through the pandemic and coping as best they could at work and in their personal lives."

 

Martin Figura said: "Thank you to everyone who made this project happen. I am especially grateful to those who gave me their time to be interviewed. The lasting impact of the pandemic on their lives was palpable and deeply affecting. I hope the poems go some way towards honouring the experiences and sacrifice of the staff, those they cared for and their loved ones."

 

The project was made possible with funding from the hospital’s League of Friends and The Stars Appeal charities.

 

You can see more details about My Name is Mercy on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From My Name is Mercy, by Martin Figura

On Being Interviewed by a Poet

How was it for you, this past year, was it: 

river swimming in lead diving-boots 

or walking in snow, blizzard blind, 

was it the Mojave Desert with an 

empty map, was it a cumbersome 

suitcase and a broken lock, was it 

line-dancing in purple crocs, a flock 

of sea gulls at a chip shop bin, was it 

windowless and continuous, a mouthful 

of salt, was it burning car tyres, pliers 

and teeth, was it blood dripped into milk, 

an alien abduction from a New Forest 

glade, sackcloth, shackles, ashes and shale, 

was it a skeleton clock, a pickaxe, a mule, 

a gilded mirror in flames, was it déjà vu 

after déjà vu, was it Nova Scotia in fall, 

an abandoned mineshaft in Wales, was it 

Easter lilies left to rot, bloodhounds barking 

in a parking lot, was it a cold metal bridle?  

Tell me in your own words was it difficult, 

are you exhausted, what are your hopes, 

what do you do to unwind?  

 

My Name is Mercy

Morning my darling, my name is Mercy

I'm your nurse for today, how are you?

Today is the nineteenth of January,

the sun is breaking through.

I'm your nurse for today, how are you?

The outlook should be positive,

the sun is breaking through.

Your wife knows you're here, she sends her love.

The outlook should be positive,

you're doing well, you’re safe, you're really safe.

Your wife knows you're here, she sends her love.

Would you like us to phone your wife?

You're doing well, you’re safe, you're really safe,

if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.

Would you like us to phone your wife?

It is difficult, I understand.

If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.

Today is the nineteenth of January,

it is difficult, I understand.

Morning my darling, my name is Mercy