Clare
In my little series
on Wonderful
East Anglia
I’ve pulled the piss
out of a lot of places
which really aren’t too bad
compared with Clare.
Clare is the pits;
The Worst.
I spent a whole day there
in a freezing, miserable excuse
for a church, rehearsing for
a recent concert.
Below the church clock
is the inscription
GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS, 1792.
It just about sums up the
cold, pennypinching, half-arsed,
narrow-minded, tit-faced,
petit-bourgeois, freeze-dried
torpor of the place.
The pubs are crowded with Salvationists,
ringing bells & bawling hymns in your
face as you drink.
(& what happens, then, on Sundays?
I dread to think.)
The rest of Clare is depressingly
stockbroker, or lesbian-science-fiction-gothick.
Even the toilet bowls are sandtex pink
with thatched seats. I suppose
you could buy ‘Cream Teas’ there if you were
fool enough.
Of all the God-forsaken holes
on this Earth, Clare must be the nastiest.
Give me two weeks in Brindisi,
a fortnight on Devil’s Island or
a life sentence in Siberia — I’m sure
I’d find them all more convivial
than a single afternoon
in Clare.
Couldn’t the Army be persuaded
to move their shooting-range
from Salisbury plain? Somebody
should do something about this place
before its influence spreads.
Page(s) 10
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The