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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Peter Lewin

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Bleak Stone College, Near Preston

Off he went on the four day poetry performance course.
Soon he was being whisked off from the station
on the free college bus to Bleak Stone: people were
chattering MAs, PhDs, Shakespearean sonnets, villanelles,
rhyming schemes, the number of beats per line,
about various courses they'd been on, all showing
their intellectual muscles. He started to feel like
he'd been beaten up already, started wishing
he was on his own drinking a pint mug of tea,
having a roll-up, listening to United on GMR.
Halfway through the course he found himself getting drunk
with the Welsh actor who was one of the tutors
who told him when he was up there on the podium
he was another Peter Ustinov. Something special happens,
he said, you can hear a pin drop, you've got total command.
That night, on their way to the bedrooms, the actor
got carried away. Look, he said, there on the balcony,
the stairway, there's the Three Musketeers fighting
the Cardinal's men - listen to the tick-tack of their
swords, see their plumed feathers vibrating, feel the drama,
the intensity, look yonder, yonder, near the fountain
on the marble floor, there lies Caesar, blood-stained
and dying, dying... I've a feeling you'll go far,
the actor said. Yeah, Preston, he replied.

 

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