Brian Docherty
Weather reports
Blizzards in Scotland, A939 Cock Bridge to
Tomintoul closed (Radio 2)
Every year in Glasgow we laid bets
on the likely date of this mantra
thankful we lived 120 miles south
of this pagan weather, smirking at
the notion of sharing Moscow's latitude.
We were temperate, only political interests
in common, remembering it was Chicago
which took its weather from Moscow,
its iron-frame architecture from Glasgow,
its music from Kerry or Mississippi.
That climate shocked Muddy Waters
& Willie Dixon into rewiring the Blues;
as Lenin might have prophesised to Engels'
US pen-pal Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky,
Rhythm & Blues = Chicago + Electricity.
A music that might have shocked Engels
as much as the meat-packing plants,
steelworks, and South Side tenements
which powered it up,
flipping the coin
on the Country & Western energising
the shop on Hope Street which sold
Western gear to Glasgow's cowboys,
all the saddles, leather chaps, stetsons,
boots & spurs a hombre could desire.
We loved every music America offered,
even Bluegrass, our own tunes in disguise,
leaving strathspeys & reels to folkies
quoting Satchmo; all music is folk music,
all of us trapped in the blizzard of history.
Brian Docherty was born in Glasgow and now lives in North London. His first collection, Armchair Theatre, was published by Hearing Eye in 1999.
Page(s) 42
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