Fred is reliably informed that today is National Poetry Day. Yes! That day when we can all stake a claim to living, breathing and just being the language of all those greats who, through the ages, filtered or fuddled meaning from the course of the everyday and wrote it down in a way quite like no other could, can or will. Teachers pontificate to their students that we’re all poets deep down, we’ve all got a story to tell, you’ve just got to open your mind and be creative. And so, up and down the land, trees are cut down, the wood is pulped, the pulp is dried, processed, retailed and eventually written on. Fortunately, as folk become more conscious of their compartmentalised bins, there is a greater chance now than at any other point in history that their daubed-on paper will actually be put to good use, before eventually finding its way to the sea. Toilet roll is my first thought here.

And so, without further ado, let me unveil to you Fred’s Five-Point Poetry Day Plan:

• Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Go on!
• You feel that? You’ve just breathed in the same air as that which William Shakespeare did, this very day, albeit 400 years ago!
• Inspiration gained. Now think of something really sententious. Pretentious will do. As long as it’s pretty short. In fact, let’s say five syllables. Struggling? OK, let’s make this a bit easier. You can count the syllables on your fingers if needs be.
• Got something but not sure it’s all that? Don’t panic! Have another go at a five syllable one. People tend to get a seven quite easily, but those fives sure are tricky.
• OK, we’re there. Stick the five on top, whack the seven in the middle, and place the second lot of five on the bottom. No, it’s not a syllable sandwich; it’s your very own haiku, and you your very own poet!
  
  Here ends the Five-Point Plan. If you’re feeling really good, go and share your wares! People will really warm to you. But whatever you do, make sure you put the recycling out for Monday morning.

ENDS

The rumble underfoot as they draw near,
Mud thrown up from the flick of their hooves.
Voices swell as they pass at a canter,
Turning as one they round the bend,

Hugging the rails as they go –
A flash of silks all mixed
Like oils smeared across a palette;
The charging light brigade.

They dip away and out of sight,
Under the lowering sun.
For now the tannoy tells the rest;
The bookmaker strikes his match.


And now up in the old grandstand
The binoculars are drawn to the eye;
The beasts emerge from the gruelling incline,
Meeting the bend for the final climb.


Again the voices rise and swell
Over the last the creatures leap and crash
Back to the earth; the whip takes hold
As every sinew strains for home.


And here is written the flux of fortune:
The form binned and the hopes pinned,
The odds-on favourite in life’s pitch and toss;
Today’s triumph but tomorrow’s loss.

I’ve recently become engrossed, absorbed, consumed, entranced by a four times daily, 370 word broadcast on BBC Radio 4 that goes by the name of THE SHIPPING FORECAST.

I love the universality of it; the idea that shipping lanes transcend geographical borders, that the seas are non-territorised, vast expanses of nothingness, blackness at night, void of artificial lighting or any trace of mankind’s lasting footprint: eery, ghostly plains dissected only occasionally by the passing of fleeting ships.

This sense of mystery is made all the more engrossing by the names of the areas that are referenced each time: Malin and Shannon incorrigibly Irish; Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Humber, Thames - the rivers running down the mainland’s back; then the brilliantly curious - Dogger, German Bight, Fisher, FitzRoy, Sole. Each sound so unique. The way these naming units are then stitched to bizarre combinations of adjectives, numbers and wind types has an alomst hypnotic quality, with the pauses between the portions of forecast creating an aural ebb and flow, simulating the seas’s own tidal pull.

Perhaps what I enjoy most, however, is its terseness and cohesion. There’s something very satisfying about order and consistency, and the forecast embodies it, from the never-changing opening of “And now the Shipping Forecast…”, through to the fixed, clockwise fashion in which the regions are listed.

Finally, as someone who enjoys and studies poetry, I find concision to be one of the most important and attractive traits. Every word choice and each scrap of punctuation matters; everything should add to the narrative. With its length limited to 370 words, coupled with the gravity of its subject, it’s clear that every syllable of sound and every half second of silence within the broadcast really do matter. Succinct, weighty, evocative: the Shipping Forecast is its own kind of poem. And one I like very much, particularly around teatime.

Phwoar, tell what you what I could do with...

What's that then?

Nice tin of beans on toast, oh yes

Ach no. Don't tell me. So this is what modern art's come to, is it? How so despairingly depressing. Ponsey arty student types...

Evocative
Awesome
Sonically
Bowie
Putatively
Off-kilter
Vintage
Insatiable
Pretentious
Ironically
Chillwave
Jaw-dropping
Rocking
Original
Colourful
Filmic
Retro feel
Moving
Compelling
Michael Jackson
Lo-fi
Zeitgeist
Melancholic
Scensters
Genre-bending
Ingenuity
Seamlessly
Ariel Pink
Unique
Majesterial

Voice #1 Jeez man you look like you've just seen a ghost. You alright?

Voice #2 Nah I just remembered something shit...

Voice #1 Wo man, what is it?

Voice #2 I made a really good joke two days ago and forgot to post it on Twitter. Achhh

Voice #1 Sucks, dude. Dude, sucks.

Here is some doggerel I’ve just unearthed from the shadowy underbelly of Laptop. The work is of one 18 yr old Mr Yeast. 18 is a very young age and Mr Yeast thought he could be like Philip Larkin, albeit not bald, homosexual or into Jazz.

Well we were all young, once.

Blurring

Late one Sunday afternoon
The photo albums have crept downstairs
And there’s the family flicking through.
No one’s passed away, there’s no funeral booked,
And no one’s moved to the USA.

In fact we’re all pretty much stuck in our roots
The motherland with its remodelled buses,
Our own Mothercare on the high street.
We’re just browsing for its own sake
No strings attached and no tears shed.

You can’t look at each one for more than
Two seconds, five if no one’s looking
There’s so many to get through and
Don’t they all do the same thing –
Same people, different sizes
Missing teeth, a runny nose
Making humans into people
Doing things to which we can relate, building
Sandcastles, knocking them down
Again and again. And look:

There’s the people met on holiday
The ones from Blackpool or Bournemouth
Who celebrated the need to stay in touch.
So the cheery cartoon Christmas cards
Exchanged and then stopped –
We lost our address book but what about them?
Captured for good on a small glossy sheet,
Stuck as they were for how many years.

And all these other people caught
Buying ice creams and pushing prams
Now probably the ones being moved around
Beyond the park and playground
Till they’re carted off once and for all
By those not found in the photograph.

VOICE #1 oh what you got there?

VOICE #2 just an odd sock i found in my laundry

VOICE #1 looks pretty normal to me