Writing - Poets and Kings

Time I chatted with Charles III. 

Why Poets Terrify Kings

Power has always had an uneasy relationship with poetry. Armies can be drilled, laws can be enforced, but poetry slips through cracks where swords cannot reach. Kings understand this better than anyone. They fear poets not because poets command battalions, but because they command language — and language can make people see the world differently. A throne rests not only on armies but on belief. And belief is the poet’s battlefield.

When Percy Bysshe Shelley declared that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” he was not being sentimental. He was describing a power deeper than decree. Poets legislate by shaping the imagination of nations, by naming what people feel before they can speak it themselves. They turn private longings into public voices. Kings may give orders, but poets give meaning — and meaning can undo any order.

History leaves us plenty of examples. Osip Mandelstam’s single poem mocking Stalin was enough to seal his fate. One short stanza frightened a dictator who commanded millions of soldiers and secret police. Why? Because a poem can travel mouth to mouth, heart to heart, untraceable and indestructible.

Kings tremble before poets because poets remind us that no authority is final. Where power seeks permanence, poetry whispers of change. Where rulers demand obedience, poetry stirs the imagination toward freedom. To read a poem deeply is to glimpse another way of being, another horizon — and once a horizon is seen, it cannot be unseen.

Poetry terrifies kings because kings can kill the poet, but they cannot kill the poem. The words remain, carried in memory, whispered in secret, rediscovered by another generation. Power seeks to silence; poetry insists on speaking. And in the long span of history, it is the poem, not the decree, that endures.

God Bless

Writing - Nothing changes

 It is often stated that 'there's nothing new under the sun', and 'history repeats itself'! We are also advised to learn from the experiences that history tells us. I am reading a book about the Luddite rebellions of 1811/12. Even 200+ years ago, there were people concerned about the reasons for civil unrest. 

The events of 1811/1812 occurred mainly in the north, from Nottingham, Cheshire, Lancashire, to Yorkshire, and concerned the use of automated machinery in the cloth-producing industries. It began in the knitting factories and spread to cotton and wool processing. Workers were frightened of losing their jobs. There were several violent acts, mostly against the machinery, all over the area. The government at the time was weak and slow in responding to the problems and allowed things to ride without attention. There were underlying issues that sound familiar today. One of the major events that escalated the need for a response from the administration was the assassination of the prime minister Spencer Perceval on May 11th 1812. 

Spencer Perceval 

In fact, it seems that his killing was a mistake. The real target was the Home Secretary, Richard Ryder, was the intended target but the assassin, John Bellingham, became frustrated at the fact that Ryder wasn't in the lobby of the Houses of Parliament, and he shot Perceval instead. 

John Bellingham 

A chaplain from the Manchester area had concerns about the rifts in society and came up with the following. 

Canon Parkinson writing On the Present Condition of the Labouring Poor in Manchester, would later state, 

"There is no town in the world where the distance between the rich and the poor is so great, or the barrier between them so difficult to be crossed.... There is far less personal communication between the master cotton spinner and his workmen, between the calico printer and his blue handed boys, between the master tailor and his apprentices, than there is between the Duke of Wellington and the humblest labourer on his estate, or than there was between good old George the Third and the meanest errand-boy about his palace. I mention this not as a matter of blame, but I state it simply as a fact." 

Sound familiar?

The government sent the army to the north to manage the situation under Thomas Maitland. After just two days he reported back to Ryder.

Before the end of his second day in Manchester, Maitland was telling Ryder that the high price of food in relation to wages required very serious consideration. He gave some precise examples. Potatoes, now the most frequent food of the cotton worker, had risen from 7/6d to 18s a wholesale load. This had caused an increase in retail price to the worker such that, where once his penny would buy him 3lbs of potatoes, now it bought only 1lb.

Maitland carried on to say that if wages had increased to maintain a closer relationship with the owners' remuneration, there would have been no reason for the unrest. 

This is the exact same situation that pertains today, and more and more people are becoming unhappy about the worship of billionaires, and at the same time, the increase in the number of poor in rich western countries. 

God Bless 

Writing - Messages

 I've written about messages in writings in the past. Dickens highlighted social problems in the nineteenth century, and George Orwell wrote about totalitarianism and democratic socialism. I was inspired to write about a possible future energy crisis. 

Blurb

The story is a speculative journey into a possible future that may lie ahead of us all. There is evidence that such a future may not be impossible. We have been warned that unless we increase the ability to produce electricity, there could be power cuts in the next ten years. Our modern-day lives are permeated through with the need for electricity and its production.
Although Cessation could be categorised as a dystopian story, I find that rather a negative word, and the purpose of writing the tale is to allow elements of hope in a seemingly desperate situation.
The story begins in 2023, a couple of years after the lights go out for the last time. Our group of survivors is thrown together on a farm in the low Pennines north of the M62 motorway and within striking distance of a number of northern towns which could prove useful for supplies. Initially, the group is small and lives on a farm called Serendipity, but as time passes, the size of the group waxes and wanes for a variety of reasons. 

Although the story was written several years ago and begins in 2023, the issue could occur any year in the future. Nowadays, if I were to write something along dystopian lines, it would probably be about a public reaction to the poisonous form of capitalism that the world is under the thrall of at present. There are so many countries that are being run for the benefit of billionaires to the detriment of the larger population that something must break soon. 

Don't fight shy of tackling thorny problems! 

God Bless 

Poetry Thursday - 90 - Another Year

 Another year has passed for me and what do I know that's new or different? 

Shrinkage

 

Your arms are shorter

Your legs are shorter

Your sight is shorter

Your belt is shorter

Your patience is shorter

Your temper is shorter

Your breath is shorter

Your memory is shorter

Your time is shorter

Your years are shorter

Your months are shorter

Your weeks are shorter

Your days are shorter

Your hours are shorter

Your minutes are shorter

You died

© David L Atkinson April 2025 

When I was young, the time was filled with recovery from WWII, and since then, over the next seven decades, there has always seemed to be some huge threat to human existence. Sometimes, we humans are the threat, and sometimes it is natural disasters. Increasingly, human choices such as capitalism before caring. 

Time Thief

 

You will never snatch a glimpse of him,

and not because the light is dim,

by the time you realise what’s been lost,

he’s long gone leaving you to bear the cost.

 

Not always clear what’s been taken,

years later it can leave you shaken,

when you realise what could have been,

and all the things you should have seen.

 

What were you doing when he stole your years,

was your busy mind befuddled by beers,

or was your attention wandering free,

unfettered, allowed to go ignoring me.

 

You’re aware of what you wanted to know,

that youthful developments come and go,

but still you allowed your mind to wander,

leaving you to regret inattentive squander.

 

He won’t allow you to rewind your time,

to revisit that which was there in its prime,

you have to live with residual memories,

and remain alert for future discoveries.

  

To keep the thief away from your door,

allow you to appreciate life’s wonders galore,

focus attention on living in the today,

value that which he’d steal in some way.

© David L Atkinson January 2021 

God Bless 

Writing - Relevance

Producing stories should ensure that the time period chosen is accurate according to the nature of the story. For example, if you are writing about WWII and the actors have mobile phones, it would not be accurate. Similarly, sources of information have developed rapidly over the last 30 years, and the information gathered should be factual rather than the opinion of others. 

There have been rapid changes in sources of information and how and where it is stored over the last 70 years. I remember frequent advertisements for The Encyclopaedia Britannica. My father used to buy compendia of historical events because he liked knowing factual information. 

Commodore Pet

In the early 1980's the government introduced computers into schools. At that time, there was no internet and data was stored on databases which could then be searched. The largest of this type of storage involved huge machines running data that was held on magnetic tape. Until Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web. 

Along with the internet came search engines like Google and smaller data collectors like Wikipedia. I have used both of these when writing the Steele novels, and they have been invaluable. However, there must be a warning about the results of searches. 

When you ask a question of Google, you can get millions of responses, and not all of those are factual. They may be the opinions of other writers and researchers rather than the actual facts you are looking for. It is therefore important that the source of the article is checked for its authenticity. 

So keep it simple and make it relevant. 

God Bless 

Writing - Be Revolting

Telling stories is fun. Well, that is why I began to tell stories in a writing way. I say that because I have told stories orally to children for forty years and more. In fact, whole classes have enjoyed my characterisations when I read stories aloud and I say that without bragging. 

The Secret Garden was one example of this but there were other unusual choices such as The Owl Service. Adding voices to relating the written word aloud engages listeners, or at least it can do, it could also have the opposite effect. A negative reaction is almost inevitable in a group of twenty-plus people listening to a story or watching a film. The best plan being to keep trying as practice makes perfect. 

So what is meant by being revolting? What I mean with regards to writing tales is using the unconventional, the bombastic, the difficult character; to stir up your story and generate an air of anticipation in the reader. It is almost like creating a voice characterisation that will have your audience on tenterhooks. Like the Northern Earls 500 years ago they were a spanner in the Queen's works. They come with attitude, strong emotions and intention to act and as such require handling by their creator. 

Wolfie Smith

In fact the 'Citizen Smith' character can make a story buzz so much so that he has become a byword for standing for the little people in society. So think about introducing a rebel into your tales and watch the fun begin. 

God Bless 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Writing - Sources

Sometimes it can seem an impossible task to find ideas for stories, poems or articles, this is not a blog that will provide all the answers but one possible well of inspiration. In fact, this provides possibilities for a number of pieces of work. 

We were all born somewhere, and those 'somewheres' have history, and those histories may be of many different types. 

I was brought up in the north east of England which has a rich and fascinating history that is little known outside the immediate area. 

In fact, unless you want great detail, there's no need to go past the contents page. 

For example, 

The Fairies from the Cave 

The Devil's Boy 

A Vampire in South Shields 

The Pickled Parson 

The Durham Puma. 

Just half a dozen out of over thirty articles concerning life and incidents in one relatively small part of our small island. In the titles, you can glean the beginnings of all types of stories etc. There is fantasy, horror, crime and adventure all wrapped up as possibilities in these hints. If you find something that engages the creative spark, delve deeper for a more detailed backbone to your writing. If it doesn't work, adapt or look again. 

I am looking to write poems that explore the history and richness of my ancestry, but equally, I could be looking to write a story on the horrors of working in a 'big house' as a servant and how such folk were treated or abused. 

God Bless 

Poetry Thursday 69 - Aam Cauld

 I once wrote a poem on the same subject but have contrived to lose it, so here we go again. 

It is a tale that centres on Hylton Castle in Sunderland and involves a young stable boy, Robert Skelton, and the 13th Baron Hylton. 

‘Aam cauld’

 

Robert Skelton a canny stable lad,

worked for Baron Hylton when times were bad,

five hundred years on the story is auld,

but he can still be heard moanin’

‘aam cauld’, ‘aam cauld’.

 

Commanded to ready the master’s horse early,

Robert ower slept meckin’ the Baron surly,

confronting the miscreant in the stable,

the Lord dispatched him with pitchfork - the fable.

 

 Or perhaps took off his head with a sword,

Or beaten with a riding crop by the noble Lord,

whichever way the story is tauld,

he can still be heard moanin’

‘aam cauld’, ‘am cauld’.

 

Nee quiet spirit young Bobby Skelton,

in the time since, his activities dwelt on,

show actions of a restless poltergeist,

by untidiness from his rest is enticed.

 

A spirit you'd want to have around the house,

as long as he's quiet as a mouse,

but when already spick and span,

will trash the place like a demented man,

moanin’

‘aam cauld’, ‘am cauld’.

© David L Atkinson December 2024 

Hylton Castle 

God Bless