Ben Barton and Jennifer Harris

Poetry Kit interview with Ben

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PROSPECT  - A COLLABORATION

PROSPECT started off as an art installation – I wrote poems and Jen took the photographs. It is based around Dungeness in Kent – Jen and I both grew up on the Romney Marsh and if I walk behind the woods in my back garden I can see Dungeness. So I still feel this strong connection to the place.   Together Jen and I make these pilgrimages there... Some of the images she has captured are just stunning. They really show what a unique place it is, so unlike anywhere else in this country. I on the other hand have something less tangible – I take home ideas and feelings, as well as the odd jotting in my workbook. It is then up to me to make something real out of it – ink on paper. (Ben Barton)   You can find out more about the project is here: http://benbarton.co.uk/prospect.htm

 

Prospect Cottage

 

I’d forgotten how large it is

As though shrunken in my brain, after years

of stop-starting

And magazine flicking

wearing out my thumbs.

Today I’m alone in your secluded bower

scooped out of stones and

hammered in the Fallout Zone.

Strength

you must have felt it, sleeping

inside those tarred planks

Nothing more than that

are they?

Aside

there’s just your scorched roses, lit

under an ochre sky

and the wildflowers, rooted in patches

of hot asphalt

I can see them all.

Without you it fights on

battling the diamond chips, the sea air

An old friend.

I know what to expect

as it inflates my lungs

the way it always has

While behind us

The sea gobbles away at the boats

in unison with the weeping rain

and my dry, unblinking eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

Nuclear Family

 

 

She spends her afternoons lazing

fat thighs squeezed inside a deck chair

toes digging in shingle

Her sunburn itching under Asda viscose

blinded by white heat

and a dusting of fission

The radio is her birdsong.

On the hot days she rarely moves

But watches

sunglassed men in BMWs

traversing the bumpy road… to ‘that man’s’ garden

something she will never understand.

Not ever

will she do that.

        Together we stare

knowing we shouldn’t.

Blink and you’re in a southern state

Tumbleweeds of litter

have blown over the Atlantic

along with the flotsam

they crashed into

the dry brush

Staining

this thirsty landscape.

        But she doesn’t notice

because never

will she do that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dungeness²

 

far, far from here

in the Seventh Sea

Across the Strait of Juan

there breathes another

in name only

doused in the lavender of Sequim

the sweat of Port Angeles

yet more toward

our pilgrim brothers, cousins

not side-stepping

The Strong People.

        Another lighthouse too

guarding

Stretches of sand

reaching out to the sea

Nethuns’ finger

stirring up

the drifting sediments

have been fabled as the longest

by modern cartographers

Perhaps we should entrust them as much

As our politicians –

never with our lives.

Though all this

it must be said

lies incomparable

to the battered stonework

that lies on our map point

here in

the Fifth Continent,

proud

Waters of Kent.

 

 

 

Mr Jarman Next Door

 

The first time I met you

was in the Tempest

or else the golden sands of Sardinia

or some BFI-funded short

I can’t remember now.

        Although I do know I was in love

from the start

I hunted

in the morning rains

those Sundays before Christian civility

with the lilac perms and

chapped hands

wares from Metro boots

Holy day flea markets

        I was the youngest there

and short changed too

yet silver-tongued

to charm a dented VHS

to my grubby

Adolescent hands

        The Blue video

No one else would

understand me, but you

even though at the time

you were barely cold

Not dead a year.

        Our local celebrity taken,

and I bet you just hated that

Didn’t you?

        No more visits to our

local bookshop, which

I know you plundered

with relish, those

well wrought tomes

light by your hands.

        No more Pet Shop Boys

in the Pilot

Not dead a year

        Still they come

to the stony beds

To stare and steal

Your pebbles

to rub and kiss them

So charged with your mysteries

is what they choose to believe.

        I remember your funeral

St Nicks dank with

wilted flowers

Those ladies and their rota, fuck

knows what they

Would have made

of your ataxia

buggery

and cropped-out erections

But that day none of it mattered

The high street quiet, grey

        I know they felt the parting too

creaking pews, sad eyes,

and paper programmes

limp and sweaty, through

the speeches and the songs.

        This is no place for the choir boy

They thought, as though

you could leave me a lasting impression

Like our fingers today,

scraped in the wet sand, while

sipping our cheap wine

one up from the pyramid brace

in the shadow of Prospect.

        You of course

Have left me so much more, not

a legacy or anything

Like that. But a window,

one I can look in to,

        not out.

We captured your

Head of Mausolus this way

like a shadowy reed,

swaying, knocking in the mists

        Leaning into the window

I grabbed it

It was your hand.

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Beach

 

Pebbles and rocks, laid to rest like old men

though snug as warm eggs, and eager

To tell us the story of time.

Ancient wisdoms strewn in shingle, the flood

assaulting the shore

You and I, we cannot think

of those who ground these stones to powder ash

or the caress of the linen robe

Sea kale stroking an ankle

measuring his gait

As he stepped

on to the land

Which was not that at all

But a bobbing raft

suspended,

leaning on the coastal shelf

temporarily

        Until piece by piece

stone by stone

it collapses like quicksand

        And as it crashes all around us

I take one last look

to see the other poets

Studying a whirlwind of shadows.