This was a short verse play performed at St. John's Methodist Church, Sauchiehall St, Glasgow, November 13th, 1966. The readers were

• Rosalind Jay (daughter of a missionary from Zambia, training to be a vet)
• Nick Handley (Liverpudlian who became a clinical psychologist in Warrington)
• Frances Jefferies (native Glaswegian, training to be a teacher)
• Gerald England (standing in for George Bell)
• Ken Thornton (Canadian Free Church Minister)

50 copies were produced of the text.

   Jesus Christ was God's Christmas present to the world!
   Oh yes!
   We opened up the gift very carefully,
   but we saved the wrappings
   and threw away
   the present!

A slim 16-page volume. It includes early poems published in magazines, a sound-poem, a poem in Yorkshire dialect and eight senryu.

The poem in question, first published in the magazine Stillborn was called Miss V.

  we left the valley in sunshine 
  climbed steeply to the high hills 
  where sheep outnumbered by far 
  the passing cars 
  there the rain met our ascent 
  with mist obscuring the views 
  surrounded by mist and by moor 
  we were totally enclosed 
  in our own world 
  the beat of the rain 
  and the bleating of sheep 
  were alien sounds 
  i wanted to explain unable to show 
  the beauty of grassandheatherclad moorland the tarn shimmering
       in sunlight to our right and penyghent rearing up in front of us 
  there was none of this to be seen 
  enshrouded in our own world 
  it mattered only that we were there.

An A4 8-page limited edition of 100 copies.

ISBN 0 903610 00 0

out of print.

THE ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION BLUES

for Quenten Lane

Moo
to  
you
too

Dedicated to Dorothy Ruth England born September 17th, 1975; died October 12th, 1975.

The cover design is Two Lapwings by Anna Adams.

It includes one of my shortest poems, the title longer than the poem.

ISBN 0 903074 21 4

  There hadn't always been a rainbow 
  only it was there when needed 
  impressing itself upon her 
  needful or not 
  She wanted the rainbow 
  even though she never saw 
  seven colours clear 
  Sometimes and it was usually winter 
  she could distinguish five 
  But mostly there were three 
  with a merging in between 
  Inside there was violet —
  flowers and blossom when his kiss 
  gave bloom to her becoming 
  In the middle of it all the blue 
  of the clear sea on the sand-dunes 
  where they had loved when she 
  no longer liked him coming to her bed 
  The tide had rolled over them 
  as they heated the night 
  into the outer red of passion 
  and the violence of tearing apart 
  She had wanted the rainbow 
  It was real 
  She had analised the spectrum 
  measured every wavelength 
  knew it as she could only know a man 
  But she wanted more than the rainbow 
  She wanted the pot of gold 
  that was not of the rainbow 
  but lay beyond its end 
  She did not find her pot of gold 
  She had by then destroyed the rainbow 
  She had lost reality for the wanting of a dream

The cover design is again by Anna Adams - Barn in Rainbowfan

   She is Mother England 
   suffering a modicum 
   of morning sickness in the evening 
   and feeling somewhat heavier 
   than in her slim-trim days 
   of pre-pregnancy dieting.  
   She is Mother England  
   busy knitting babygroes 
   and searching all the ads 
   for second-hand cots, 
   trying to remember 
   her antenatal clinic dates. 
   She is Mother England 
   The taut swelling of skin 
   from where come kicks 
   hides the lap on which 
   a three-year-old would sit. 
   He says there's a baby there, 
   the result of Daddycation. 
   She is Mother England.

Cover design by the cartoonist, Roy Mitchell.

Profits from sales were donated to the Downs Children's Association.

The title stems from my son Strontian's misquote of the phrase used by Roy Castle, presenter of Record-Breakers — "To be a record-breaker, you've got to have DEDICATION!"

   gently the brown hill slopes 
   to forest of hard fir

   above the edge 
   in cool, cloudless sky

   a tiny sliver of yellow light
   peeps

   graduates 
   into a demon disc

   rests ready to roll 
   earthly firs stand firm

   the moon 
   rises to its rightful sky

A joint collection with Christine England.

Cover design by John Brady.

   and the crowd has
   no hands although
   each    individ-
   ual   has   two


          and who'd dare to
          be   the  one  to
          deliver       the
          midwife's  baby ?

A mini-booklet containing several examples of Squares, the verse form invented by Gerald England.

Sample poem

Some review quotes

In almost all of Gerald England's poems it is the human element that is important. FIVE DAYS AFTER THE BOMB describes Manchester after a bomb attack. Motoring through, he notices the office girls in summer dresses, the workers whistling and the policemen smiling. Then he turns a corner and looks up Corporation Street:

 It was like gazing through a window 
 at some scene from Bosnia or Beirut; 
 the now so silent debris hanging.

There is shock; then, in the next stanza, a mounting anger for a

 city that survives and smiles.

It is his sense of humour, though, that gives balance and reason to all he writes. The poems are the work of a man of courage and humour, a man who recognises the quiddity of things and draws his own conclusions. I enjoyed reading them.