There’s an Ashes poet — bet you didn’t know it
David Fine
The official Ashes poet was not in optimistic mood at lunchtime yesterday. “I might write something about gasometers emptied of hope,” he said as he stood in the shadow of the metal Kennington landmark.
“Or I might do something about Strauss, taking off The ballad of Sir Patrick Spens.” And he starts to recite: “Oh where can I get a steely skipper to steer this ship of mine?”
David Fine is attending every day of every Test this summer, with the financial support of npower, to record the twists and turns of the Ashes in poetry. He did the same thing in Australia in 2006-07 with an Arts Council grant. As well as publishing a poem each night on Ashespoetry.net, he has been tweeting thoughts and doggerel throughout each day on Twitter. “It’s quite hard work to pay attention all day,” he said. “You can understand why the players get tired.”
To prepare for the series, he had a “net” by attending the game between an England XI and Warwickshire last month as well as a women’s Twenty20 game. “There are similarities between cricket and poetry,” he said. “You have to learn the basic techniques, but the great players go beyond technique.
“People always think poetry is about rhymes, because that’s what they are comfortable with, but the rhyme is the forward defensive of poetry: the safety shot. Assonance, alliteration and rhythm are the important things — the half-rhyme is poetry’s equivalent of the ball you think is going one way but goes the other.”
Contrary to English perception, the Australians are more comfortable with poetry than the English. “They don’t fear it,” Fine said. One of his poems from this summer, KP NHS, is in the Bush ballad tradition and uses Australian slang. “The Gun-shear’s crook, fleece their attack,” it reads, a gun-shear being the name for the top sheep-shearer and crook, as well as being a shepherding pun, meaning ill.
Fine was hoping to write a Dylan Thomas-esque lyrical ode to Ian Bell, whom he admires because he once had a trial for Coventry City. Alas, that hope was punctured. Back to the gasometers.
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