Five Poems
Abstracts
The first four of the five texts included here, none of them long, were all inspired by university poetry-writing workshops I’ve either attended (‘For Saint-Exupéry’) or given (the following three). Concerning ‘For Saint-Exupéry’, the instruction was to write a poem containing the word ‘graveyard’. ‘Are You Ready’: write a poem beginning ‘Are you ready to’. ‘Summers in Nettlebed’: the requirement was to write a villanelle. ‘New Vaccine’: write a poem in quatrains on the theme of discovery (theme inspired by Brian Patten’s poem ‘The Small Dragon’ which begins ‘I’ve found a small dragon in the woodshed’). The latter three poems were written during the workshops, as in fact I do the exercises I set and write along with the students in real time. I have given poetry-writing workshops to third-year English students several times since 2016, either as part of the Printemps des Poètes events at Artois, co-organised with my colleague Mireille Demaules, our librarians and staff of our Service culture, or as ‘stand-alone’ sessions. I would add, after Louise Glück who states in her introduction to Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994) that her poetry and her scholarship spring from the same impulse that, to me, both teaching and research, as I try to practise them, are in themselves deeply creative acts.
Finally, a song lyric (for the source cf below). I was kindly invited by Claire Hélie when she and Elise Brault were leading a Paris III POEM workshop session on dialect poetry to recite a poem, and recited the lyrics of ‘Gunman’ as a poem. It is intended as a sort of affectionate imitation (in no wise a parody) of Linton Kwesi Johnson, whose ‘Inglan is a Bitch’ I have taught.
Full text
1For Saint-Exupéry
2Saint-Exupéry spent his summer holidays as a boy by Agay Bay on the south coast of France: this is the bay mentioned in the first line of the poem. As a young man he failed to get in to Naval College. During his National Service, however, the future author of The Little Prince found himself cut out to be an airman.
3Now, at noon, this bay is calm enough,
You would not guess what terrors lurk beneath.
Yet I have known the headwinds lash and rouse
The sea to fury such as made me fear
Those sleeping on the shore might wake up dead...
Here, where he swam and fished his boyhood summers,
I’ve come to understand his destiny:
He thought it was the sea rejected him -
The beckoning horizon’s siren song,
The oil-skinned sailors’ salt and tarry language,
The screeching, swirling, grey-white gulls above him -
From these he flew, from these he moved away.
His waves were cumuli, his sea the sky.
His longing was to seize life from on high,
To look back down on earthbound, human limits -
Landmarks, coastlines, palms and matchstick pines,
The well-defined expanses of the oceans -
His exigency reached beyond the stars
That wormed their glowing way inside his head,
Then formed his only wreath:
That final flight, his graveyard was the ether.
There he set his spirit free for flight,
And no cartographer on earth could tie him down.
4Are You Ready?
5Are you ready to fly? asked the magician.
I can’t, said the frog, I have no wings.
Are you ready to run? asked the magician.
I can’t, said the dolphin, I have no legs.
Are you ready to sing? asked the magician.
I can’t, said the fish, I have no voice.
Are you ready to fight? asked the magician.
I can’t, said the kitten, I can only play.
Are you ready to go? asked the magician.
My roots are here, said the man, I’m dug in.
Are you ready to fall? asked the magician.
I’m ready, said the autumn leaf, I’m hovering.
Are you ready to walk? asked the magician.
I’ll walk, said the tree, I’m moving.
Are you ready? asked the magician.
You can fly, he told the frog.
You can run, he told the dolphin.
You can sing, he told the fish.
You can fight, he told the kitten.
You can go, he told the man.
I’m glad, said the leaf.
I’m glad, said the tree.
6Summers in Nettlebed
7Summers in Nettlebed when days were long,
I felt as though they’d never end.
We followed our star, always sang our song.
Some things we did were right, and others wrong,
But all we had we’d give, we’d share or lend,
Those summers in Nettlebed when days were long.
The teachers and grown-ups whom we lived among –
Our wills some tried but couldn’t break or bend,
We followed our star, always sang our song.
I never talked much, mainly held my tongue,
Wrote dozens of letters I never did send,
Summers in Nettlebed when days were long.
Adults would say, you’re lucky to be young,
We just went our own way, never set a trend,
We followed our star, always sang our song.
Happiness means knowing where you belong.
If you like, you can make the past your friend.
Summers in Nettlebed when days were long,
We followed our star, we always sang our song.
8New Vaccine
9I’ve found a new vaccine, experimenting
in my lab. Been looking for one
for years. The world needs it,
It’s time people recovered.
We all looked for this antidote.
I kept in touch with colleagues
all over the world. When I finally
made my discovery, we don’t believe you,
They said. It doesn’t stand
up, they said. Hasn’t got an earthly. Not serious.
So I call them up on Teams. They
laugh in my face. Could they be envious?
They wanted to be first, but now they’re last.
I remain calm. I explain my method.
I wait to see if any of them will say:
Congratulations! Can I help? Can I join you?
10Gunman
11you bettah give up on de gun man
give up on de knife
you bettah have some innocent fun man
mek a bettah life
you know dat roadrunner lifestyle
don’t do you no good
you bettah chuck it on de junk pile
dat’s got to be understood
you bettah give on de plug man
s’nothin’ I ever dug man
you bettah start relatin’
go easy on de speed-datin’
you bettah clean up on your act man
give up on de drink
dat’s a fact man
Or you know you’re gonna sink
time to relocalise
time to deglobalise
forget de instant gratificashun
make room fi imaginashun
stay whey from dem county lines
or you’ll end up wid a face like Frankenstein’s
don’t do no more cuckooin’
or it’ll jus’ be your undoin’
you bettah give up on de gun man
give up on de lies
don’t wanna be out on de run man
hidin’ out in disguise
don’t go near dat gated community
you ain’t got diplomatic immunity
slow down, goin faster and faster
turn round dis ecodisaster
respect dis life dis planit
get out of dat dirty bedsit
Brexit up to our necks in it
jus’ text it, or don’t text it
you bettah give up on de gun man
give up on de knife
you bettah have some innocent fun man
make a bettah life
References
Electronic reference
Adrian GRAFE, “Five Poems”, e-Rea [Online], 20.1 | 2022, Online since 15 December 2022, connection on 13 June 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/erea/15392; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.15392
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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.
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