What time is love...

So I promised love and sex, didn't I? OK. Let's start with love.

I've written quite a lot of love poems – well, who hasn't? I've written about love affairs (successful and less so) and I've written about unrequited feelings and I've written about loving all kinds of people and things and concepts. I will admit it - I enjoy writing about love in all its many stages and forms and I have been, generally speaking, a big fan of love for most of my life (and here I'm talking about love in the widest sense - romantic but also passions, whims, addictions). I have thrown myself in headfirst, feetfirst and pretty much anything-you-like-to-think-of-first in many different situations and with regard to romantic love in particular...well, let's just say...I've given it plenty of attention. I've no doubt spent a lot of energy on love affairs that I could have been spending on building a successful career in something (anything...) but still, we make our choices, don't we? And then we live with them.

So why write so much about love? I think I just can't help it. You might remember that a few months ago I was, suitably, in love with the new CD from the band Chumbawamba (it's called 'The Boy Bands have won'). It really is a great album and quite different from anything they've done to date. There's a song about Larkin, you might remember me mentioning, but there's also a song on it called 'Sing about love' (the link will take you to the lyrics). It is a great song but I can't agree with the sentiment, no matter how hard I try. I know there is a lot going on in the world that needs attention but that never makes me want to stop thinking or writing about love. I know what they mean (and in some ways I agree with them) but then I do still sing about love (in poems and in songs) and I probably always will. I write about all sorts of other things too (I have a kind of vague ambition to write about everything, somehow, some time...) but I couldn't leave love out – it's so vital! In a way I can't help feeling what would be the point of writing poetry and NOT writing about love? It is such a fascinating subject, so loose, so changeable, so like poetry in a way. People are always trying to define poetry too aren't they, trying to pin it down, trying to find formulae for it (but they never will). Such is love, don't you think? Isn't that partly what makes it so desirable (and frustrating...)?

So maybe I'm a romantic...in every sense...Byron always seems perfectly reasonable to me, after all. But these days if you're female and talk wildly about love (as I do sometimes) people tend to think your brain is mush and that all you want to do is read a lot of love stories or watch a lot of very bad love stories on film. In fact it's quite the opposite - I may be female and a bit mental but I assure you I do not watch non-stop 'rom-coms'. Formula films of any kind bore me really...if a film isn't going to surprise me in some way I'm not interested...and some of you know exactly how I feel about the Richard Curtis school of regurgitated romance ('Love Actually' being the lowest of low points – Thompson/Rickman excepted). The last film about love I enjoyed was Richard Linklater's 'Before Sunset' (partly because of the music). That film really thinks about love (though it probably helps if you have seen the not-really-so-good prequel 'Before Sunrise'). They talk an awful lot though (be warned) and not a lot happens...and yet it does. It's magic, you see...

I am also aware that all this talk of love and passion and 'poetry is like love' can be a bit vague and waffly and annoying for some of you logical, scientific thinkers. Sorry about that but really...come on...if we all agreed and thought the same wouldn't life be dull? Like a bad marriage? Not that I've ever been married...but you know what I mean. As I said not long back I've never wanted to be married but at the same time that has never stopped me being interested in finding something like true love. Despite being in many ways a sensible realistic, even cynical girl I have always believed (just to be awkward) that there would be a special someone who would be perfect for me – not a prince or even a husband but a someone, for sure. Along the way to my current beloved (and we have been together about eleven and a half years) there were, in fact, lots of other special someones (and some of them read this blog...awkward pause). Things did not work out with these someones for all the usual reasons – circumstances, incompatibilities or just because the other person was an idiot. Now and again I was the idiot too (hard to believe, I know).

But back to poems...I can't say I've ever sent poems out as part of a love campaign or anything like that (my own poems or anyone else's) and in fact, though I could list my favourite love songs from now till New Year, I don't really read much love poetry as such. Probably my favourite poem that mentions love (so far) is Larkin's 'An Arundel Tomb'. I'd be interested to hear your favourite poems that are in any way to do with love (especially, but not only, if they are less well-known ones). And plenty of poets read this too so maybe some of you might share your own love poems with us (links or poems... if they're not too long to fit in the comments boxes).

Of my own love poems people have liked 'Free love' and 'Diving' and 'Let me be your fridge magnet' (which is really about writing...and desperation...and love can be so desperate...hence the marriage of themes...). Also one person liked 'All in the tone' so much she read it out as part of a tour round the USA (she's a singer). All those poems are on the website under 'love' but I'm going to post a different one here today. The poem below is quite an old one – one of the first I wrote once I'd started concentrating on poetry instead of stories and articles and other stuff. It is about quite a corny subject – the old falling-in-love-with-tasty-foreign-bloke-while-away-on-gap-year business – except of course when it happens to you it isn't corny...it is AMAZING. I spent a year in Madrid and fell in love (at 19) with a Chilean man of about 25. The 'chileno' of the title is Spanish for Chilean man and you just say it chi-lay-no with the accent on the 'lay' (interestingly enough). He was older, wiser, a sort-of political exile (there are always lots of different levels of exiledom) and he was really very attractive (partly of course because he was nothing like the boys I had known in Middlesbrough growing up). He had read lots of books too – political theory even (and I was very impressed by that in those days). There were problems (his girlfriend for one...) but it was still a very exciting love affair and I very nearly didn't come home at the end of the year such was my devotion. Then in the end I did because, as I say, I'm a romantic AND a realist...and I had noticed that the girlfriend was still...the girlfriend and I was most likely the daft-but-to-him-at-least-tasty-foreign-girl-who'll-be-going-home-soon. Over 20 years on I don't regret any of it (though I did learn one lesson - I never got involved with anyone ever again who already had a partner of any kind). I had had plenty of previous entanglements and encounters but this was probably my first big love affair (with a capital L). I cried a lot when I came home...weeks and weeks of tears!

So here's my 'chileno'. It isn't in any particular form...as I say it is one of my older poems and I wasn't even thinking about what I was doing – I was just writing, quite literally, from the heart. I love it as it is (faults and all) so I'm not going to change it now. I suppose if you wanted to call it 'randomly cut up prose' or something you probably could but you see I wouldn't care...because I sing about love...

And thanks to the KLF for the title to this post. I love them too.

x


Chileno on my mind

Hand in hand firmly
We walk
Through the medieval setting of the city
A touch on the flat-footed side
You walk meaningfully
Each step placed exactly
In place
The afternoon sun as ever
Makes walking hard
Makes buying ice-creams almost
A necessity

To treat you
Is all I want to do

Your smiling
Winning
Charming eyes
The sun to me
At 19
Have nothing to do with balls of hydrogen
Mean simply warmth and happiness
And lucky skin that gains a glow
You walk with me
Man made of sun
You walk with me
But never really see me
As I see you



RF about 1997 or so