What are you earliest memories of being attracted to poetry?
I grew up in a very strange environment. My parents were elderly and lived overseas, and I was passed from guardian to guardian, to boarding school, to my father’s strange mates, so much so that I found my solace in nature. Even now I really would rather be with animals than people. I prefer the company of horses and dogs than human beings.
That situation impacted me and I was deeply lonely as a child, however I have always liked stories. From a very young age I have been devouring books and writing stories.
Casuality
There is a moment immediately after an action
When silence is deaf to itself:
There is only the smell of discharged weapons,
And smoke. Fractured air reverberating
From concussion; the hammering of fire.
Hands slowly disconnect their grasp
From stock and pistol grip.
Sometimes at the second of release
The shaking starts, butterfly wings
In the wind.
But within a minute, perhaps less, quiet rushes
Like a wave to engulf ears, cheeks, lips, the dirt
That is dressed with cartridge cases, belt-link and
– pray God not me – scarlet flowers that resolve
Into dressing pads.
Until like the release of a dam, from trickle to flood,
Come the screaming assault, a drenching in oily whimpering
Signaling men trapped in agony with no merciful release.
And so it goes even after the years have drawn tight
And the memories have been ingested.
One day a man meets a woman. They duel consensually
Drawing blood lightly with humour and intrigue.
But both are wary, carrying lessons from earlier actions
With dressing held ready to staunch the flow.
JB – 1986
That sounds like a difficult childhood?
I was a very angry child. I was angry at my parents who weren’t around, I was angry at the situation in Northern Ireland, I was angry at the system, I always felt I was outside of it. I was angry because even though my father was English, I never felt I belonged there, and I would channel some of that anger into poetry. I really started to play with poetry properly when I was in my late teens.
Did you get support at school?
Well there was obviously no support at home, and my parents weren’t around, but they did keep paying for me to go to good schools. I got expelled from a few of them, but there was a school I went to where the teachers decided to spend a bit of time with me.
Despite the fact that I was a troubled kid who would get into fights and walk out of classrooms, they could see I liked books and literature, and so they decided to help me. And thanks to them I went from being at the bottom of the class to near the top of the class. I was good at English, Literature, French, Biology and Geology.
I did find a groove at some point, I played sport, Rugby and Judo at a very high level, and I also played in a band, but crucially I always loved books. I have to admit though, I was generally very, very wild; an uncontrollable, undisciplined child.
What do you go on to do after school?
I wanted to work outdoors, and that meant, in my mind, either farming or being a soldier. I worked on farms for a while, even working on the Queen’s estate at Sandringham. But I realised after a while that because there were no farms in my family, that was a problem. If you didn’t come from a farming background there was a possibility that you would end up as sales rep for a seed company. I definitely did not want to do that.
My mother’s side of the family who were from Ireland, had a branch of the family in Australia. I went there and worked in open cast mines, living a fairly wild life and then I returned to the UK and joined the Royal Marines. I kept extending my career in the Marines, and at the same time I was still doing Judo; I fought for Great Britain in Judo.
Manu Bay
Past the doors of the Raglan
cabin there is a twisted
crown-shaped rosemary.
Its stem lined and bent
like the olive trees of
Agios Nikolaos in Crete.
Bees visit the small mauve
flowers daily and once
came an orange butterfly.
But in my dream its branches
grew into my hair and we
tangled messily into one tree.
Our arms stretched to
the sky whilst our toes
dug deeper into wet earth.
Whilst we slept out there
on the road to Manu Bay
Bruce Shirley died at the wheel.
They found his old red Nissan.
Him curled that way and
the engine still warmly ticking.
Raglan – July 2017
Do you stay with the Royal Marines?
I did a lot of things in the Marines that affected me deeply and eventually I resigned my commission. After those experiences I worked on a farm, worked as a bodyguard and I moved on to do freelance military work as well. And after all that, I ended up as a copywriter at Saatchi and Saatchi in London.
I think it is reasonable to say that I do have a fair story to tell and part of that story is that all the way through my life I have always written poetry.
