Memory, from A Man of Heart.

This is taken from A Man of Heart, by Liam Guilar. Published by Shearsman books 2023.

Lullingston Roman Villa remains, Kent, England.

Maxim 1
History is a record of brutality
tempered by outbursts of idealism.

Memory
There was never enough light
Even in summer, shade
and shadows contour brightness.
At night, torches and lamps
shiver the edge of sight.
The candle drew attention to itself
while life continued in the silent,
darker ebb and pool beyond. 

I remember her hand on the pillar,
a shadow on the white stone.
Her eyes bright in a dark face.
She was worried, there were visitors,
men of power and influence,
come to court her daughter.
Not bad for a freed slave
from the lands around Carthage.
I remember her hand on the pillar,
the light shaking over the mosaic floor.
She had plans. We all had plans.

The Wassail ceremony. Vortigern meets Rowena

This extract is taken from A Man of Heart, by Liam Guilar. Published by Shearsman books (January 2023)

Rowena offers Vortigern the Cup.

If you’ve ever ‘Gone Wassailing’ or heard the Christmas Carol ‘Here we come a wassailing’ and wondered what wassailing was, it comes from this story.

The Old English greeting Wes Þu hal (Be well!) became Wassail.

In the previous episode of The Poetry Voice I read an extract from A Man of Heart in which Hengist left for Britain, leaving his daughter on the shoreline, watching him depart. One he established himself he sent for her, and in this extract he’s pitching her at Vortigern the King. If the king marries his daughter, Hengist will become the grandfather of Kings. In my version of the story, Vortigern is aware of Hengist’s plan, thinks he’s in control, but then he meets Rowena for the first time,

If you’d like to see the original Middle English version of this episode, I’ve pasted it below.

Reowen sæt a cneowe; & cleopede to þan kinge.  
& þus ærest sæide; in Ænglene londe.   
Lauerd king wæs hæil; For þine kime ich æm uæin. 
Þe king þis ihærde; & nuste what heo seide.   
þe king Vortigerne; fræinede his cnihtes sone. 
what weoren þat speche; þe þat maide spilede. 
Þa andswarede Keredic; a cniht swiðe sellic.    
he wes þe bezste latimer; þat ær com her.   
Lust me nu lauerd king; & ich þe wulle cuðen.   
whæt seið Rouwenne; fæirest wimmonnen.    
Hit beoð tiðende; inne Sæxe-londe.   
whær-swa æi duȝeðe gladieð of drenche;    
þat freond sæiðe to freonde; mid fæire loten hende.   
Leofue freond wæs hail; Þe oðer sæið Drinc hail.    
Þe ilke þat halt þene nap; he hine drinkeð up.    
o[ð]er uuel me þider fareð; & bi-thecheð his iueren
þenne þat uul beoð icumen; þenne cusseoð heo þreoien.    
Þis beoð sele laȝen; inne Saxe-londe.
& inne Alemaine; heo beoð ihalden aðele.

Hengist Leaves for Britain. From Liam Guilar's 'A Man of Heart'.

This extract is taken from ‘A Man of Heart’ by Liam Guilar, published by Shearsman in January 2023.

The Venerable Bede dated this event to 450 AD. The British, attacked on all sides, abandoned by Rome, hired mercenaries to help them to fight their enemies. Traditionally, they hired three boat loads of ‘Germanic Warriors’, led by Hengist and his brother, Horsa. On the beach watching them depart is his daughter, Rowena, who will play a significant role in subsequent events.

Their story is told in A Man of Heart.

Liam Guilar's 'Akhmatova's requiem'

I read the poem Requiem by Anna Akhmatova on a previous podcast.

Several things made this poem happen. WHile Akhmatova lived through Stalin’s times, many of the people who persecuted her are now forgotten, they are just ‘footnotes in her history’.

I used her poem as part of a unit on poetry in translation. I would tell the story of how, when it was being written, she would write the new verses on cigarette paper. She would show them silently to her friend, who would nod when she had memorised the lines, then they would burn the paper.

Classes often found this most moving part of her story.

But at the end of every lesson, there’d be at least one of the printed copies of the poem left in the classroom, often dropped on the floor. Once one of the papers had a foot print on it.

The poem first appeared in the Irish Journal , The SHOp, and was then chosen for ‘The SHOp, An Anthology of Poetry’, their ‘best of’ collection.

Liam Guilar's 'These heroics One and Two'.

Two poems, written some years apart.

The modern admiration for the action hero seems like a childish escape into fantasy, until you realise the implications. Real heroism, the courage to keep going on a daily basis where there is no simple victory, no cheering crowd, no prize, goes unnoticed.

These heroics number one is takes from I’ll Howl before you bury me. These heroics number two from Rough spun to Close Weave.

Both are still available from www.liamguilar.com

(A note on pronunciation. There are at least two ways of pronouncing Cuchulainn. I naturalised mine from Irish speakers I grew up with. At university I was told: ‘Oh Guilar, you mean Kah Hool lin’. He said it in such a patronising way, in his Bow Tie English Accent, that I have stuck with what I started with. )

Liam Guilar's 'Byron In Venice: The poet in Exile.'

The Grand Canal in Venice

 Byron in Venice

(The poet in exile)

 The debris of a city in decline
slops at the crumbling steps,
as the sun sets over palaces 
even dusk can’t dignify.

 The clock strikes, he puts down the page
and calls for servants. Suddenly
cannot remember if he is to meet
the opera singer or the serving maid.

 No matter how elaborate the choreography,
his hands run free, his mind completes the rhyme.
Afterwards, duty done, excuses made, 
he’ll coax these stanzas to their climax 

 and scrawl defiance on the blank of time’s indifference,
graffiti on the walls of history. 
He has explored the tangled pathways of his heart
and written travelogues for those who stayed at home. 

If that leads here, to age and desolation;
the fading light, broken on the Grand Canal,
where life is repetition, and even lust grows stale;
the boys and women he has loved 

the friends he misses as he dines alone,
faded signatures on bundled letters,
locks of hair, old arguments the night returns;
if it leads here; beyond the poem, what remains? 

An aging face, once beautiful,  
staring through its own reflection,
soliciting an audience
to dignify the commonplace as art?

I wrote it after reading Byron’s letters. All twelve volumes. I was thinking about what it means to write, to live abroad, to use writing to organise memory. What happens when a commonplace experience or emotion is written about by a master like Byron? Is there any point to writing poetry?

The poem is taken from ‘From Rough Spun to Close Weave’. Signed copies are available from the shop at

www. Liamguilar.com Otherwise available at online book sellers.

Liam Guilar's 'Just once'

The household fire.

‘Coke’ in this sense, is fuel for a fire. Thought cleaner than coal, it was much harder to light.

This poem is taken from Rough Spun to Close Weave which is still available from online booksellers or direct from www.Liamguilar.com.



Liam Guilar's 'You never asked me for the Moon'

This is taken from Lady Godiva and Me.

My Leofric is not Tennyson’s. Nor is he, at this point of the sequence, the historical Earl anymore than Lady G is either the Historical Godgifu or the legendary Godiva.

Leofric is the one who stands and waits, hoping his lady will return. Hoping that being devoted in some way cuts him from the crowd, and knowing that it rarely does.

Lady Godiva and Me is a book length sequence of poems set in the city of Coventry, from its earliest Roman beginnings to the present day. More information and samples can be found at www.Liamguilar.com.

Liam Guilar's 'More than a broken token song'

I am a life long devotee of the ‘Traditional folk song’. This poem is dedicated, without irony, ‘For the Ballad singers, with gratitude and affection.’

But I don’t like Broken Token Songs, even if some of them have the best tunes.

In this particular sub set of the folk genre, a girl, we shall call her Sweet Dotty, is usually walking in her garden, or down by a river, when a stranger arrives and propositions her. She says she is waiting for Sweet William to return from the wars, or from sea, or wherever he’s been these last seven years, and she will be faithful to his memory. Having told the girl various lies, the stranger then reveals himself as the missing William. They produce their ‘broken tokens’ and live happily ever after.

The back story here is that before Sweet William went off to the war, set sail to make his fortune or was press ganged, he and Dotty broke a token, a ring or a coin, in two and each kept a half, so that when the battered and disfigured male returned he could prove who he was.

What I don’t like about broken token songs is the implication that it’s ok for the guy to have gone off and had all sorts of adventures but the girl must remain chaste and true. I know this goes back to the Odyssey and I know it’s cultural, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. So I wrote my own version.

If you don’t see the man in the door’s stories and language as utterly inappropriate, and see what that suggests about him, then I can’t help you. This poem is published in ‘Rough Spun To Close Weave’ by Ginninderra press. Available from all online sellers, details at www.liamguilar.com

Liam Guilar's 'The Ugly Little Man's Version'

Rumplestiltskin.

This is my favourite story told by the Grimm brothers. Their version is a masterpiece of narrative economy. If you’ve read the earlier French version you can only admire how much has been stripped out by the time they got to it.

Like most folk stories it won’t survive logical scrutiny, but it moves so swiftly you don’t have time to stop and consider how strange it is, or how inconsistent when you’re going along with the story.

So here is the Ugly Little Man, Rumplestiltskin himself, the only one who doesn’t change in a story about transformations, a three time failure in a story of threes, perhaps feeling a little sorry for himself, or just rightfully indignant. As he says: ‘I saved her life three times/she never once asked me my name’.

Liam Guilar's 'My Grandmother's story'

Liam Guilar

The most frightening stories I’ve ever heard were told around the table by my English Grandmother and my Irish Father. There was no attempt to ‘be frightening. They both believed in the truth of the stories they were telling.

This one scared me most because it didn’t finish. It seemed to be all detail and no story. Years later, when I remembered to ask her what was under the floorboards, the answer was long and involved and didn’t seem to belong to this story.

The poem is taken from ‘Rough Spun to Close Weave’ (Ginninderra press 2012). You can find other samples from the book at www.liamguilar.com.

Peeping Tom Speaks from 'Lady Godiva and Me'

‘Lady Godiva and Me’ is a book length sequence of poems set in the city of Coventry.

My idea was that anyone who stood on a street corner in the city could imagine the swirling voices of all the people who had lived there since the city was first founded.

In the first section, ‘History to Legend’, the voices of Leofric, Godgifu/Godiva and Peeping Tom can be heard. Here’s Peeping Tom, unapologetic, speaking for himself.

You can read more samples on www.liamguilar.com

A revised second edition of the book is now available from Amazon, the Book Depository, or from the shop on www.liamguilar.com

from 'Lady Godiva and me' The Modern City

‘Lady Godiva and Me’ is a book length sequence of poems set in the city of Coventry.

My idea was that anyone who stood on a street corner in the city, could imagine the swirling voices of all the people who had lived there since the city was first founded.

The second part of the sequence, called ‘The Modern City’ suggests the voices of the migrant communities that made the city after the second world war. This is a small sample from that section.

You can read more samples on www.liamguilar.com

A revised second edition of the book is now available from Amazon, the Book Depository, or from the shop on www.liamguilar.com

Liam Guilar's 'Two stories from Bede'

These poems are from ‘A Presentment of Englishry’ (Shearsman Books, 2019) where they form the first of two ‘interludes’ between the three major narratives in the book.

Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ was written in 731 AD.

Story One: Recovering Oswald’s Relics.

Oswald, King of Northumbria was defeated by Penda of Mercia in 642. Oswald’s body was dismembered and his head and limbs displayed on stakes. A year later, Oswald’s brother and successor, Oswiu, lead what modern media would describe as a ‘daring raid deep behind enemy lines’ to recover his brother’s head, hand and arm. The story about the raven is told by Reginald of Durham in the twelfth century.

I am intrigued by the reality of this story, hence the poem.

Story Two. The Death of King Sigbert of East Anglia

The details of Sigbert’s story are basically as told by Bede. He was another of Penda’s victims. Or of his upbringing. Or circumstance. How much choice do you have?

Liam Guilar's 'Prologue to the stories of Vortigern'

It’s the week the podcast turns fifty, so something unusual to celebrate. This is from ‘work in progress’. I needed to hear how it sounded.

A Presentment of Englishry (Shearsman 2019) ends in the ruin of Roman Britain and points forwards to the story of Vortigern, Hengist and Rowena.

I’m currently working on that story. The ‘historical background’ is set out on www.liamguilar.com under ‘The Legendary History’.

This Prologue is set in Britain in the mid sixth century. A small group of survivors are fleeing west and north. They seek shelter from a storm in a ruined villa, where they find a solitary old man living in the rubble.

To pass the time, they tell a story. It’s a familiar one; the story of Vortigern. It’s so well known everyone contributes. The old man claims he was a participant. No one believes him.

This prologue, if it’s ever finished, will provide a narrative overview which will be contested, confirmed or denied by the story that follows it.

A ‘Latimer’ was a translator. Vortigern’s translator was called Keredic.

Liam Guilar's 'Lute Recitals'

The Poetry Voice is fifty! And here is something different to celebrate.

This poem was inspired by a contrast; Allan Alexander’s ‘Castles In the Sky’, a Cd that alterted me to the pleasures of the lute, and a bizarre conversation with a lutenist, who derided ‘Castles in the Sky’ for not being ‘Authentic’. Apparently everything has to be ‘authentic’. I started wondering what an authentic Dowland performance would have been like.

The music i’m playing in the background is Allan’s ‘Dance of the Washerwoman’….his guitar arrangement of a Renaissance lute piece.

‘Lute Recitals’ first appeared in the journal 'Southerly' and then in my book, "I'll Howl before you bury me'.