"30 feet high" ?
A note by Tony Attwood
I first discovered DM Black's poetry in 1968 when dividing my time (somewhat unequally) between organising the revolution (it was 1968 after all) and studying music.
By the middle of that momentous year I had on my shelf most of the series of Penguin Modern Poets, including the famous volume 10 on the Merseyside poets. When volume 11 came out I purchased it, not quite knowing what to expect, but expecting something interesting. What I found was poetry that has stayed with me ever since.
The majority of my other Penguin Modern Poets have long since gone the way of most paperbacks, but that original copy of volume 11 is still with me, including its odd - perhaps bizarre is the right word - cover photo of mineral specimens from Northamptonshire - where by coincidence I now live.
Looking at the much thumbed volume now I find the DM Black section covered beyond belief in notes - including details of the musical settings which I wrote of some of the poems. I remember that I also used the book while teaching "Art and Environment" with the Open University and "Music in the Community" at Dartington College of Arts. Perfect examples, I use to tell my students, of what you can do with words when you are unencumbered by current thought and past tradition. "Open your minds," I would say, "it's all in there."
No other contemporary writer has had such a long term influence on me. Perhaps it is the way that the red judge and black judge poems are so immediately accessible, and yet also leave one questioning, peering back into this strange new world, wondering quite what it is that one is seeing in there. Perhaps it is the wonderful opening lines, such as "Delicacy was never enormously my style". For over 30 years these poems have been part of my life.
In the intervening years the world has moved on, and at times the poems of DM Black have remained on my shelves, unread, but never ever forgotten. It is a testimony to their power and influence of DM Black's work upon me that through perhaps 25 house moves, two marriages, the fall of the Berlin wall, three car crashes and the bringing up of three gorgeous daughters, somehow this book of poems has survived intact, a powerful reminder of earlier times - a lifeline from my own oft-troubled past, into the present and towards the future.
And never once, in all these times, did I forget one particular set of lines. I never had to learn them - I certainly never recited them to anyone else. It is as if they have always been there embedded in my head. I'm pleased to be able to place them here - and delighted to have the opportunity in some small way through building this web site to say thank you to David Black, for the pleasure that his work has given me through so much of my life.
The lines come at the end of "The Red Judge". The full poem appears in the Selected poems section of this site.
Quite suddenly the night was still: the cracks
In the roadway rested, and the tenements
Of Rose Street stood inscrutable as always. The black judge
Snored at his post. And all around
The bright blood filled the gutters, overflowed
The window-sills and doorsteps, soaked my anyway
Inadequate shoes, and there was a sound of cheering
Faintly and everywhere, and the Red Judge walked
O thirty feet high and scarlet towards our stop.
Read the full poem
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