Alan C. Brown poet and translator, his group Tyneside Poets meet in old George Pub Coth MarketNewcastle on Tyne 1st on 2nd and last Tuesday each month at 7.30pm. 
Married with tow daughters. Allan has published several including The Rag Doll People. He has transations of poems from Russian by Maya Broisova 
(From Stoney Shores also Glass Zoo by Galina Gamper). 

Alan recently celebrated his 80th birthday. A gifted, staunchly individualistic poet with a prolific output,during his long career has made a lasting 
contribution to the Tyneside Poetry scene.

A translator all his working life, Alan encouraged cultural exchange between poets from numerous Europian countries. By single-minded cultivation of 
these links he assisted many local poets to expand their own litarary horizons beyond Newcastle's walls.

Alan's poetry has appeared in both English and foreign magazines and he has produced many books, his most recent success being Golden Girl, 
an anthology of poetry and illustrations to celebrate the City of Newcastle in the Millennium.

 

PORTRAIT IN SHADES OF GREEN 

To Emily Tennyson 


Stood in green shade, unbroken by self love,
In and out of the flash of imagination,
No ragged moon; no cracked, sand-grained statue,
You hold up the poet’s name like a fluked crystal,
Your soul still arched around the sound he made; 
Echoed reversed memories with buoyant music.

Alive he was a knot of needs, un-erasable poems 
Opening and shutting, like an unravelled ocean.
After his death your task was to set all in order, 
As you had always done - as wife and mother;
The voice of your heart, an orison of detachment;
A root, clutching the dark flame of dispossession;


His honest public face, crying to be let in,
Was something you could hear, achieve; a task
You set yourself, with unequalled passion,
For had not all that he was collapsed inside you?
Small things cannot argue when destiny explodes 
In them, implacable, as stars. And this was yours -

Reverent, breathless, you now had one fixed aim 
To grasp the oysters moist and single pearl,
And turn all else to stone with a Gorgons eye. 
Stood in green shade, un-bruised by grief’s earthquakes,
In and out of the man, who left on his own   
(Another Alfred) would surely have burnt the cakes.



QUIET COMMONPLACE THINGS 


“When the sun’s shut off, passive plants 
and stones open our eyes.”
		Zen Wisdom 


Potted plants indoors on a window-sill,
A prospect on a garden seen through smudged glass,
Nothing but these, with their own quietness, fill 
The blank gaze centred down on wood and grass. 

Also even the flat look of a brick wall,
Has the same mood flooded with inner grace,
If we allow commonplace things to fall
Into a mind detached from time and space.

There’s a gift, given only by quietude,
But lost rushing madly from place to place,
Something that’s only grasped in solitude
Where we converge stood face to face.

What is it that we can’t put into words?
Or give a name to – yet like a burning touch spreads! 



UNEXPECTED   MUNIFICENCE  

“Till the Spinner of the Years, 
Said “Now!” And each one hears”.
		
Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1926) 

Thomas, still underground as he had expected,
But with less flesh than bone, rancid in acid soil.
Distanced from rain and snow, scarecrow heat-blanched;
Or else spirit-body clothed in white linen,
Bewildered more by this because unlikely,
As not a kneeling ox or plodding donkey.
Thomas the poet, but a thin ghost. come from where ever;              
Haunting a reader of your depressing stories,
About a ruined girl or a fine stone mason,
Who carved gargoyles and names on tombstones.
Perhaps one of these also stands in a Dorset church yard
Where you sleep heavily, like an old donkey
Sauntering down mud roads with clicking hoofs,
Where Tess, stood waiting for your resurrection,
By Stonehenge, in a downpour of drenching rain.

Thomas the Doubter, outliving most; but your first name,
That was inapposite until you touched the wounds, you doubted
Like your name-sake, once stood in an upper room
Together with many more, at first exactly like he was,
Who only touch Christ’s wounds, when they reach Heaven.
My Lord and my God, do you say, “If I got here, anyone can;
Look! Now I have the key to life’s dark journey,
As a wise Dane I met here the other day, whispered, man
“If God is love, then he’s love in everything, always”
Wasn’t he right about that?  In Dorset not many think so,
Me, myself included!”  And two big tears from your eyes 
Run down your moustache on finding all things made new.
Unexpected munificence – That was your greatest surprise.