Requiescat in Pace Adrian Henri

Thank you for sending me down the rabbit hole to read Adrian Henri (who once slept on our couch), Brian Patten and Roger McGough, and listen to The Liverpool Scene. I have happily wasted almost an hour on this.

Time spent in reading or re-reading Adrian Henri's poems is seldom wasted. In particular, his passion for Heather Holden ('Our Lady of Haslingden') can be physically painful to contemplate. Contrasting Henri's output with 'Fra Lippo Lippi' and other poems by Robert Browning that I was supposed to read and analyse helps me to understand why my patience with the English examinations system ran out. You must see 'Batpoem' recorded on live TV in February, 1969 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0GUbAImHuw. All that talent unfettered by convention.

As a love poet he was remarkable, and although I confess I haven’t read or heard him in a long time I still remembered almost all the words of ‘Love Story” this afternoon. - and “I’ve got those Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, John Mayall can’t fail blues”.

I went for an interview for teacher training to High Melton College, Doncaster in 1969 where an admissions tutor asked me about my favourite poets. I named Brian Patten and Adrian Henri along with Thom Gunn and (I think) Gregory Corso (or maybe Ginsberg - I was only 18, so sue me). She looked down her nose and said they were not poets, merely “versifiers”. Needless to say I wasn’t accepted for study.

I’ve nothing against Browning or Tennyson or Wordsworth and I will fight anyone who dismisses Larkin or Betjeman or Edward Thomas, but those guys in the 1950s and 60s, particularly Patten and Henri turned so many of us onto a lifelong love affair with poetry.

Thanks once again for provoking my memories, and sorry to hijack your thread.

That's not a hijacking, that's an energising. I'm hoping for/looking forward to a further instalment.

Exquisite capture!