Two Beatniks in a bar

All I can say is wow you are talented

The Er Barnsley Seascapes

1. Goldthorpe er Seascape

Park the car. Wind
the window down. Listen.
Shanties echoing
up the tight street

as the pitmen sing
their way from work.
The YTS lamplighter
stands, and his matches

cough out in
the well-trained wind.
He was not a clever
boy at school

so all he can say is
shi.t, not like us
clever people, who wind
the window down to catch

the dying tradition
on our Japanese tape recorders.
Shanties, clinking like
cardboard money,

the cardboard money
they have round here.
Burns easier.
Cheaper than coal.

2. M1 Seascape near Hoyland: er it’s a rough day

They huddle in their coats
and the gaffer holds his gun
but only for effect. For this
photograph I am taking, I suppose.

For the interview, the gaffer
is proud: ‘We only have six more
miles of motorway to roll up
and dump in the sea’ he quips.

5. An old seadog er speaks

First it was called NCB, you’d see it
on the boats, then British Coal, on
the wharves, then they changed the name
to British A Vase of Flowers, changed all
the boats, all the wharves, all the
signs outside the pits, then they
changed it to British Very Nice
and a month later to British Smile
and they kept repainting the boats
and wharves the fish the seaweed the

6. er from a Learned Paper about the Seascapes

Very few of er the South Yorkshire
Coastal Mining Settlements survive
in anything like their original

er state. Some have become islands,
some have sunk into the sea, some
have worked loose from the earth

and slither around the countryside
scaring er owls and other woodland
creatures. One was found in Harrogate

a town in North Yorkshire next to
the sea. ‘It had er wings’ said a local
‘and was tired from much hard flying.’

.