Brian Patten: “My heart was like a firefly; it moved / through the darkest objects laughing”
Today we feature British poet Brian Patten, writer of popular lyrical poems, delightful children's poems, and member of The Liverpool Poets
What does today’s poet have in common with The Beatles?
Brian Patten and The Beatles were both rising to fame in 1960s Liverpool. They were moving in the same cultural milieu and making similar innovations in parallel art forms. They were also both influenced by the American Beat poets—figures like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
There was a lot of artistic cross-over happening there at that time; some of the local poets were musicians, and some of the musicians were poets. (Lennon and McCartney both published poetry books.). Artistic walls were breaking down; poetry readings sometimes had music, comedy, and live painting.
The sound emerging from Liverpool at this time was called “The Mersey Sound” or the “MerseyBeat” (after the nearby River Mersey). A documentary called Sex, Chips and Poetry: 50 Years of the Mersey Sound describes the poetic part of that phenomenon:
“We all remember The Mersey Sound, don’t we?
[The documentary shows footage of The Beatles, with “Love Me Do” playing the background]
No, not that one. This one.
[The documentary switches to footage of the cover of a book titled “The Mersey Sound”]
Britain’s first rock-and-roll poetry book.
The one that Penguin books published in May 1967, the same year as Sergeant Pepper.
But instead of Paul, John, George, and Ringo—there was Adrian, Roger, and Brian.”
“Adrian, Roger, and Brian” were Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten, known collectively as “The Liverpool Poets.”
Their collection of poems surprised everyone by selling out of its original run quickly. It ended up being one of the best selling collections of poetry of the last century, with about half a million copies sold. It is on the list of Penguin Modern Classics.
Patten was born in 1946 in Liverpool and grew up in “a working class neighbourhood, now long demolished.” His childhood wasn’t very happy. He dropped out of school at 15 and started writing for a local newspaper, while also getting involved in the local music and poetry scene.
At 18, he went to Paris, where he “lived rough” and earned money by “writing poems in coloured chalk on the pavements beside the city’s pavement artists.” 1
Patten describes this time in his life in a 1997 essay for The Independent:
And then I went with a friend of mine to Paris, and we were sleeping under the bridges on the embankment of the Seine, kipping in semi-derelict houses.
….I earned bits of money. I'd met up in a cafe with a young poet, a girl, and she translated some short poems of mine into French for me. I also used to write them in coloured chalk on the pavements on the bridges.
….I was earning enough for a basic diet of French loaves stuffed with bananas and goats' milk, which I lived on, and I travelled around a bit in France and Morocco.
About six weeks later I went back to Liverpool and rented an attic room in Liverpool 8, a run-down area; they call it Toxteth now. I survived doing bits and pieces; I was on the dole for a few months. I was organising poetry readings in various clubs and bars that paid next to nothing, but somehow it seemed easier to live on air then.
Patten didn’t stay in Liverpool for long after his return. From the same essay:
I went to live in Winchester - from a total city environment to this quiet existential existence in a Cathedral town, reading Steppenwolf and writing poems. I love the water meadows and the river Itchen - that wide, shallow water; it cleans out your head.
When I first discovered Brian Patten’s poetry, I had no idea about any of this. A neighbor handed me the book out of a Yard Sale box. I was 16. The book was battered and old-looking—and free.
I assumed it was the work of a poet who maybe had only ever published one book, who maybe was forgotten to history. I imagined that I might have the last book left.
It was a sad thought because the poems were magnificent: small explosions of lyricism and wit and alive-ness—impossible & delicious—tucked inside the torn faded covers.
The book was called The Irrelevant Song. My favorite poem from that book is “Poem Written in the Street on a Rainy Evening.” It begins:
Everything I lost was found again.
I tasted wine in my mouth.
My heart was like a firefly; it moved
Through the darkest objects laughing.
The narrator continues, still on that rainy street, describing a feeling of joy that cannot be destroyed:
My joy was gobbled up by dull surroundings But there was enough of it A feast was spread; a world Was suddenly made edible And there was forever to taste it
How could anyone have given away a book with that in it?
Read the full poem here.
Patten has written so many beautiful (and fun!) poems—from lyrical, mournful poems to silly, delightful children’s poems.
Here is one more poem. “The Armada” is an absolutely beautiful & haunting poem about a childhood memory that is juxtaposed with visiting his mother in the hospital as she is dying. It starts with the line “long, long ago” and then gets to this childhood memory:
I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond
and to the far bank launched a child's armada.
A broken fortress of twigs,
the paper-tissue sails of galleons,
the waterlogged branches of submarines—
Later in the poem it takes us to the hospital and the mother’s bedside. He reaches out to touch her and remembers that scene:
for as on a pond a child's paper boat was blown out of reach by the smallest gust of wind, so too have you been blown out of reach by the smallest whisper of death, and a childhood memory is sharpened, and the heart burns as that armada burnt, long, long ago.
Read the full poem here.
More, please
Brian Patten’s website.
This BBC Interview to celebrate 50 years of The Mersey Sound is a great listen. It has Roger McGough and Brian Patten as guests of honor (Adrian Henri had passed away), and several other poets as guests.
This video is so short but FANTASTIC. Patten reads one of his most famous poems in it, “So Many Different Lengths of Time.” (If you don’t get goosebumps watching this, please unsubscribe from this substack; your soul is obviously made of Tupperware.)
This video is by a poetry lover who bought an original copy of The Mersey Sound in 1967. I feel a bit of a kinship with him, considering my own battered copy of a Patten book.
Related to the Batman poem, here is a fun article about how a kind of comic book lineage has evolved from Patten’s poem.
This is the documentary mentioned at the beginning of the post. It is SO FUN to watch. You can feel the energy of the era. They did a great job.
How about you? Have you heard of Brian Patten? Do you have a favorite poem?
See you tomorrow with another poet!
Jenny
Jen, I loved this post! "How could anyone have given away a book with THAT in it?" Thank you for this marvelous introduction to Brian Patten.