Shay the poet heads to Eroica Britannia

Just one month to go to the most handsome cycling festival - Eroica Britannia.

Vintage bikes, vintage everything and 30,000 people heading to Bakewell in the Peak District for a fun filled 3 day family adventure on 19, 20 and 21st June

.

There's music, films, conversation, food, drink and of course loads of old bikes.

And this year there will be poetry, courtesy of yours truly, with a half hour set on the Saturday afternoon.

My set list is almost sorted and although I never really stick to the list there will be a couple of new cycling ones in the set including "A minute and a half" and "I like people riding bikes". There'll be a fair few non cycling ones too and we'll have a great time.

I'll post more on the set as we draw closer.

Domestique

A couple of years ago I wrote and posted a poem about doping in cycling called Dopers' Lament. More recently I wrote this short poem about the sadness of the young men who died as a result of "doing what had to be done"....


Domestique

Bike passed to mechanic

Showered, massaged, refuelled

Another day done

Another lesson learned

Doing what has to be done

And he dreams of bigger days

Of Pyrenees and Alps

Of his name on the road

Dreams of glory

Of podium girls

And fast cars

And he drifts off

Aching

On a hotel bed

And molten Macadam blood

Seeps through enlarged ventricles

And a young man

Domestique

Sleeps

Forever

I Like people riding bikes

This ought to go on my cycling blog as much as on my poetry blog - maybe it will. I wrote this on the occasion of leaving my job at CTC and it explains why people like me work so hard to encourage more people to ride bikes. My former colleagues had this already but its time to share.....

Oh Yes and here is a gratuitous picture of a tree:

I like people riding bikes

I like people riding bikes

Young ones, old ones and in-betweeners

Thin ones, large ones, tall ones and short ones 

Racers, wannabes and commuters

In Lycra, corduroy or pin-striped suits

Tourists and mountain bikers

B... M... Xers

People that ride with their mates

And even the single speed hipsters

(But preferably with brakes)

I like road bikes, track bikes

Bicycles, tricycles, unicycles

Recumbents and tandems

I like bikes with pedals, with treadles

And those with hand cranks

Folders, mountain bikes, BMX bikes and

Speedway bikes (but not on the road)

I like cargo bikes and trailers

Balance bikes, trikes, kiddie cranks

Tag-alongside and child seats

I even like bikes with electrical assist

I like steel, aluminium, bamboo and carbon

(just a little bit)

I'm not sure about cardboard, manganese

Plywood and plastic

They might have bells or hooters

Saddlebags, bar-bags

Panniers or rucksacks

I like people riding bikes

I'll pedal alone

We'll pedal together

I'll take the road, high or low

I'll take the rough stuff or the smooth stuff

The single track or the velodrome

I'll take cycle lanes and shared lanes

I'll just take the lane

I'll pedal to work and I'll pedal for fun

I'll give or take a croggy or a backie

Or a push on steep hills

Maybe I'll take a tow

I like people riding bikes

But

I don't like everything

I don't like bad riding

I don't like bad driving

I don't like victim blaming

I don't like hi-vis and I don't like helmets

I don't like safety placebos and mystical rituals

I've seen the Emperors' new clothes

Bright shining yellow

With a polystyrene cap

Hip, hip, hooray

The crowds cheer

As the otherwise invisible

Emperor pedals by

And I do like people riding bikes 

Canakkale

Written for Rochdale's commemoration of Gallipoli this is, like my other war poems, not a celebration of courage and sacrifice (important as those things are) but an indictment of war itself and of the foolishness of the human race.

Canakkale Savasi

Where victory is no sweeter than defeat

A battlefield between the high ground

And the moral high ground

The beach and the hills

The gulf of belief between them

A stubborn separation of ideologies

Oceans or continents apart

Stripped-bare lands, smouldering and smoking

Drenched in blood

Canakkale

Where victory is no sweeter than defeat

Defeat the only exit

A battlefield of slow contrition

And lives wasting day by day

Where a quick death becomes preferable

To a slow-dying, slow-starving, forced-walk

Towards an impossible exile

And the victors loose the one thing that mattered

And with humanity destroyed, what was left?

Canakkale

Where victory is no sweeter than defeat

Where new countries emerge

With foundations of blood built on suffering

Again the blood flows from the high ground

With new hatred, new wars and new causes

And the pain echoes across another century

No celebrations nor commemorations

Nor pomp nor ceremony disguise

The days humanity faded

Gallipoli

Where victory is no sweeter than defeat

A battleground, named by the defeated

Remembered for butchery, for death

Defeat the only exit

Victory a lingering defeat

Surely no pride, only sadness

And a perpetual warning; ignored

Through blood soaked centuries

To humanity's peril