THE GOLDEN ROOM
‘Was it for nothing that the little room,
All golden in the lamplight, thrilled with golden
Laughter from hearts of friends that summer night?’ (Wilfrid Gibson)
I’m as happy as a daffodil
this day;
sunshine flows around me
over fences,
leaping
with the joy of my poetry.
I am Lord Pretty Field,
a tipsy aristocrat of verse,
become full of myself
and country booze
in the Beauchamp Arms.
Under branches frothy with blossom,
I carry a torch from Northumberland
for Wilfrid Gibson
and his old mates;
for Geraldine
I bear
my Cheviot heart
in Gloucester ciderlight.
We can only catch
a petal from the slaughter,
a bloom
to ease the melancholy
of a Dymock dusk;
hear laughter
over the gloomy murmurs
of distant wars.
A swirling rook cries out
across St Mary’s spire
in dialect
as I climb
back to my White House room
to dream of an England gone,
and a flash of whisky
with Abercrombie.
For Wilfrid you are still
‘a singing star’,
drenched in balladry;
and this I know:
I will keep your little songs alive
in this Golden Room in my heart
and, in my Hexham’s market place,
rant for you
and cover
all our love
with streaming daffodils.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
HEXHAM’S ‘PEOPLE’S POET’: Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962)
‘Heather land and bent-land,
Black land and white,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land of my delight.
Land of singing waters,
And winds from off the sea,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I would be.
Heather land and bent-land,
And valleys rich with corn,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I was born.’
Wilfrid Gibson, author of poems like ‘Flannan Isle’, ‘The Ice Cart’, and ‘The Drover’s Road’, was born in Battle Hill Terrace, Hexham, on October 2nd 1878, the son of a Fore Street chemist. He grew up under the guidance of an elder sister who was responsible for much of his education.
Not much is known about his early years except for a distinct gift for language and a desire to be a poet.
His first book of poetry was published at the age of 24 and entitled ‘The Golden Helm’. Similarly romantic was his next book, ‘Urlyn the Harper’, published two years later. This was followed, in 1907, by ‘Stonefields’ which depicted the strength and atmosphere of Northumberland and the Borders, and then ‘Daily Bread’, issued in 1910, which went into a third printing, partly because of its down-to-earth style proving that there was a market for poems on everyday life which people could relate to. Gibson had ceased writing pseudo-Tennysonian verse and had begun to write realistic poetry in which he attempted to reflect the speech of ordinary people, based on events stemming from everyday life in Northumberland and eleswhere.
In the summer of 1912, Gibson left Hexham for London to broaden his literary horizons and never returned to his native town, except for very occasional visits. He moved to Dymock in Gloucestershire in 1914 to join a group of poets and his new bride went with him, Geraldine Townshend (secretary of poet Harold Munro of the Poetry Bookshop in London), who he had married in Dublin in December 1913. One of the Dymock Poets, the American Robert Frost, said of Gibson that ‘he is much talked of in America at the present time. He’s just one of the plain folks with none of the marks of the literary poseur about him’. The poet Rupert Brooke affectionately nicknamed him ‘Wibson’.
He was turned down by the Army because of his shaky health and poor eyesight but was recruited to the war effort in 1917 when he served as a clerical worker in the Army Service Corps. Shortly beforehand, he had embarked upon a successful reading tour of America.
In war and in peace, he tried to capture the lives of ordinary people and he acquired a reputation as a poet who identified with the urban poor and who understood the harshness of the lives of working people, what he called ‘the heartbreak in the heart of things’.
‘Wibson’ continued to publish a selection of poems every two years or so until 1950 and he still went on reading and lecturing tours around Britain, despite money problems and the aches and pains of rheumatism and fibrositis. But his work declined greatly in popularity and is scarcely known today. He had written to Robert Frost in 1939 that ‘I am one of those unlucky writers whose books have predeceased him’.
He died at Virginia Water in Surrey in a nursing home on 26th May 1962, aged 83.
O YOU WHO DRINK MY COOLING WATERS CLEAR
FORGET NOT THE FAR HILLS FROM WHENCE THEY FLOW
WHERE OVER FELL AND MOORLAND YEAR BY YEAR
SPRING SUMMER AUTUMN WINTER COME AND GO
WITH SHOWERING SUN AND RAIN AND STORM AND SNOW
WHERE OVER THE GREEN BENTS FOREVER BLOW
THE FOUR FREE WINDS OF HEAVEN WHERE TIME FALLS
IN SOLITARY PLACES CALM AND SLOW
WHERE PIPES THE CURLEW AND THE PLOVER CALLS
BENEATH THE OPEN SKY MY WATERS SPRING
BENEATH THE CLEAR SKY WELLING FAIR AND SWEET
A DRAUGHT OF COOLNESS FOR YOUR THIRST TO BRING
A SOUND OF COOLNESS IN THE BUSY STREET
Inscription by W.W.Gibson on north side of The Temperley Memorial Fountain of 1901 in Hexham Market Place
