{"id":7912,"date":"2022-12-01T12:49:27","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T12:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=7912"},"modified":"2025-05-20T07:34:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T07:34:24","slug":"peter-hughes-life-writing-i-m-john-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/7912\/peter-hughes-life-writing-i-m-john-james\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Hughes: Life Writing: i.m. John James"},"content":{"rendered":"

I met John James soon after moving to Cambridge in the autumn of 1978. I\u2019d gone there, after doing some farm labouring in the Isles of Scilly, to do a degree in English Literature at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology. Later they changed the name to Anglia Windows Polytechnic, or something. After my course finished I moved away. First to Brighton, then Stirling, then Italy. But I moved back to Cambridge in the early 90s just in time for the first Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry. I had the pleasure of reading with Ralph Hawkins and David Chaloner at that first event. I taught in schools in and around Cambridge for the next 15 years. John James was a central figure in poetry. I had the good fortune to hear him read on several occasions. In 2007 I moved away from Cambridge and did up an old coastguard cottage on the Norfolk coast. I started Oystercatcher Press at the same time. John did two pamphlets with Oystercatcher, \u2018Cloud Breaking Sun\u2019 in 2012, and \u2018Sabots\u2019 in 2015. Between 2007 and 2017 John came to visit quite often. He wrote me this poem for my 60th birthday in 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

STUDIO\u00a0\u00a0 POEM\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John James<\/span><\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/i>for Peter Hughes<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>the Boston Deeps give way to the North Sea<\/span><\/p>\n

a grey canvas expanse punctuated<\/span><\/p>\n

by streaks & flecks of Titanium White<\/span><\/p>\n

under a variable veil of cloud<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

but where in this are the opening moules<\/span><\/p>\n

in their black casserole & rising lid<\/span><\/p>\n

with a bottle of Chimay Blanche still life<\/span><\/p>\n

or site specific obsolescent sphere<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

difference in the face of image saturation<\/span><\/p>\n

resistant to continuous screening<\/span><\/p>\n

a redemptive calm to be recovered<\/span><\/p>\n

in a twisting vine of ripening beans<\/span><\/p>\n

as the music in your head floods the page at night<\/span><\/p>\n

the distant flickering lights of Lincolnshire<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the sonnet form was a little nod to the fact that I\u2019d been knee deep in my versions of Petrarch over the preceding months.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I took up the Judith E. Wilson Fellowship at Cambridge in 2016 I was keen to organise an event to acknowledge the importance of John\u2019s poetry. The conference on the poetry of John James was hosted by Magdalene College in March 2017. The contributors included Ian Brinton, Ian Heames, Drew Milne, Peter Riley, Simon Smith, Andrew Taylor and Geoff Ward. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

John died in May 2018. This is a poem I wrote in his memory soon afterwards.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Life Writing: in memoriam John James<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the proliferation of Cambridge street food stalls<\/span><\/p>\n

shows no sign of slowing down John<\/span><\/p>\n

& I\u2019m sitting eating in the market place<\/span><\/p>\n

while a guy plays the guitar<\/span><\/p>\n

in front of the monument to Snowy<\/span><\/p>\n

me with a fistful of Mediterranean sausage<\/span><\/p>\n

nestling in a bright refreshment of mixed salad<\/span><\/p>\n

invigorated by a generous ejaculation of chilli sauce<\/span><\/p>\n

as your man moves on<\/span><\/p>\n

to a song about feeling it in your fingers<\/span><\/p>\n

& feeling it in your toes<\/span><\/p>\n

though I am mainly feeling it in the pit<\/span><\/p>\n

I neglected to mention the cucumber<\/span><\/p>\n

& mint tinged yoghurt lining<\/span><\/p>\n

the whole dense wrap where the sausage is halal<\/span><\/p>\n

& the music here is free<\/span><\/p>\n

& finds its way into the witnesses & sky<\/span><\/p>\n

we cock an eye at now & blink<\/span><\/p>\n

away an inappropriate sad anger<\/span><\/p>\n

reflecting on the Irish referendum<\/span><\/p>\n

Windrush & the grotesque stupidities of Brexit<\/span><\/p>\n

we join in with barely audible humming<\/span><\/p>\n

bodily registration of the rhythms<\/span><\/p>\n

a tapping foot or two fingers patting the thigh<\/span><\/p>\n

the sun is moving round the building<\/span><\/p>\n

& in the circumstances John<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to fuck shamelessly<\/span><\/p>\n

with the playlist & he effortlessly<\/span><\/p>\n

segues into a moving instrumental<\/span><\/p>\n

take on love is the drug<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Peter Hughes<\/strong> is a poet and painter. He is also the founding editor of Oystercatcher Press, winner of the Michael Marks Award \u2018for outstanding UK publisher of poetry in pamphlet form\u2019. Peter was born in Oxford, worked in Italy for several years and is now based in north Wales. He also teaches, and has been Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellow in Poetry at Cambridge University. Described by Tony Fraser as \u2018one of the U.K.\u2019s most interesting and unclassifiable poets\u2019, Peter is the author of over a dozen books of poetry which include Nistanimera, The Summer of Agios Dimitrios, <\/em>Allotment Architecture <\/em>and The Pistol Tree Poems. <\/em>Nathan Thompson describes the latter as \u2018flickering, intense, innovative and utterly mesmerising’.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter\u2019s Selected Poems<\/em> was published by Shearsman in 2013<\/span> alongside a volume entitled<\/span> \u2018An intuition of the particular\u2019: some essays on the poetry of Peter Hughes<\/em>, edited by Ian Brinton. 2013 also saw the publication of Allotment Architecture,<\/em> by Reality Street. In 2015 Reality Street published Quite Frankly. <\/em>This substantial volume contains Peter\u2019s unconventional versions of the complete sonnets of Petrarch.Peter has also published versions of Cavalcanti and Leopardi. His most recent books are A Berlin Entrainment<\/i> (Shearsman), and Arrangements <\/i>(Aquifer), a collaboration with El\u00e9na Rivera.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Click here to go back to:\u00a0Contributors and Links to Pages 1 – 4<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I met John James soon after moving to Cambridge in the autumn of 1978. I\u2019d gone there, after doing some farm labouring in the Isles of Scilly, to do a degree in English Literature at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology. Later they changed the name to Anglia Windows Polytechnic, or something. After my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[68,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/images.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-23C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7912"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8298,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7912\/revisions\/8298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}