I am sorry to have to say this, but for anyone unaware Mike sadly passed away in Decmber of 2009. He will be sorely missed by us all, Martin (Stepson)
It is, I suppose, inevitable that my upbringing has had a profound effect upon what I am, and in turn how my approach to art has developed.
My early years were spent in the Valleys of South Wales - a schizophrenic environment when the landscape of miners' terraced houses clinging to the hillside segues seamlessly into crags and fern-garnished mountainsides, vigorous brooks and secluded woodland. Musicality, lyricism and a love of spoken language are all part of my Welsh heritage and I think they are all discernable in my written works. My father was killed in WW2 and my widowed mother married a man from Manchester in the north-west of England. To say this development was a culture-shock to me is an understatement - I hated my new home, and my new family. Wales was - and remains - the place I call home, though we only visited there each summer holiday every year until my mid-teens.
Apart from those early years and visits, a further two years living semi-rough on the resort coast of North Wales, three years at College in Chester, and a single year working in the Fenlands of East Anglia, I have lived and worked in Manchester. The earthy and grounded tones in my work are directly attributable to my childhood and adolescence in the back streets of this soot-stained, grimy industrial city. My passion - and my life's work - for the education of children with special educational needs arose purely by accident: during the summer of one of those years on the North Wales Coast I worked at a Holiday Camp., and was asked, as a favour, to be 'Uncle' and look after the guests' children, arranging activities etc. The problems of one or two children who simply didn't fit in affected me deeply, and pointed me in the direction of my future career.
If asked what my influences are I could be ridiculously trite and say 'life' and given that I've lived more than sixty reasonably eventful years, there'd be more than a modicum of truth in that. However, in terms of literary influences, here goes: I've always been a voracious and woefully indiscriminate reader, although until I was in my late teens my reading was almost exclusively non-fiction. I was a typical back-street philistine late-fifties teenager interested in birds, booze and Buddy Holly - in that order. It wasn't until I reached my late teens that I began to read anything of interest, but when I did I devoured everything - Satre, Camus, Kerouac, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche. Poets included the beat poets Ferlinghetti et al, Blake, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Baudelaire, Rilke, Lorca, Cummings and a selection of contemporary British poets, Dylan Thomas, T S Elliott, Christopher Logue, Ted Hughes and [ironically] Sylvia Plath. Of these, I think only G M Hopkins and Dylan Thomas had any stylistic impact on my work, and then not deliberately.
Until the age of 18 art was of minor importance only - I wrote the odd poem purely as an elaborate 'chat-up line' - but my main academic interest lay in science. It was assumed that I'd go to University and end up in medical research. However, a chance friendship with an art specialist changed all that. After a few visits to pubs I discovered that I was moderately skilled in sketching likenesses: this led to portraits with pastels and then oil-painting. I was hooked. My friend sent a folio of my work to an art college and I was offered a place, much to my mother's dismay and disgust, because I'd also been offered places at Oxford and at Aberystwyth Universities to read sciences.
The upshot was that, after a catastrophic row, I turned down all the offers, left home and for two years drifted aimlessly in North Wales hardly earning enough to feed and house myself let alone afford to buy art materials. The experience with children in the holiday camp seemed like the answer to my problem - I could have a 'proper job' and still have time to make pictures and write. I made my peace with my mother, did a year's unqualified teaching to be sure I'd made the right choice, and as a compromise accepted a Teacher Training Course specialising in Art and in Human & Social Biology. At college, I exhibited and sold my first pictures and also had some poems published in college magazines.
For ten years I combined committed teaching with a moderately successful period of art production. Headship, however, requires a great deal more involvement, and the amount of spare time for painting and writing diminished year by year, until by my mid-forties I was totally wrapped up in my work to the exclusion of every other interest. My son's suicide changed all that. Art provided an essential outlet for the mental devastation of this tragedy, and for the trauma of a distinctly nightmarish final year of teaching leading to premature retirement. I don't exaggerate when I say that Art - pictures and writing - and the opportunity to 'publish' online saved my sanity.
There has been more than one defining moment in my life:
a. my sudden switch to art, leaving home, and the final choice of teaching as a career
b. my marriage and horrific divorce after 15 years
c. my son's tragic suicide [aged 29]Â - my promise to him led to online publishing
d. my premature early retirement after gross mismanagement by my employers
I'm married for the second time and have a stepson and stepdaughter, in addition to my own two daughters - and 8 grandchildren [to date!]
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Comments (18)
Meisiekind
How tender and fragile a tale! 'She loves me, she loves me not..." Excellently executed as always my dear friend. Hugs, Carin xx
AusPoet
Oh, Mike, I always look forward to your posts. This one does not disappoint. A beautifully sweet and tragic story you weave, of a young heart callously broken by an old and jaded one. I hope he got his comeuppance!
Excellent work my friend; if I could still "vote" as in the old days, I would do so. Instead, I shall call this a favourite.
algra
Nice work and a sensitive poem.
RodolfoCiminelli
Excellent and beautiful realization Mike.....!!!!
mickuk50
excellent description of how fragile life can be and more over LOVE :o) mick
beachzz
Oh my, what a beautfiful story of a broken heart; Love ~~~ so great, so good, so fleeting sometimes!!!
BlueLotus7
Once again your words paint glorious albeit sad pictures...but as seeds of the dandelion reseed the lawn...love returns in another form and place. It flourishes in places one would not expect anything to survive: between cracked sidewalks of Time and in the crevices of shady alleyways we occupy as homeless lovers.
vaggabondd
Very nice work my friend
dhanco
Beauty and sadness in this wonderful story, Mike. So true and very touching life experiences you reveal in this excellent work. I had to read this twice .. thank you for sharing your beautiful words.
helanker
SO beautiful it is. Very lovely poetry, Mike.
romanceworks
Such bittersweet memories captured in your lovely and poignant words. Your poetry is always a journey to the heart. :o) CC
hipps13
Hi Mike To Love is not easy at least it comes in many forms beautiful work sweet smile to you warm hug, Linda
leanndra
How sad! It makes me cry. Love is never equal it seems. Oh to experience love that is pain free. Beautiful writing Mike, but so sad.
amirapsp
Stunning...Hugs
Blush
This is a sad poem sweetie But wonderful as always Hugs Susan~
avalonfaayre
My 'baby daddy' told his son it is always best to be the one who loves less. I told him differently, of course. It is always better to love the most. It hurts more in the end, but I couldn't live with myself knowing I didn't give all I had. Says something about him though. I remember this one. I loved it before, too. I love, "Piss the bed." Never heard of that term before, but it just might become my new slang...lol!
auntietk
Ahhhhh ... a sad tale, indeed. A fickle young woman, more interested in herself than in anyone else. Beautifully written, my friend. Your story is well told.
bangonthedrums
how heart-wrenching...! you have made a tragic tale beautiful in your poignant telling of it...