Stairs of Practice

Stairs of Practice poem text, with drop capital

Digging deep for Campaign Against Arms Trade — a mini-speech to advance the fundraising of an excellent cause

Remember, remember, this 5th of November, BAE Systems,(1) slush money,(2) and Britain arming dictators again and again!(3)

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) seeks nonviolently to put an end to all that.(4)

CAAT pursues peaceful economic revolutions in the name of 'conversion':(5)

• Swords into ploughshares
• Spears into pruning hooks
• Missile delivery systems into more accessible and energy-efficient transport modes
• Carpet bombs into a cornucopia of pastures of plenty and
• Bullet holes into boreholes and artillery into artesian wells (6)

So please dig as deeply as you can
To help make such peaceful economic revolutions possible
As you donate to Campaign Against Arms Trade.(7)

Take part in peaceful economic revolutions for pastures of plenty.

By Alan the Poet Therapeutic

Notes

1. https://www.caat.org.uk/search?q=BAE+systems
2. https://www.caat.org.uk/search?q=slush+money
3. https://www.caat.org.uk/search?q=britain+dictators
4. https://www.caat.org.uk/about
5. https://www.caat.org.uk/search?q=conversion
6. Some poetic licence here.
7. https://www.caat.org.uk/support-our-work/donate

Backdrop to the birth of the poem 'The Arts Manager'

I had volunteered at a charity for adults with learning difficulties as 'Basic Education Learner Support Volunteer' in its 'Computer Club' and become more aware of what else was going on around me within that charity. It had a Thursday night 'drop-in' cafe for service users at which wholesome food was prepared for the customers.

Through discussion with the Acting Arts Manager of the place, who was also the main organiser of the 'drop-in' cafe, I also realised that as an amateur entertainer I might have something to contribute in a reciprocal way with an audience of [other] adults with learning difficulties.

It was some years since I had been 'Resident Court Jester' at Julie Felix' and Marianne Segal's Magic Messenger Club, and communicating with an audience had always appealed to me more than Simon Cowell-type-competition 'stardom'. The then Acting Arts Manager was very welcoming of my idea of my entertaining that audience, and so I went along with my guitar and provided musical shakers to audience members to help further their participation and inclusion. That also tied in with a renaissance period regarding my creativity and I made the most of it while I could, writing new words to a traditional melody presenting a sense of common cause with the socially undervalued audience, and sharing humorous and children's songs from my Magic Messenger Club act, and more.

The Arts Manager also told me in a very inspiring way that while she was not comfortable with using computers, she had done a presentation about Nobel Peace Prize Winner, the Kenyan Wangara Maathai in a PowerPoint slide show.(1) I felt that Maathai's work against deforestation was an excellent metaphor for what we were creating in that 'drop-in' cafe where I was a cabaret performer, despite having been told many years ago that I had no potential as a singer.

Though my cabaret singer role there fizzled out as an Arts Manager with different priorities was appointed instead of The [Acting] Arts Manager for whom that poem was written, I treasure the memories of what we shared together in that space and will leave this story with an image that highlights what we created there.

One of the service users was a wheelchair user requiring intensive care including the care required in being fed. (The word 'require' connotes rights as well as need and responsibilities, as Disability Equality Trainer Michèle Tayler told a class I had participated in in 2004.) The one-handed use of a musical shaker helped ensure her inclusion and a transformation in her mood, as her face and her whole being 'lit up' and she might as well have been 'The Belle of the Ball', as her smile beamed so radiantly!

It's years since I was last in touch with that [Acting] Arts Manager who facilitated such transformations in service users, and as I thus don't have her permission to name her here, I shan't but I take the opportunity of celebrating what she accomplished by publishing this story and the poem The Arts Manager.(2)

Link references

1. https://uk.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=wangara%20maathai&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-100&type=newtab
2. http://alanthepoettherapeutic.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-arts-manager.html

The Arts Manager

"Many people say they love art. In reality, too few appreciate

or understand the development of an artist."

— Mike Turner at a 1975 folk singing workshop in

Birmingham, responding to my 'growing pains'

in acquiring musicality

The Arts Manager

Her acceptance, enouragement and enthusiasm
Help us grow through, "Whoops!" to, "Whoopee!"

She helps us grow trees of our talents
On the soil of our potentials.

Our forest of creative fulfilment
Can ward off the desert's encroachment.

By Alan the Poet Therapeutic
© 2005 by Alan Raymond Wheatley

PS: I dedicate this poem to my new classmates and class leader Natalie at Cacophony Choir, Belmont Community Centre, Hereford, who welcomed me as a 'resonant bass' when I joined them on the evening of Thursday, 19 October 2017.

Cacophony Choir meets every Thursday in term times, from 6:45pm to 8:00pm (18:45 to 20:00 by the 24 hour clock). Because next week is half-term, the next session of Cacophony Choir will be on Thursday, 2 November 2017

'Threat levels', who declares them, and the nature of the threat

This blog post has been transferred to the 'Kwug Blog' of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group.
http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/threat-levels-who-declares-them-and-the-nature-of-the-threat.html

More to come on this blog in future

I apologise for the apparent neglect of this blog over the past months.

My neglect of it has resulted mainly from lack of online access to the same PC on which it was created, due to damage of the equipment. I have also moved house -- an event that caused the equipment malfunction -- and am settling into a new home in a different region.

Please keep in touch.

Music Therapy (a poem for my guitar teacher Ray Gallo)

Being in Ray's guitar classes
Is Music Therapy to me!
Drawing his students to their full potential
By treating each as someone special,
He leads us up and never puts us down.

Ramon Gallo opens the channels to music in me!

by Alan the Poet Therapeutic
© 1984 by Alan Raymond Wheatley

About this poem

One aspect of living where I currently live in North London that I most treasure is my connection with guitar teacher Ray Gallo in Haringay Green Lanes, between Haringey Green Lanes Station and Turnpike Lane Station. That connection is deepened through the access that Disability Living Allowance support allows me to private lessons of about 30 minutes with him each week.

I first came across Ray via an evening class he was running in LB Camden for Camden Education around 1984 or 1985.

Sadly, the classes were short-lived due to the shortfall between funder's class size targets and student take-up, and as a person with an invisible learning difficulty, I was under too much pressure from unemployment benefit office/jobcentre to pursue conventional, non-artistic career openings to devote myself to my musical development.

In early 2011, though, I became more settled on Employment & Support Allowance 'Support Group' status and with Disability Living Allowance access to help me secure additional supports I require. With a greater appreciation that my guitar learning problems are more to do with my learning difficulty than being 'unmusical', I sought out Ray's services for private lessons.

Thus I'm now making slow but steady progress, and know that I would benefit from allowing myself more practice time.

Ray (left)  and pupil Alan show off for Karina Gallo's camera, March 2017

I recall what Mike Turner advised me at a Grey Cock Folk Club Singers Workshop session I attended in 1975 or 1976, after I had spoken of my difficulties practisings at home while my younger sister, studying for her 'A' Levels told me, "Shut up! You're tone deaf."

Mike Turner responded:

"Many people say they love art, but too few people appreciate the development of an artist."

So, many years later, Ray celebrates my musical development with me.

 
 

 

From 'Dude Swheatie of Kwug' back to 'Alan the Poet Therapeutic' with a blog

I have been many things in my life and now I believe it would be a great idea for me to return to my poetry and my songwriting aspirations, but via the Google blogosphere.

Since September 2013 I have been the main blog controller for Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG), with intermittent postings.(1) There I have acquired the nom de plume 'Dude Swheatie of Kwug' on account of

1. the KUWG nickname, 
2. the fact that I wear a posh hat, and 
3. a spoof on my surname 'Wheatley'. 

Now though, as I am preparing to move out of the KUWG heartland of the London boroughs of Brent and Camden, my attachment to that blog is diminishing and a past identity as 'Alan the Poet Therapeutic' is re-emerging following a warm reception of my poems at a recent London Federation of Green Parties social near London Bridge Station on Thursday 23 February. In my 64th year of this life, I believe it's time for me to enter into a fresh phase of life as an autonomous person and — dare I say — mouthpiece for the 'Collective Unconscious' rather than as a profile raiser for the kind of collective entity that is the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group.

So I'll 'kick off' this new blog with a poem I wrote in the early 1990's, Communal Womb.

Communal Womb

There are times when I feel cut off —
Separated from the world —
Outside. Starved of Love.
Like an abandoned child.

In such times I write my poetry,
Reaching in to seek the Womb in me.

And there are times when I know
That I'm enough —
With a fertile, abundant world around
My glowing, life-giving, fireball of Love.
I blend my vision with the here and now.

In such times I share my poetry,
To celebrate the union of the Womb and me.

And in such times I share my poetry,
Reaching through
To seed the Communal Womb.

By Alan the Poet Therapeutic
© 1990 by Alan Wheatley

 Link reference

1.  http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/