The English Pub and Poets

I have just enjoyed a literary meal at my local pub, where the landlord is fond of his ale, women and poetry. It is good to share a pint with him and chew the fat. He will drop in a line of poetry and look at me for verification. I smile back as I am hopeless at attributing some of the most famous lines! It links us though to an important literary and cultural tradition. One that poets have needed and used going back to Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Donne at the Mermaid Tavern. It is a great tradition. Dylan Thomas, Norman Cameron and George Barker wrote poems in the pubs of Fitzrovia. George Orwell drafted essays in pubs and saw their role in defining Englishness. Louis MacNeice and Roy Campbell famously came to blows in a pub as have other living poets that I shall not name. A few nights before he died, Barry MacSweeney told me of a poem that he drafted in the late 1970s in a Canterbury pub with H.R. Keating and John Arlott after watching a county cricket match. He was going to send the poem but never did. Sadly, pubs are closing at an alarming rate thanks to cheap alcohol in supermarkets and other factors. Poets and writers need pubs and community. There are always stories to be heard and told. Support your local and not the likes of Tesco. Raise a toast to your landlord and read him a poem. It will do you both good! Long may we support our local pubs and keep the tradition alive.