‘There are three elements central to all my poetry and prose: celebration, wonder, and discovering’ – David Grubb, 2009
David Grubb was born in 1941. He worked as a psychiatric nurse, a teacher and headteacher, and for Barnados. Aghast at the fact they had several press officers simply for the royal family (in relation to the charity) he left and set up his own charity, Children’s Aid Direct. This charity was hands on, and money for staffing and administration costs was raised separately from normal donations. David often convinced lorry drivers from Reading, near where he lived, to make a trip to Bosnia or Kosovo to deliver aid; he often accompanied them, clad in a flak jacket, and wrote all the charity’s news reports and publicity material.
This writing could be persuasive, shocking and informative, but it wasn’t just about reports, news and charity work. David was a writer throughout most of his life: novels, books of poetry and an inventive autobiography, along with letterpress editions and thousands of appearances in poetry magazines and anthologies. He believed in the power of the arts, was sure that refugees, orphans and those otherwise affected by disaster and conflict needed to play, dance and tell their stories as much as they needed food and shelter. Aspiring authors too: in later years, having ‘retired’, he became a writing tutor and mentor.
His poems dealt with people, be that memories of his parents, those he met in passing, other poets, historical figures, the insane and those disregarded by society. He had strong spiritual beliefs but did not preach at others, was open to debate, conjecture and the impossibilities of belief and faith.
In addition to those who inhabited his writing, he was a dedicated husband, father and grandfather. That dedication included several years of caring for his wife, Beverley, before she had to spend her final days in a home. Ironically, David would also move to a home so his dementia could be monitored and he could be looked after. He died peacefully on Easter Monday, 2024.
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Over the years he and I had not only a publisher/author relationship, but also a friendship and a dialogue in poems, where we would write back to each other’s poems that struck us, usually as new poetry collections were published. The poem below, written in 2013, picked up on the idea of faith and prayer and death being an unsolvable riddle within the expansive universe. Unpublished at the time, it seems an appropriate memorial to him.
David Grubb 1941-2024
YOUR OWN RIDDLE
‘In the centre of the prayer is your own riddle.’
– David Grubb
It’s more of a joke though, without a punchline,
and no friendly audience to applaud. Doubt
creeps up and in, then spreads. Answers
don’t make sense anymore, especially as
you can’t remember what your question was
or even why you asked. Life’s too busy
to bother with anyone who’s too sure
of what’s right and wrong. Black and white
becomes grey, the vertical and horizontal
have both started to shift. Life blurs, repeats,
and slurs its speech, speaks in a language
you don’t understand. The riddle is unsolvable,
the joke’s worn thin; we’ve heard it too many times
before. They always said it was a matter of life
and death, but as people you know depart,
life and death seem less clearly defined,
memories crowd in and you remember the morning
your best friend’s son called to say his dad had died;
that night in London when, going back for coffee,
another mate’s mum told you both his father
had suddenly dropped dead earlier that evening.
Phone calls and car rides, surprises and decay:
news of death travels slowly and hurts all the more
for doing so. The wonder is we can live at all,
knowing what comes next. The wonder is we get up
every morning and stagger through the day.
In the centre of each prayer is a riddle:
the white shape of a body, outlined in the stars.
© Rupert M Loydell
Rupert Loydell 9th April 2024
