It’s National Poetry Day on 2 October, so we’re going to celebrate it over a long weekend of irreverent, irritated and irate doggerel! Here’s ‘No Such Thing as an Englishman’ to really stoke up the tempers!
No Such Thing as an Englishman
There’s no such thing as an Englishman,
He really doesn’t exist.
There was never a castle, a moat, a drawbridge,
His house failed to subsist.
There’s no such thing as an Englishman,
With blood deep blue, and skin ghost white.
There’s no such thing as fists of red,
Shaking in varicosed fright.
Because an Englishman is part Scot, part Gael, part Celt,
Part Saxe, part Franco, part Serb.
He’s part Indo, part Carib, part Sino;
Part Arab, part Thai, part disturbed.
His blood is a Mishra mash of madness,
of cultures a-far and a-near,
He doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going,
So he curse, he shout and he swear.
Because an Englishman is part woman,
Part he-man, part her-man, part sha-man.
Scratch an Anglo and there’s a vigorous hybrid,
In a gene pool of shimmering light.
Their bloods are the colours of mud and of sand
Their bones, the tastes of the sun and the strand;
Their tongues, taste the moon rising high in the sky
And falling rains, wash away, the tears in their eyes.
Our nerves weren’t forged in Sheffield,
But in Scotia, near and afar.
Our guts were shaped in Islamabad,
And the restaurants and bazaars of Belfast.
Our oaths don’t belong to king and country,
But to our brothers, our sisters, our cousins,
Yet we swear allegiance, history and platitudes
Till our shoes are glued to our feet.
There’s no such thing as an Englishman,
He just doesn’t exist,
And those who would want to deny this,
Are deluded, foolish, trapped fish.
The deniers, the nay-sayers and flag wavers
Who are looking to protect their list,
Had better beware, their game is to scare
But they won’t.
The dance of the Englishman is over.
There’s No Such Thing as an Englishman
There’s No Such Thing as an Englishman is an anthology of poetry from an irritated England and marks the many sources of irritation faced by the average Englishman or woman these days – everything from the railways to referenda via what ever it is the young call music these days.
It was launched on 31 January 2020 – the day when the UK left the European Union and when the phenomenon known as Brexit finally, we liked to think, finally evaporated and all those years of frustration, anger, sheer disbelief and irritation all come to rest. But as Chairman Mao once said about what he thought the effects of the French Revolution were, it was way too soon to tell.
But its two authors – Nick Owen and Janice Owen – have become accomplished at becoming irritated at many facets of life in England over the years and hope that you, dear reader, will find some solace in knowing that you are not alone when it comes to feeling frustrated, pissed off, angry or just good old fashioned irritated.
Being English though, means we’ve just reached a level of irritation and aren’t quite ready to riot. Yet.