Betjeman's Bank Holiday Birthday Blog

Monday 28th August was a day for enjoying all things traditional and everything English- like seaside siestas, glorious gardens and fun-filled fairs- not to mention beer and barbecues, cars and queues. It was the last Bank Holiday of the Summer- but also the centenary of the birth one of Britain's most popular poets laureate, Sir John Betjeman.

If you're a regular reader of these blogs or know me well, you'll already be familiar with my love of word play and particularly alliteration. The appeal of successive words containing the same initial letters is one of the many fun things you can do when trying to combine twenty-six letters to make satisfying sentences- there, I did it again!

I've always enjoyed writing about the people and places I've visited, and the emotions and experiences I've had along the way. I suppose when all's said and done that's what all writing's about, whether fiction or fact. It's how we share our humanity, how we can attempt to understand our deeper feelings, trials and tribulations. Somewhere along the way, good writing also has the power to entertain as well as inform.

I love putting words together to form these blogs when - increasingly of late- other writing commitments don't get in the way, but I've never seen myself as much of a poet. With the odd exception, I'm very much a prose-smith. But I can nevertheless appreciate poetry's power to elevate the commonplace to the comment place, where literary criticism and appreciation of the use of language come to the fore.

Some sourpuss scoffers thought during his lifetime that John Betjeman couldn't be judged a proper poet at all, because he so loved rhyming couplets. But so what? The great joy of rhyme is that is memorable, and Betjeman had a gift for condensing the profound into the fuss-free device of a rhyme which everyone could appreciate. That doesn't mean his writing lost any of its power for all that: Christmas, which I paid homage to in this blog last Advent with my own poem, is a work of beauty which portrays the meaning of Christ's birth in a way none of the sugary lines of a Christmas card ever can.

John Betjeman's great contribution to English society was that he was a flawed genius- like so many of the rest of us, no doubt. Twenty-two years after his cruel death from the ravages of Parkinson's Disease, he's been remembered this month in many a television, radio and newspaper homage. At the same time, A N Wilson, his latest biographer, has stirred up controversy over claims about the authenticity of a letter about the poet's mistress.

The words of others can never do full justice to the legacy and the life of any individual. They are but a feeble attempt to explain the mysterious, complex, wonderful creation which is a human being. John Betjeman was a walking contradiction at times; considered quintessentially English in so many of his writings and causes, he was actually of immigrant stock. Always a man of faith, and yet often ill at ease with his Anglicanism. A master of words and yet at times tortured by his thoughts- particularly of death.

I love John Betjeman's poetry. I love his depiction of an England now long gone, of the suburbia I inhabit and the customs I cherish. He wrote some lovely words, worthy of celebration at this centenary time. But a man's a man for all that- as another great British poet,Robert Burns, famously declared with his homage to humility two centuries before Betjeman. Only in faith and trust, and in the love of Jesus do we really find what life's all about. Plenty of poetic words in the bible, as well as the journalistic narrative of my namesake Mark confirm that for me, as ultimately it did for Betjeman.

By blood after bird
God kept his Word
From the Ark, the dove sent
That all should repent
Becoming flesh in Palestine
Jesus came for all mankind
That love should prosper, in souls of the earth
And everyone know the joy of new birth.