An Excellent Lunch Companion

I recently discovered that a poem I wrote in commemoration of the death of writer Francis King was still available on the PEN website.

English PEN is part of a worldwide network of writers, and the fact that my poem was accepted at all I considered a prestigious honour.

Discovering it is still alive and available for perusal three years after it was written and sent when I had received news of the writers’ recent death at the age of 88.

Francis King was someone that I only met briefly, but I am sure like many, meeting with him has remained in my memory. He was an excellent lunch companion.

Few people can have so many interesting anecdotes drawn mostly from a life well lived.

His circle of friends was extraordinary, and when he mentioned someone that he called Morgan, it took a later gentle reminder that he was talking about EM Forster, a writer that most of us will have heard of, but few will count as close friends.

There is the generational thing, of course. Francis King was of an older generation. A very different generation, in which being homosexual was itself considered criminal.

Impossible for most people to understand in these very different times.

And he moved in a circle where he knew WH Auden, he of the famous funeral poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral.

It is ironic that my life should have crossed with that of Francis when it did, and that I should have even been able to write that poem in honour of his memory.

That it can be viewed on the English PEN website is an added bonus, but it reminds me that I have written many poems in the context of Humanist funerals, some of which are published in my collection, 50 x 50 -Useful Poetry For Troubled Times.

It is not so much that I have a particular fascination for memorial poems, but simply that I had a Humanist Celebrant friend for whom I wrote to order a number of such poetic expressions.

I suppose I had, and still have, the time to be able to respond quickly. Funerals of course are never planned far in advance.

But this is certainly the most prestigious opportunity to have the last word.

My style as a poet lends itself perhaps, unpretentious, and when I worked closely with my humanist celebrant friend, she was grateful to have someone at that could take a simple narrative of someone’s life, and frame it within blank verse, that came across as a poetic expression of those things that had been communicated to me.

This facility of mine became the focus of my application to the Arts Council of England for a small grant. The first and only time that I have received funding from this source for my own work.

I mentioned in the poem I wrote that was simply entitled Francis King CBE that he had been generous enough to have read some of my poetry and commented positively on it, and said that he would write on my behalf to the Arts Council. It was how he himself had started out as an author, in very different times, with the receipt of an award from that body.

But Francis spent most of his long life working for the British Council, often overseas, and he had a particular liking for Japan.

Which was something we could talk about, because I had the good fortune to travel to Japan when I worked as the Development Director for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

My week in Japan is one of the highlights of a life that is far more constrained these days, and such travel would simply be impossible these days.

But I am glad to have done it when I could, and in some style too.

It is a simple fact that when you work for a National orchestra, that when you stay abroad, you stay in five-star hotels. And a size star hotel in Japan is quite an experience.

But that lunch with Francis King was an excellent one, and he was an extraordinary raconteur.





Francis King CBE

The family has gathered, the struggle ceased
but sadness should not cloud the day.
Your life must end, but it has been long
and filled with so many friends along the way
who have already sung their song.
I like to think that you will soon be drinking tea
with many of them, Japanese style
- and how you will admire the waiters!

You were kind to me, and read my words
for which I am so grateful. Better still
you said you liked them, and wrote as much
to those that gave you your first start
for which I'm truly humbled.
But then, you are a gentleman, and a nearly-knight
though a sword, in truth, wouldn't suit you quite
for it would clash with your convictions.

The conversations over tea
would be well worth overhearing.
Such a literary gathering it will be
and a library's worth of worthies.
Besides, so many shelves across the world
will keep your memory fresh
for you chose for your profession
one in which death is only the beginning.