What If? Why Here? February 12, 2009

Visiting Sheffield recently, two things struck me as I emerged from the station. Firstly, that after a long train journey without facilities, the sight of those fountains isn’t particularly helpful, and secondly the poem What if…? that adorns the side of Sheffield Hallam University, by the Poet Laureate, Andrew “perpetual” Motion.

It is the most immediately obvious of the poems that have been written up around Sheffield as part of Off the Shelf’s ongoing project Text in the City. Others include Roger McGough’s love poem to the city which appeared on the glass of the Winter Gardens on Valentine’s Day 2006, and Jarvis Cocker’s Trashed on Cider which has been on the side of one of the student flats since 2005.

Sheffield, and Yorkshire in general, has a thriving poetry scene and public celebration of that is a great idea. While Motion’s poem certainly catches your attention, it is not a particularly inspiring piece. Apart from one token reference, 

Rising from Sheffield Station/ and Sheaf Square 

it could be talking about anywhere. This is unsurprising since Motion is himself an Essex boy and his links to this city are based on connections to the universities. He is not inextricably linked to Sheffield in the way John Cooper Clarke is with Salford or McGough with Liverpool; poets who love their towns and are cherished by its inhabitants. Motion will never be the Essex poet, partly because Essex already has a fine tradition of local bards including Billy Bragg, Ian Dury and Luke Wright. Motion does not celebrate his Essex roots, and instead is commissioned to write for other people about other places. He claims that What if…? is aimed at travellers arriving in the city for the first time. If the idea is to say something particular about Sheffield, perhaps it would have been better to commission a local poet. McGough is not local either, but his simple appreciation of the city is eloquent, 

I like this place/My son a student here. 

Jarvis Cocker who actually grew up here was a good choice, and also serves as a reminder that Sheffield’s musical heritage extends beyond the Arctic bloody Monkeys.

(but when you melt/ you become the shape/ of your surroundings:/your horizons/become wider)

In response to What If…?, Radio Sheffield invited its listeners to contribute lines to create their own version. Some were passionate: 

Let our dialect grab you by the throat; 

others simply bizarre: 

And the clouds swing by like angry dinosaurs. 

Creating public sentiment by competition can often yield odd results. Take for instance Morecambe Bay’s tourism website, on which residents and visitors to Morecambe are invited to post their own poems about the town. One opens with the inauspicious line, 

Old lady, dead in room 3 weeks/The glaring headlines read

Discovering What if…? upon exiting the station makes an interesting first impression of the city and lends dignity to an otherwise unattractive building. But I am sure that there is a Sheffieldian who could have written something quirkier and more heartfelt than Motion’s rather banal offering. 

I am not sure whether the same could be said for residents of Morecambe.