Hidden Moments

How I got into poetry needs a little more explanation. There was, back in the sixties, a vibrant cafe, or pub scene. Among many of them, there was regular poetry readings at the Lamb & Flag pub in Covent Garden, London, organised by Norman Hidden, the Chairman of the Poetry Society. It was to several of those that I ventured as a young man and became hooked on poetry & literature.

Not just the subject, but the people. This was, what they later called, the swinging sixties. And whilst, conventionally, I was earning a living, like everyone else (and looking after my family) vicariously I was a bohemian. When I get my head around this technology I will show you a b/w picture of me looking like John Lennon (with short hair). Add to that a mixture of strange friends (who, of course, were poets & writers) and you have the general idea.

One or two of these larger than life characters needs some more attention. David Chapman, for instance. A poet through and through. He was tall, with a granite like face hewed out of the Hollywood hills. His shock of blond hair lying limply on his head gave him the appearance of a Roman senator that had just stepped through a damp mist. He smoked (we all did then) played with drugs (I never did that!!) and ended-up in a psychiatric hospital, where he wrote a book called WITHDRAWAL that he dedicated to me. We supported each other like brothers, me giving him some real support, he giving me inspiration and a view into the psyche that is the crazy mind of the Dylan Thomas type poet.

Let me give you a taster of David's work (we were both published in Poet Lore):

LOTUS

Leaves and petals on the water floating
Cool and hard, untouchable
Drifting echoes of birds in a downward sky.

And a face in the water with them
Of one who fell into the water
While she watched them
Slowly, with the current turning
To a dead rose
A reflection
Drifting downstream with the leaves and petals


When I got married in 1965 David read a poem that I wrote, at the wedding service. He stood by the altar reciting the poem, dressed in black trousers, a white shirt with a loose tie and a green flannel jacket - sticking out of his breast pocket was a poppy, he had snatched from the roadside, placed at a clownish angle. Pure theatre. Needless to say my wife was somewhat phased out by this (being the innocent girl next door) but she got used to it (and is with me still some 45 years !).

I said there was another character, that was an even more amazing mixture: George Paul Solomos. A middle aged, American/Greek writer, friend of Gore Vidal and many others. Then living in Tufnell Park in London, poor and sponging money from people like Jonathan Guinness. I was one of his acolytes. He had published a novel in 1952 called The Man Who Went Away - I thought it was the best thing I had ever read. Every weekend I would spend the days with him and the evenings with my soon to be wife. To reach him I had to get 2 buses and walk the last half mile. I think I would have travelled to the ends of the earth. He introduced me to high society (attending a party in Eaton Square), to real writing and bringing the two together in a film magazine he published called FIBA, where I was asked to interview the famous film producer, Leon Clore, and turned in a 3-page feature (my first professional assignment). GPS then asked me to write a screenplay for a vamp on vampire called Count Dracula. It was all heady stuff. But, at the same time, I was trying to hold down a job and support a family of, now, 2.

I had to choose, a writer's life, or conventional comforts? As it is I called my son Dominic Maleo and set about writing a novel ... called Maleo. Life had only just begun...