Subscriber Showcase #3
Jim Friedman
Jim Friedman was born in Lewisham, London and raised in Stevenage New Town, Hertfordshire. He read English at Nottingham University and stayed on to complete an M.Phil.
He taught at Loughborough University for 20 years and then changed career to become a relationship counsellor and supervisor until his retirement in 2014 when he started writing poetry again.
He is a member of Derby Stanza.
Standing Alone, Leaning Against (Coverstory Books 2022), written with Dave Smith, was his first published collection. A solo work — A Picture’s Worth — followed in 2024.
Hudson’s Home movie
Hollywood folk on Labour Day,
gathered at Rock’s, his beachside house,
for drinks and gossip in the sun.
Jack, Lauren, Sal, Roddy, et al,*
smaller-seeming than on screen,
like the tips of icebergs look small.
Self-conscious in the camera’s eye –
surprisingly – they squint and mug,
alive in a kodachrome world,
forever capsuled in their time.
A day-off doing mundane things.
Yet fame is on their faces still,
larger-than-life-ness won’t let go
of them – big fish in a small pond,
leviathans nibbling at crisps.
* Hollywood stars mentioned are: Rock Hudson; Jack Lemmon; Lauren Bacall; Sal Mineo; Roddy McDowall
John Keats’ ‘Posthumous existence’ All the ways of being a ghost, he’s found them lying in his path: orphaned, love-lost, mouse-poor, unknown, terminally ill, far from home, occasional blood in his mouth. And when they hand him the roses, autumn roses gathered for him by a stranger, they have no scent and seem fake, as if already he can no longer smell his own life. He’s heading north, in a carriage full of flowers picked by the road. As though rehearsing what’s to come, his friend walks slowly alongside its suffocating little room.
Oscar’s apologia for his Lives
Soon each orifice will explode.
My biographers will note that,
and also when I bit my hand
standing outside a pastry shop,
hungry and mouse-poor in Paris.
Forgive the touches of pathos
and grotesquerie writers make
of my adventures these last years;
they need pepper to season them
and tears to salt my final act.
Yes, men have stared, pointed at me
accusingly for so long now,
I have become my own last play;
a melodrama, perhaps, but
with such a charming leading man.
I play a beggar, cap in hand
held out for notoriety,
praise, fame; most abjectly – it seems
the scribblers want to say – for love
of one incapable of love.
The heart is a bit of a dog,
I think, all too readily
wagging its tail but loyal, too,
once it finds a master, a home
to give and give itself away.
Mine wagged its tail and I found out
how capable I was of being
recklessly, gloriously alive.
And selfish, I admit. But tell me,
why would they have it otherwise?
Scribblers put us on pedestals
and perpetrate idolatries.
Such treasons cannot have enough
enjoyment of the good times,
of spicy downfalls to disgrace.
My farewell after bitter scenes,
trying to keep some dignity
in the gutter – an achievement
I hesitate to recommend –
was the best scene I never wrote.