Vers Idiotique Eleven
by
Victor Adereth & Andrew Seear
London & New York, 2012
Contents
Preface by Sir Corbet Woodall
Report From The 2012 Seoul Conference
On Dietary Illnesses In Horses 1
Northampton: Where Sibelius Went Wrong 2
An Advertisement For War 3
Desire 4
The Silence 6
Evening Bells 7
The Excursion 8
Concerning Idaho 10
The Ballad Of Joseph Smith 11
Things People Did 14
Freedom & Liberty 16
The Beach 18
Things We Learn 20
Welcome to Sweden!
Välkommen Till Sverige 23
En Älskare Reser Norru 25
Here’s… Johan! 26
Möjligheter för alla I den svenska flimbranschen! 28
Trevligt Att Träffas! 30
Pain Without Ceiling, Men With No Feeling 32
In Violation Of Norms 34
The Courage of Thomas J. Underwood 37
The Ballad Of Steve Jobs And Lief Ericsson 40
A Swedish Lullaby 43
Taking An Interest 46
Aquatic Absolute 47
Oxenstierna Faces Down The Pessimi Exempli 48
Dear Mary: Your
Problems Solved 50
Letters to The Daily Telegraph 56
Preface
by Sir Corbet Woodall
Former BBC Newsreader and Author ofThis Is Sir Corbet Woodall And Here Is The News In Heroic Couplets
Victor Adereth vigorously maintains an address in East
Ham, despite the devastation wrought by the Olympic Games. “Three months after
the Olympic Flame was extinguished armed policemen on horseback are still
demanding to see my passport,” he told James Naughtie during the November 15th
edition of Today, the popular
early-morning Radio 4 news programme. When Naughtie himself added that the
Paralympic Games, which followed on directly after the Olympics proper, had
“granted the civil authority unprecedented powers of search, arrest, detention,
torture and summary execution,” listeners were perturbed to hear what was later
understood to be riot police entering the studio and arresting Adereth and
Naughtie amid sustained gunfire. When Naughtie was returned to his duties the
next morning he assured listeners that the police had been obliged to discharge
their automatic weapons and percussion grenades simply to restore order. He
thanked them for responding so promptly to the emergency call he had put in
when the interview with Adereth had become a threat to the safety of listeners.
Adereth was attacked three days later in The Mandarin
Palace, Gants Hill, by a young man armed with a shoulder-mounted water-canon
who identified himself as Leslie Thruxton, a former pupil of Adereth’s who
chanced to be in the restaurant that evening. Recognising his old teacher, he seized
the opportunity to wheel his 3000-gallon water compressor over to Adereth’s
table and “take him for a bit of a hop, skip and a jump down Memory Lane”. When
he was asked by reporters if he remembered Thruxton, Adereth replied, “I
remember Leslie as petite and rather shy—and she didn’t have a beard when I was
helping her to an appreciation of Sir John Suckling. Mind you, that was twenty
years ago.”
At the turn of the New Year, as the nation was crossing
the Tropic of Capricorn—I speak in electoral rather than nautical terms—Andrew Seear
lifted his political telescope to his already somewhat jaundiced eye and
watched November 6th drop down nearside from the horizon and hoist her
mainsail. The two-year electoral voyage had become a lethal drudgery for Seear
long before 2012 appeared, came about and fired a broadside that left USS Common Sense in a burning and
sinking condition. He felt he had no option but to go over the rail and let the
Ship of Fools sail on without him.
As early as mid-February an op-ed intended for publication
in The New York Times sounded an ominous note: “As we contemplate the field of Republican
hopefuls as a representative group, or herd, we are not only entitled but obliged
to feel a deepening concern for the future of the GOP. When we consider in
particular Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, the vital supporting trio
of Candidates Without A Chance, do we not have a responsibility to—at the very
least—question our faith in American democracy? But when we gaze into the dark,
dead world that waits behind the beseeching vacancy of Mitt Romney’s eyes, I
believe we owe it to our shared humanity to stop for a moment, take a breath,
and utter—I mean ask out loud—the most serious question in the world: If we all die, who will mourn for us? Romney
faces us as from some dreadful Easter Island of our common soul and we turn
away, terrified and humiliated by the sudden realisation that we
don’t matter."
Never a substantial presence wherever he happens to
be, Seear seemed during that short and painful spring to hang and fade on the
air like an uncertain memory of a building that you feel sure was there once
but can’t quite visualise. Then he was gone. Hot spring gave way to the hottest
summer in recorded history, prospective candidates slithered painfully out of
the delirium of debate like frogs off a frying-pan, and in the end there was
just Romney. Many readers felt that Seear’s reclusive mistress, the poet
Mishkin, had no right to indulge his withdrawal and that her first duty, like
his, should have been to them and not to him. His agent, Sam Yodel, is a notorious
Buddhist who maintains and demands strict silence from his colleagues,
employees and clients in and out of his office when he observes the practise of
Sudoku from May to November. And Adereth
was of course unhelpful as a point of principle when he wasn't being harassed,
arrested and detained at the pleasure of George Osborne et al.
The poet Bashō says crystals never form in turbulent
waters, that butterflies never fly in thunderstorms, and that flowers fail to
thrive on the field of battle. But we know better. Armed policemen galloped the streets of East
Ham and Hurricane Sandy hurled the ocean at New York. The Spice Girls reformed
and The Reverend Billy Graham prayed for a thunderbolt to strike down Dan
Savage. The combined might of George Osborne, Mitt Romney, Rupert Murdoch, John
Sununu, Mrs. Rupert Murdoch, the late Sir Jimmy Savile OBE, Donald Trump,
Kenneth Branagh, Hank Williams Jr., Tony Blair, Eric Idle, Rush Limbaugh, Ted
Nugent, Russell Brand, Ann Coulter, John McCain, Lionel Asbo, Mark Thompson and
Coldplay conspired to silence the roaring pens of Adereth and Seear, but here
they are as ever, clearing their throats to deliver more bad news.
These are desperate poems, written by, for and on the
run from desperate men and women. This is traditionally a time of peace and
goodwill, but these are not traditional poems. These poems acknowledge the crucial
difference between mercy and kindness—and their authors know, crucially, the
value and the worthlessness of each in unforgivable times.
