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poetry

Dean’s first collection on the streets…

Sometimes I'm So Happy I'm Not Safe On The Streets. Published by Wrecking Ball Press.

Dean Wilson’s first collection of poetry was going to be called Confessions of a Redundant Postman.  I do hope such trivia will turn up in a pub quiz one day – and not just in Hull but elsewhere, as Dean’s legend spreads far and wide and way beyond the city. As it is, the much more satisfyingly oddball Sometimes I’m So Happy I’m Not Safe On The Streets (taken from a line in the poet’s Away With The Fairies) is emblazoned on the cover, atop the body, as is Dean’s wont, of a hairy, tattooed man.

Those that have seen Dean perform have been eagerly awaiting this publication for a while (who wouldn’t want a piece of him?). Those that have neither seen him, nor heard of him, better brace themselves. The 62 pages of Sometimes I’m So Happy I’m Not Safe On The Streets’ are packed with an onslaught of absolute gems. Some of the poems within may shock the faint of heart, and other readers may not be ready for Bare Hands, Peer of the Realm and other honest slices of Dean’s life. But Dean’s world and body of work are to be embraced, should be embraced and will be embraced.

These 51 pieces of literary genius will make you laugh, cry, take deep breaths and doubt their veracity. But these are very real poems from a very unique voice. And, even though you may never have heard his nervy vocal stylings, nor laughed at his on-off moustache, or marveled at his recollections of what happened on his way to the Whalebone public house, you will be left with an absolute sense of the man. At his best, which is often, Dean simultaneously moves and induces hilarity.  Sometimes I’m So Happy… is the totally accessible, highly entertaining, utterly superb collection of a superstar.

One day, and one day soon methinks, the world will know of How D’Ya Like Your Eggs in the Morning?, visitor numbers to Bridlington will have dramatically declined thanks to Day Out and Never Stand On A Deckchair will be recited daily by every child on the planet. Every child on the planet.

When I picked up my copy of Sometimes I’m So Happy…  from the offices of publishers Wrecking Ball Press, the exchange was accompanied by the comment “all the hits are in there.” Which they are. Wondering what your life’s been missing? Get yourself a copy right now (an absolute snip at a tenner).

Read five poems by Dean Wilson on the Morning Star’s website.

 

Supply & Demand…

Here’s a jolly little poem for you on a Friday afternoon, ’bout a corner of Hull, along with an attractive image of said corner. Have a nice weekend.

Waterhouse Lane

Supply & Demand

She was standing under the streetlight

No idea who Septimus Bromby was

And no desire to wade through some early 19th century census

To find out the name of the pub he ran.

No desire to be here, either

Standing under the streetlight

Of one of the city’s most famous streets

Built on a demand for fresh water

Giving those of a different era

What they wanted

Long before sewage

Flowed through here

Cash in hand.

Sit quietly…

“If you have time to chatter,
Read books.

If you have time to read,
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.

If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance.

If you have time to dance,
Sit quietly, you happy, lucky idiot.”

Nanao Sakaki