My name is Tony Keating. My family moved to London from Kanturk in North Cork in the 1950s, and I was born and brought up in Lady Somerset Rd and Leighton Rd.
Fast forward forty years and here are three poems from my first poetry collection, The Ghost Orchard, published by the Swan Press in Dublin, which contains a large number of poems with a Kentish Town theme.
And as for now? I live in exile in Lancashire.
N.W.5
Home 25 years on,
Meeting myself for a quiet drink,
I am as I was.
Whatever else has changed.
I map the sanctuary of my old haunt,
-The Bull and Gate-
With emergent eyes,
The fittings and faces have aged
But occupy the same space.
A virus of memory situates past and present.
I am yesterday in the corner,
A speck of the history
Without which this cannot exist.
The shadow of Christmas past
Who resents being a tourist on his own turf,
But things are as they are,
I want my dust to lodge in a crevice
On Kentish Town Road,
Where my dust belongs.
The Junction Tavern
Embossed, tobacco stained
Magnolia paper
Peeling off the walls.
Red cracked lino,
Scattered tables with bentwood chairs,
Newspapers, betting slips and pencil stubs.
A conspiracy of Caribbeans and Celts
Playing dominoes and cards
In an edgy stillness.
The silence and muttered words
Occasionally rocked by shouts,
Bricks slammed on tables,
A flurry of abuse
For misplayed trumps or dots,
Choreographed aggression
And occasionally a fist,
Until stillness settled once again
To the sucking of teeth and clearing of phlegm.
Out there the ‘60s was happening
In the Junction nothing changed.
They re-emerge in my memory
Through a fog of smoke, beer and piss.
Scully, O’Gorman, O’ Driscoll,
Jamaican George and Welsh John
In their collars and ties.
On Sunday morning their Sunday best:
For protocol had to be observed
To honour the utilitarian pleasures of the working man.
Eavesdropping in a chip shop
His disregard for her is structural,
Not the transitory disregard of the bad day
Or the hurt snipping of terrible news,
But the fruiting head
Of a lifetime of disregard,
Sneering and contemptuous,
Unleashed in the private parts of the day,
When he believes no audience is on hand
To hear his fawning, passive, coos,
Those choreographed kindnesses
For which she must feign delight,
Those moments of respite
She knows to be only public deep.
6 thoughts on “‘Out there the ‘60s was happening. In The Junction nothing changed’”
Tony these are lovely, bringing it all alive I love it thank you,
Thanks Louisa, It’s lovely to get your feedback, I was so lucky to have been brought up in Kentish Town and I’m so pleased you find the poems so evocative. I love the energy of Kentish Town today as well as remembering its past very fondly.
what the hell! I live in Lady Somerset Road and I’m about to move to Leighton Road and I love/ used to write poetry! coinkydink or what.
I massively love these words – going to share them far and wide 🙂
Thank you so much Laura, I went from 15 Lady Somerset Rd to Kenbrook House and then back to 15 Lady Somerset. I hope the move goes well!
Tony, as a contemporary of yours I find N.W.5 and Junction Tavern evocative of the past and descriptive of my present relationship with the Town. Whatever happened to ‘Sunday best’? Will seek out more of your work.
Thanks for the comment Paul. I often have a pint in The Junction when I’m home and I am very much in the company of the ghosts of those men in their Sunday best! Take care, Tony.