Gerald Kells has lived in Walsall for forty years and is very proud of his adopted town.
He’s worked with Friends of the Earth and the Campaign to Protect Rural England as a
countryside campaigner, but all the time he’s also been writing. I caught up with him to
ask him about his poetry.

How did you get into poetry?
It goes right back to when I was a teenager in an Evangelical Church Group and we all
took part in services. I couldn’t play guitar or sing so I wrote poetry. I was performing
right from the beginning.

Later on, I tried my hand at writing books and plays, and even got some performed, but
all the time my heart was in poetry. I would write it without ever sharing much.
A couple of years ago I started going to poetry readings again, with my good friend,
Carole Howard, a wonderfully sensitive writer who sadly passed away. It was a tough timefor me, as my mum was very ill but it inspired some new poems and I found the
confidence to read them.

What inspires the poetry you write?
It’s a bit of everything. Sometimes it’s political or satirical, sometimes it’s about nature,
sometimes it’s personal. Funny is the most difficult. I also like writing about Art. It
started when I went round Art Galleries. I found I would look at the pictures and not
linger and, if I was with anyone, would have time on my hands at the end so I’d go back
and pick a picture and use poetry to help me look at it properly. There are so many bits
in pictures we never really see, even famous ones.

It led to a joint project with the Walsall Art Gallery and their People’s Collection. David
Calcutt and I got some people together and we wrote about the pictures and did a
reading. More recently I’ve been involved in PoArtry, an exhibition in May 2019 in the
General Office Art Gallery.It was great to work with Fran Wilde and to produce some poems based on her wonderfuletchings, which we compiled into a leaflet.

The other thing that inspires me is thinking about what life’s for. I know that sounds
pretentious but I spent a lot of time in the Church and I still muse on what we’re here forand why and whether there’s any justice and what justice and love and hope really mean.

How Does Your Environmental Work Influence Your Poetry?
I’m sometimes sitting in a meeting and I’ll write something down. ‘On the Running of
Hares’ in my first compilation, ‘LI’, was inspired by hearing someone saying: ‘We don’t
want to start any hares running…’ and knowing that, behind the scenes, his organisation
was working away on promoting new roads, which would damage the environment.
But, mostly it’s more subtle than that. I’m inspired when I’m in the Lake District or the
Mourne Mountains or just walking round Walsall. The Arboretum is one place that is
always changing and always inspiring.

Good poetry makes people value what they’ve got.

Is Poetry relevant? If so, why?
I think it has a place which is important. It can’t change the world, I know that, but it canhelp us think about Society and find our way in it. Sometimes a poem can also put a
mirror up to things that are wrong in the world. People will listen to poetry and have
their views challenged without realising it. They don’t turn off to the ‘other side of the
argument’ as they do with the News.

Is performing your poetry important to you?
I’m not a Performance Poet but I enjoy reading my poetry. I like to learn some short
pieces to relax me when I read, but I can’t learn screeds. I had a theatre group in the
1980s and acted, but I hated learning lines and often forgot them. So, I stopped
performing.
I always think of my poetry as having its own voice, even if it will end up on the page.
What will it sound like? How will the words play off one another? I guess I’m not modern.
If anything, I’m an old-fashioned lyric poet pretending to be contemporary.

Where can we get hold of your work?
I’ve published two poetry books, my first collection, ‘LI - Fifty-One Poems’, and ‘Nine
Etchings’, which is the Art-Poetry collaboration. Both are published via Lulu and available
on line or at readings. I also published my Young Adult adventure book: ‘The Net
Mender’s Son’ through Smashwords as an on-line e-book.

And are those selling well?
I’m told Donald Trump has a copy. He wrote to me to ask why it didn’t include the poem
about us meeting up on the bus? I told him he’d have to come to one of my readings to
hear it. He hasn’t replied, but perhaps during the next State Visit…?