The 'City of Culture 2017' bid supporting poem...

I was asked... As it generally falls to me, in the absence of a 'Laureate' poet for the city, to deal with any 'municipal' poetry required by the City of Plymouth; to write a poem to support the bid...

Here it is - and is entitled: 'Art & Artifice..'

‘Art & Artifice..’

In the kiln’s wild, white infernos; molt glass fishes dart and swim,
Artifice in crystal magics, weaving spells in fire and air;
Hissing hot as Satan’s anvil, waiting on the blower’s whim,
Art in waiting, to its forming, birthed in every flash and flare;
All in sight of Devon’s doorway, close upon the Cornish shore,
Clear as rain and hard as granite, born of sand and fire and ore.

From imagination’s cauldron; tin and tallow, iron and lead,
Father, son and Holy Spirit, bend the sculptor’s sacred art;
Alchemists of fire and metal, ‘bove the quayside’s sound swept bed,
Land and sea in fierce amalgam, Kraken with a copper heart;
Stands aguard the basin’s gateway, steeled against the surging tides,
Sentinel to Plymouth’s heartland, Barbican and Cattedown rides.

Pole and palette, mop and mottler, thieves of light and secret hues,
Dance in hands that sensual massage, board and canvas, tramp and king;
Stealing rainbows from the heavens, chrome spat yellows, greys and blues,
Visions born in paint and pastel, dreamed to give our spirits wing;
Hail Sir Joshua, grand and master, Lenkiewicz and Beryl Cook,
Each and all illuminating, Plymouth’s oak bound hist’ry book.

All upon the stains and splinters, strutting bold upon the boards,
Master tellers of our fortunes, stealing into hearts and minds;
Songs sung rich and mediaeval, songs of ploughshares, shades and swords,
Act and actor interwoven, smoke and mirrors; spelling binds;
Grand and Globe and Drum and Palace, Laud the ‘Royal’ one two three,
Each their hour to strut and posture, echo their soliloquy,

On the wheel in earth and water, thumb line deep in living clay,
Slip and fettle, trip and treadle, magic in the thrower’s hands;
From the mind’s eye into being, in a wetly played ballet,
Sorcerers in earths and ashes, raising arts to their commands;
Mighty metals, tins and sulphurs, clothe with cloaks of vibrant glaze,
Taint the air with smokes and humours, Cloaks the Ope with sting eye haze.

Half a thousand years the making, quenched in fire and seething brine,
Craft and craftsman, guild and gilder, art and artists came they here;
To this Mother; step and foster; drew they each of one design,
That their guile, in wood and iron, free be cast from debt or fear;
Old as sin and hard as granite, waits our mistress to be queen,
Plymouth City, well of culture, crowned in twenty seventeen...

Did you like it? Do you think it will help our bid? Do you think Plymouth needs a Poet Laureate of its own if it is to aspire to become 'City of Culture 2017'?

Feel free to add YOUR opinion...