7. Philip Dawson Hammond
A lifetime of writing... An individual voice.
Philip Dawson-Hammond was born in 1959, in the industrial mill-town of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
The son of a shopkeeper, Philip was educated at Highfield Grammar School in Wakefield, and later at Leeds College of Technology, where he qualified as a machine printer.
He spent over thirty years working in local newspapers, both on production and in an editorial capacity as a regular columnist and feature writer for a series of provincial titles.
Since starting to write at the age of sixteen, Philip has developed a style of his own, covering a rich variation of subject matter, which he feels has resulted in the discovering of his own individual voice within the diversity of modern verse.
Philip is married with one grown-up son, and now lives with Cathy, his wife of ten years, in Sprotbrough, South Yorkshire.
The poetry here is taken from his recent collection Six, published by Fool’s wisdom in 2024
Poems
On the Retirement of a Lighthouse Keeper Guide St Sepulchre Gate, Doncaster 2023 Sonnet for a Dead Lover Silver Cross An Ode to Johnny Cash
On The Retirement of a Lighthouse Keeper
Once - They called me keeper of the light Lord of the night shift And guardian of the Seas. I - Knew each star and distance between From this rock, this anchorage My outcrop republic. A - Descendant of the Candlestick maker Now too departed. Not - Of those who come By road and over land Bringing darkness of their own For - Which there is no light. Now - No longer to eat at this small table Or watch the world And reassuring curvature at the horizon. Still - I see from shore The lantern still burning A beacon for a life once lived In - A world still turning. <<<
Guide
But for good fortune I will never need you, nor your kind. I do not know your name Or where you go And places you have been Since first we met. Then, on the street I would not pay A second glance with thoughts of you When there's no reason, I could think of, that I should! Your presence, be it known and understood So unassuming with each measured step and stride On calculating speed and distance seen Leading not ahead, but from the side. And now you guide me too In such a moving way, that I see your face to comprehend This truth in what you came alive to be With smiles reflected in your master's eyes As though a candle burning in the darkest place. I see you in a new and different light My head is turned And heart no longer blind. <<<
St. Sepulchre Gate, Doncaster 2023
Sunday morning, eight o’clock, St. Sepulchre Gate – calling: Any spare change, mate, for a cup-a-tea? As I turn and walk on by…. Where dewdrops on the doorsteps catch a shaft of morning sunlight With sadness as it flickers in the gutter down the street Then rain comes down like tears to stain the faces of the old ones ‘Till Winter comes like boulders turning water into ice As I turn and walk on by…. Then someone shouts with anger overflowing like the dustbins Littering the lives of those strewn out along the way And the cackle of a young girl’s voice then cracks an awkward silence Amidst the wheezing cheers breaking out to greet the day Their knowing faces mock those passing, defiant in their longing Survivors of the cold night, but there’s one more on the way And they who know, but do not tell, take pleasure in their secret To wonder at our wondering, where do we all belong? As I turn and walk on by…. But the Frenchgate Centre’s closed to those who hang-out round the doorway For Greggs’ free milk and sugar in a cardboard Holy Grail And sleeping bags unmade like shrouds before the Resurrection Untouched by human conscience in full view of those who cared. Could this, our new Jerusalem, be city of redemption? Flinging wide the open gates as in the Crucifixion* Standing by the shopping centre, waiting for the Saviour Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There’s one in every town! Where they turn and walk on by….
* Fling wide the gates, for the Saviour waits to tread in his royal way. (The Crucifixion by John Stainer 1840 – 1901) <<<
Sonnet for a Dead Lover
Come friendly ghost and walk with me once more And speak in tongues that wake me from my sleep Then lay with me again between the strands Of day and night that one time paved our way. When from the void, a voice so often heard Still resonates across that great divide Eclipsed, elusive in the maddening crowd Reminds me of those words we used to say. Now I am waiting, woken by the storm That drifts across my skin as though your hand Is touching intimately as I rise In vapour trails across a cloudless sky. Today, together on this breathless wind That blows the ghosts of yesterday away. <<<
Silver Cross
It stood seven years in the hallway I would marvel at its plush blue hood And chrome spoked wheels - Streamlined as a racing car Great suspension too - Better than my best-ever Corgi. With maker’s name displayed In relief script typeface Proudly - As you would expect of a Ferrari. I wondered why it was still here Perhaps in waiting For that little brother or sister That never happened! After all - I could think of no other reason For it still being here In the hallway And why it had such pride-of-place When it was clearly In-the-way. Until, one day, it disappeared Along with my father With no words of explanation From Mother. Little did I realise then It was to have been my very first Own set of wheels And my last! <<<
An Ode to Johnny Cash
He held an old guitar like a sword hung from his side Challenging the Devil at his back As he wiped away the demons from his brow and from his face And spoke in fifty thousand shades of black Then as the world fell silent when the final curtain fell And a tear stained the stage on which he stood His voice became an echo like a train upon the track That’s never stopping, never turning back Then he waved a ragged flag and laid a bottle down At the weary feet of drunken Ira Hayes For the child became a man once of the soil and this great land None working man could ever understand From Arkansas to Memphis where the river runs on When still it has a long, long way to go From cotton fields to Nashville and the Midnight Jamboree Radio and the Grand Ole Opry show The truth though still uncertain, we’re told is partly fiction Still resonating through our troubled soul No backstage pass to trade in for a Willie Nelson show And he still don’t care to see Ruby fall For Chattanooga’s changing just like any other place But still I guess the song remains the same For bootleggers and broken hearts, Rocky Top and teenage queens Where men in black still walk the line of dreams. <<<