There’s a new poem below. I don’t tend to like explaining poems, but I do appreciate a bit of context.

Like many others I suspect, not least in the USA itself, I feel profoundly shaken by recent events there.

When I was six, I discovered Charlie Brown cartoons, encouraged by an American exchange student assistant at my primary school. She sent me a Peanuts stationery set from home after she returned. As a student, my degree was English and American studies. Part of my course involved studying for a semester at The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. For around a decade and a half after that, I’d regularly visit to explore different cities, national parks and to walk a section of the Appalachian Trail. Nowadays, I barely recognise the place.

Unamerican

What I liked about America 
as an English boy, was Charlie Brown, 
the idea of a diner, in a one-horse town: 
single main street, hardly changed since 
first plotted, like a Western. What I liked 
was an Art Deco movie theatre, 
Downer Avenue, Milwaukee – 
cinema as temple. What I liked was 
‘kick-ass’ girls, who said exactly 
what they thought. 

What I used to like about America 
was Jim Hazzard, remarking ‘Isn’t that 
a poem?’ his stare lost through window, 
as he chewed on a line from a magic realist 
baseball story. What I liked was trees. Walking 
trails in northern forests, or stepping inside 
Muir Woods, California, dwarfed by old growth 
coast redwoods. I liked a graphic Parks Dept. 
poster of Yosemite: sequoias, centuries-grown 
silhouettes. What I liked was hearing 

Tarnation in a café, somewhere 
San Francisco, mournful, epic. 
Sounds more succulent, than the free 
refills of coffee. What I liked was stores 
in shacks, crammed with record racks, 
where for $1.99 you might pull treasure: Cold 
Fact by Sixto Rodriguez, or There’s A Riot 
Going On. I liked Gray’s Papaya, 
on a Manhattan corner, gulping down 
three hot dogs, fuel for getting lost 

beneath the shelves at Strand 
Bookstore, taking in a view of the Flat Iron 
from the very angle Stieglitz had, 
only, with a younger cast. What I liked 
was being gripped by Trout Fishing 
in America. Free to wonder what 
Brautigan really meant. What I liked was 
promise. What I liked was scale. 
And mostly, that it all made sense. 
I was young. Now I am not so sure.