POETRY IN EMOTION
SPFL’s first poet in residence using verse to open doors long closed after it delivers fitting tribute to Saints legend Coburn
the steel tube, the barrier chest height, big people behind me buzzing in the restless wait the pitch close enough to smell the damp air of expectation close enough to cling on to the Saints in Europe SV Hamburg, SV Muirton we would see legends that night we’ d be in the presence of legends did we know then? they’ d shape our memories placing bookmarks into the fold of scarves into faded programmes into dog eared stories into the ears of our children
Jim Mackintosh’s beautiful, evocative intro to The Apostle’s Tale, a tribute written at the passing of a St Johnstone legend in Willie Coburn.
The story of the key to being a true fan not just at his club, at any club – the ability to recite the names of men for whom history is written in their deeds.
And the reason why Mackintosh ended up being the first poet in residence at a Scottish professional club at all.
“I know,” he laughed. “Poetry, eh? Most people are probably thinking of the misery of double English on a wet Tuesday afternoon in high school at the mention of it.”
Instead of that misery the 57-year-old is embracing the art’s relationship with the game he loves, bringing them together for a project to harness the power of both to benefit dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers across Scotland.
Mind The Time is more than a book of football poetry – it’s a 194-page treasure trove that will raise funds for Football Memories, a fantastic programme using the national sport to unlock doors into the minds of men and women that may have been closed for years.
In more than 120 groups across the country volunteers work with images from bygone days to tease out responses from the unresponsive, delving into the recesses of their memories to rekindle a fire from the smallest of flickering embers.
Mackintosh said: “Poetry has been around football for a long time, even the unconscious poets on the terraces. The language is there.
“There are very few who are tied directly to clubs. Ian McMillan of the BBC is the poet in residence at Barnsley and Yorkshire Cricket Club.
“In Scotland there are three of us – a guy cal led Thomas Clark down at Selkirk, I came along as the first tied to a professional club – which was remarkable that it took until 2016 to do that – and the third is Stephen Watt at Dumbarton.
“It started when I wrote a poem William McGonagall would have been proud of in the wake of St Johnstone’s Cup win in 2014.
“I then wrote another one about our trip to Lucerne in the Europa League on the plane coming back.
“Both were well-received by the team and the squad.
“We all had a bit of a laugh about it – just this daft supporter writing stuff.
“Then Willie Coburn passed away. Willie was the left-back in the Willie Ormond boys’ team and was latterly the caretaker of the all-weather pitches at McDiarmid Park. He’d been involved with the club for 55 years. “And I got a phone call asking me if I’d write a piece to mark his passing, which was a hellish difficult thing to write. You don’t want it to be an obituary. “I don’t like the use of the phrase celebration much either but I wrote this thing called The Apostle’s Tale – which I’ve squeezed into the book – and it’s essentially about the code of being a true St Johnstone fan, being able to rattle off Ormond’s team from the League Cup Final and it starts
‘ Donaldson, Lambie, Coburn...’ It went down very well, to the point where the family kindly included it in Willie’s book of memories.
“If I never write another poem I’ll always believe that kind of thing matters more.”
The conversations that followed formalised Mackintosh, who lives a decent Steven Anderson clearance f rom McDiarmid, as the club’s poet in residence.
In doing so it set in motion a chain of events that will bring him to the Scottish Footbal l Museum at Hampden on Wednesday to formally launch the collection of work he edited.
He said: “Mind The Time, which is the name of the book, is a poem I wrote for the Saints Hall of Fame dinner and was my public unveiling
“It took seven minutes to perform but seven weeks to write and to a certain extent a lifetime to create.
“I was writing poetry in my teens and watching St Johnstone even earlier. I saw my first game in 1965.
“But I got a copy of the poem signed by all the players and the legends and took it to a guy called Stewart Walker, who was the St Johnstone fan who had a heart attack at Pittodrie last February and had his life saved by the paramedics at the ground.
“It turned out Stewart worked for the Football Memories group based at Saints and he asked if I fancied writing a poem or two for them or doing Mind The Time for them. The sad thing about it was he said to me, ‘ Jim, you could read the same poem every week…’
“And that hit home what it was all about so I gave him a better idea.
“Why don’t I put the shout out to my contemporaries across Scotland – my fellow poets – and ask for any football poems they could donate to a wee pamphlet for the Football Memories group.
“And it turned into an even better idea. Thomas came back with a bunch of poems, Stephen did and then of course through Twitter and Facebook and all that nonsense it grew arms and legs. I got up to about 40 or 50 poems and began to wonder how I’d get it published. At which point I called in my connection with Ally Pa lme r o f Nutmeg mag az i ne , which is a qua lity periodical on Scottish football. And we’re putting the book in the same format as Nutmeg.
“Ally has generously donated his time to produce it, the printers gave us a good discount so as much money as we can make goes to the cause.”
Mackintosh was overwhelmed by the response to his appeal with something in the book that will appeal to the depth of everyone’s football soul.
There’s work on legends of the game, poignantly on the likes of Billy McNeill whose family recently went public on the battle the Celtic colossus faces with dementia himself.
There’s a brutally acerbic take on the failures of the 1978 World Cup campaign,
a deeply personal account of the transition from man to woman and how the love of football played its part in the author’s life.
He said: “One or two just emailed poems more in hope than anything else.
“An emai l said, ‘ My father had vascular dementia and I like what you’re doing’. And I liked the fact they sent it so it’s going in the book.
“What did we ask for? It’s kind of the principle of what the Football Memories groups are about – triggering memory.
“Give me a poem about the golden years and what they are to you. It could be last week, last year, last century – it’s entirely subjective.
“There are poems about Willie Bauld from Hearts, about Davie Cooper, Denis Law, about the day Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev was at Rugby Park, poems about going to the football with your dad, about the first games you saw under floodlights.
“Maybe someone will read that poem or look at the picture that goes with it in the book and it’ll spark something in them about a night-time game they saw and prompt a discussion.
“First and foremost we want to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s, of Football Memories Scotland and what it does.
“And if we get a few more people going to that because it’ ll help, we’ve done something positive.
“Even collecting the poetry has done that because everyone bar none has said they knew someone who had suffered with it.
“At the end of the day it’s 10 quid. We hope you enjoy it, we hope the poetry speaks to you. But even if you never read it you’re giving money to a good cause.” ● You can buy Mind The Time online at nutmegmagazine.co.uk/shop Proceeds go to Footbal l Memories Scotland.
Poetry has been around football for a long time, even the unconscious poets on the terraces. The language is there