Words to Uncle Sam By Patrick Henry

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An Englishman in America can meet very mixed kinds of reception. Cultural differences he presents might arouse fascination or reverence from the natives, but acceptance that he holds superiority in Anglo-Saxon language and civilised values can be outweighed by scornful dismissal of such notions. A lady on a bus in The South told me in a manner worthy of Blanche Dubois that she had been unaware her language was spoken in that little old European country, England. But now hearing it had happened only since the time of Chaucer, six centuries ago, replied that in Arkansas one had always spoken English.

Being educated in American Studies and having the name of their great Independence hero who demanded Give me Liberty.. has never guaranteed me a specially warm welcome in the U.S over several visits. Being of Irish descent and Yorkshire upbringing serves only to cause more suspicion. A limey is a limey is a limey can be the unspoken verdict in the eyes of many, from a Boston literary hostess to a Harlem bouncer or cabbie.

This time I was making a poetry and art exhibition tour arranged by a New York internet magazine in that State's Catskill Mountains. When we crossed the Hudson River by Rip Van Winkle Bridge, I sensed a bizarre perspective on reasons for propelling me here. An ageing, white-bearded English subject, dreaming poetically for decades until a rude awakening amidst revolutionary U.S. Independence to find his anachronistic allegiances now viewed as treachery! Washington Irvine set his famous story here in The Catskills, had it now been rescripted here for myself?

My paintings were to be exhibited mostly in the rural Bank of Greene County, where potential customers would at least be holding money, if no great feeling for art. Between literary events I lodged in an old weather-boarded house by Catskill Creek, whose swollen waters gurgled derisive amusement at my predicament night-long as I fretted over what tomorrow would bring in this strange land. Daytimes I framed my pictures in an old lean-to shed. Time stretched long in this hamlet devoid of shops, pubs or much glimpse of humans. Vehicles sped by, windshields blanked by sun.

The first poetry evening opened at Conkling Hall, an elegant eighteenth century meeting house recently restored. Some of my paintings were displayed on the stage, from where I read, as well as my own work, the American Philip Freneau's poem about George III lamenting the loss of his transatlantic colonies. A pianist played patriotic British tunes behind me. Cast as Rip Van Winkle one minute, and then his beloved lost mad monarch soon after, might make me seem dramatically upwardly mobile, but felt ludicrous. The refined, elderly audience seemed astonished but impressed.

A further half-dozen poetry events unfolded over the next fortnight in village libraries and bookshops. They included poetry and art workshops for children, and sometimes featured my talks on Wallace Stevens, on uses of Persona in literature, and on creating poems and paintings from travel experience. My own verse reading always formed the main element.

Once I joined in with a poetry group at a bookshop in the state capital city, Albany, no Manhattan, but a fine river port of brownstone houses. A bearded, Beat-Generation style poet and teacher chaired the proceedings in wry satirical vein. Participants included a macho truck-driver, a comic, obese Jewish gay, a Kafkaesque born-again Christian hippy whose Armageddonish menace might be tongue-in-cheek, or maybe not; and several Blacks of various sexes whose work ranged from scatty Hip-Hop to lyrical dreaminess. Performing my poem about Woody Guthrie went down well. It had scored somewhat at more genteel gatherings, but here was right on the money.

Some funding support for my visit came through local businesses and meant collecting drafts with my editors, or minders, in their huge old Chevrolet and then cashing in at that bank where my paintings still stared at us from the walls with Impressionistic panache over the solemn counting of money. The Daily Bank Job, I called it. Once a local Arts Convener phoned in to tell us we were intruding on his territory, On the Waterfront menace loaded his gruff tone. In the U.S even culture proceeds like a racy chapter in Damon Runyon.

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