The Almondburian Poets

THISpoem, unusually erudite for a second-former, appeared in The Almondburian in December 1942. We shall never know why D Hardy was especially inspired to compose a poem evoking the memory of John Oxenham; perhaps it was no more that he had noticed that Oxenham had recently died and felt that a suitable tribute should appear in his school magazine. The reference to sand appears in Oxenham’s seminal book The Coil of Carne describing the view from the House of Carne: ‘As far as eye can reach--sand, nothing but sand, overpowering by reason of its immensity, a very Sahara of the coast.’

John Oxenham was in fact the pen-name of the journalist, author and poet William Arthur Dunkerley; as a journalist he also used the name Julian Ross. Born in Manchester in 1852, he later moved to Ealing, where he was deacon and teacher at the Ealing Congregational Church from the 1880s. In 1922 he moved to Worthing in Sussex, where he became the town’s mayor.

In addition to his poetry, Oxenham wrote over 40 novels and short stories, one of the most successful in its day being A Mystery of the Underground (1897), a murder story about a serial killer on the District Line of the London Underground. It led to complaints from the railway company that is was ‘too realistic’, and had led a reduction of passengers on Tuesdays, the days on which the murderer always struck.

A S-A-N-D-Y ODE

(with apologies to John Oxenham)

Yes, it’s sand in the barracks and sand in the houses, Sand in your caps and sand in your blouses, Sand in your ears and sand in your nose, Sand in your pockets and sand in your clothes, Sand in your stockings and sand in your nails, Sand in the washtubs and sand in the pails, There’s sand in the pots and sand in the pans, Sand in the water and sand in the cans, Sand in the jam and sand in the bread, You can’t get rid of it, even in bed, There’s sand in your watches and sand in the store, Sand overhead and sand on the floor,

Wherever you go there’s always some sand.

There’s sand everywhere in this sandy old land.

There’s sand in the pound notes that sometimes you spend, But this sandy old poem is now at its end.

D Hardy (2 alpha) l We know relatively little about Moldgreen-born Derrick Hardy apart from the fact that he attended Almondbury Grammar School from 1941-49. He was clearly an able pupil, achieving four Credits and five Passes in his 1946 School Certificate. Sadly, he left School three years later, having failed his Higher School Certificate.