Many over the years were thrown away or lost. The first time I started to take note of the fact I wrote poems was when I did some work on a housing project in an inner-city comprehensive school in the early 1970s. At the time I ran a community housing association and self-help scheme. Because the kids in the school started to complain about poetry they had to learn, I experimented with showing them one or two of what I came to call my housing poems.
And the next which I used in a session with older young people who were learning day- release English.
It was only about ten years ago that a friend who knew I was a closet poet said I must submit two poems for an anthology being produced by the Community Projects Foundation to celebrate its first 25 years. An independent editor accepted both the poems I submitted.
And gradually I plucked up courage to submit the odd poem for publication. Quite a few have found a home, including some of those you’ll hear.
In the 1960s and early 70s many of my poems took up themes which had echoes in the life of people I know and my own!
As a one-parent breadwinner in London I learned much. My work took me into government departments and the boardrooms of major companies. I also spent half my time with community groups. I tried to communicate about life in real communities to those in power. Their ignorance astonished me. This angry short poem came on to the page on a train journey.
The next three were expression of deep loneliness.
Very many of my poems are an almost subconscious response to something I’ve experienced. In my late teens I was a journalist. It was a job which opened me to experiences which I felt were very unjust: experiences which sometimes influenced my future work.
In 1994 my schoolfriend and friend for life, Rosemary, died. I wrote this poem after her death:
In 1979, I married Walter. The next poem is one I wrote about my first visit to Germany with him to the place where he was a child before escaping Nazi Germany.
Now two poems which express very different experiences about being over 60:
The next is about Jubilee 2000 in the pattern of sing-a-song-of-sixpence.
This is a very recent one. Once again it’s a comment. Poems can say neatly what would take pages of prose sometimes.
One about static electricity which is a minor irritation in my life!
The next will echo with anyone who through illness, and after an operation, stays awake most of the night only to drop into a peaceful sleep as dawn arrives.
Dreamtime is a recognition that we must accept that which we cannot change,
Ruth I Johns 1999
Feb 2014 after being asked to put ‘poems’ in order by Walter
‘Death’ appears quite a lot in these ‘poems’ which – of many – have survived. Death is not always meaning literally ‘the end’ but also death of the spirit; the wasting of positive energy: seemingly unstoppable greed etc. The ‘poems’ obviously were sometimes a safety valve.
In speech, I sometimes use the word ‘anger’ in a way which can be misunderstood. I still often use it in the old-fashioned sense of ‘righteous indignation’ at a situation. Whereas ‘anger’ today is more often expressing a personal attitude – hence all the ‘anger management’ courses!
RIJ
Family note: Mum is still very much alive, though living with dementia. Mum put her poems in order in 2014 and we have a folder of them all, some of which are scanned and presented here. I chose to include here the ones she read in public, since it feels safe to assume she was happy to share them. The introduction above appears to be written for a poetry reading, but I don’t know any more details. I’ve dated it 1999 because, in the introduction, she refers to a ‘very recent’ poem called Intellectual Property, which she dated 1999. One of the poems she mentions in the introduction, Leaving Home, was not with the papers in the folder, so is not included in the selection here.
Neil Johns, March 2025