My Dog

by Ian McMillan (I Found This Shirt, Carcanet)

April is the Cruellest Month
might seem like a strange name for a dog,
and sometimes I think it is
when I’m shouting her name
on the high moors
in the driving wind.

‘April is the Cruellest Month!’
I shout,
‘April is the Cruellest Month!’
and my dog runs up to me,
barking, wagging her tail,
and I feel slightly, ever so slightly
embarrassed.

But then when people say
as they walk by me
on the high moors
in the driving wind,
‘Can a month bark?’
‘Can April wag its tail?’
I swell with pride
because my dog’s name
is image, and metaphor, and poetry.

So,
‘April is the Cruellest Month’
I shout, and
‘April is the Cruellest Month’
and the words roll round in my mouth
like Easter Eggs in a Shopping Basket
which is the name of my cat.

Working on the premise that there is poetry for everyone, this one is for dog lovers who don’t mind a poem that doesn’t rhyme, and anyone with a sense of humour.

In 2000 I gave a reading with Ian McMillan at an event arranged by Barry Rutter, the artistic director of the Northern Broadsides Theatre in Halifax, West Yorkshire. I was relieved that Ian was reading first — until I heard him. Ordinary sentences turned into comical stories with wicked punchlines as he spoke, and the audience rapidly dissolved into gales of laughter that built into a storm of hilarity. I found myself bent double, tears of hysterical mirth rolling down my cheeks, when suddenly it dawned on me that I was the straight guy, and I was on next.

The realisation of the differences between the two of us filled me with horror. Think of the audience! But, despite my new-found anxiety, Ian was so funny that I just couldn’t stop laughing. In fact, the idea of me going up there, deadpan and serious, and reading a poem about a dead kookaburra, or a man from Outback Australia with his only arm broken and in a sling, made me laugh even harder; the idea of the audience’s bewildered expressions at the contrast between Ian’s riveting performance and my own efforts made my ribs actually hurt. My fate, I thought, was sealed, but at least I would go down laughing.

It was only by dint of Barry Rutter’s skilful summary of one reading, and introduction of another, that our two disparate performances sat comfortably (I hope) side by side in the same evening. The members of the audience regained their composure and I was able to keep a straight face.

So, when I read this week’s poem for the first time, I could almost hear Ian’s voice telling me that April is the Cruellest Month had peed in the corner and asking if I had a mop and bucket.

“April is the cruellest month” is the first line of T. S. Eliot’s wonderful poem The Burial of the Dead , which is why the dog’s name “is image, and metaphor, and poetry”. April breeds “Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain”.

Of course, I do not actually know if Ian owns a dog called April is the Cruellest Month; it might be a figment of his imagination. And the cat’s name, Easter Eggs in a Shopping Basket, could have arisen from a clutch of chocolate eggs in a wicker basket, espied hanging over an old woman’s arm one Easter. Ian might have glanced at them and thought how catlike the arrangement appeared. One often doesn’t know when a poet is talking about their real life or the lives they imagine for others, or Easter eggs, or cats and dogs. On the other hand, Easter Eggs in a Shopping Basket might be giving birth to kittens in a box beneath his kitchen sink even as I write this.

But I believe a poem works for you as long as you enjoy it, or relate to it on a level of your own. If the history behind it is not known to you, it is not your fault; you just haven’t stumbled across the poet’s diary. Nor should you be expected to excavate a sometimes well-buried intention unless you are studying poetry in a forensic manner — as opposed to a happily subjective one. If the poet really wants you to know the poem’s origins, and there are not enough clues in the text, then perhaps he or she should add an explanatory paragraph. Otherwise, it is up to us and our own interpretations.

Two weeks ago I imagined that Jackie Kay’s poem Old Tongue , about losing the strength of a Scottish accent in favour of a more English one, was autobiographical. It was written in the first person and I know her to have been born and brought up in Scotland because I’ve read her biographical notes. But it was entirely possible that a period of time spent in England as a child might well have escaped mention. It was only at the eleventh hour that her publisher happened to mention — and only in passing — that of course the poem was not about her at all.

And I am just as guilty; sometimes I imagine myself as someone else and write from their perceived viewpoint; sometimes I write in the third person about myself. It is often easier to be open about oneself by examining one’s own actions as if they belong to a stranger.

Knowing about a poet’s life can sometimes give us a more accurate insight into the poet’s work. (Sometimes not.) My Dog , however, is not afflicted with any poetic subterfuge, but is a joyful romp “on the high moors/ in the driving wind”. And while you read this I will go and feed our three dogs, Mouse, Widget and Snickers, (two nouns and a verb) and ponder the curious autobiographical fact that I used to name my cats after motorbikes.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

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