THE MARCH OF 100 MEN

23-10-2006

Birmingham's Iron Man in Victoria Square is now an icon of the city, but sculptor Anthony Gormley - who also created the Angel Of The North - has had a less friendly reception for his latest installation at Crosby Beach in Liverpool. It's, er, 100 iron men wading into the water, but now council jobsworths have decided they'll have to go, much to the disgust of The Stirrer's poet Brendan Hawthorne

The March of One Hundred Men

Gormley's one hundred marched north west

carrying a migratory visionary mission statement

to the grim waters that now rip-tide around them

Whipped up on de-burring angle-grinder winds

these icons left a brother in Brum

sinking his roots firmly into the black soil

not too far from the fiery crucible cocoon

from which their form was redeemed

and where controversy still rains down

in terms of metal spatter mutterings

Between red flag warnings, grey quicksand

and sunrise sewage outfall pipelines

these renegades wade out into the apocalypse

only to be arrested by health and safety issues

their future now dependent upon the cast of fishermen

and the spineless vetoed votes of lip-service

culture barons representing their own effluent society

Not by the will of creation or the need

to be regionally identified as a nursery of edification

can Establishment see further than high tide debates

on the ‘sanitise beyond recognition' policy

that presents another opportunity for commerce to

bill and coo over originality

in a moment of vague interest and fake diversion

before sending in the bull-dozers

These iron men of land and sea

ferrous red and resolute

may yet be denied their slow decay and

long-term demise through saline erosion

Instead they may be looking to board

one of the regular ferries that pass between

them and the pumping smokestacks of the ‘head

and be transported to another place

somewhere to call home

Somewhere where commitment to art

and spectacle are welcomed by planners

campaigning for individuality and

not the corporate seal of approval

that now exists in this country once filled

with patrons of invention and eccentricity

Stand up for the rights of Gormley's Legion of Honour!

Before it's too late…

© Brendan Hawthorne 2006

(check out www.poetrywednesbury.co.uk/)