I have know Jack Henley for many years but had never visited him in his flat in Tangier<\/p>\n
That was until last month when he invited me to visit him as I was in Morocco on business<\/p>\n
Although he has been one of the Angry Young Men<\/em> he had not published for over twenty years<\/p>\n Some thought that he was dead but most people had just forgotten about him<\/p>\n He had been my late fathers best friend and my love of poetry was promoted by him<\/p>\n But he never commented or criticised my work noting who is he to be a critic<\/p>\n Nor did he bother with the critics who had slammed some of his later books<\/p>\n Better off masturbating if they can get it up for they are the vermin of the earth\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What actually surprised me when I entered his flat was how sparse it was<\/p>\n It is the heat my dear boy one does not want to be cluttered as it suffocates\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n On the low wooden table overlooking the scruffy street below was an almost derelict typewriter<\/p>\n Jack has no time for computers or so I was told although he actually owned one but rarely used it<\/p>\n On the only shelf in the room there were only three books one was the collected poems of Eliot<\/p>\n The most outstanding poet of the last century as Hopkins was the outstanding poet of the nineteenth century<\/em><\/p>\n He would then tell me that if I carried on with my work then I might well be the great poet of the twenty-first century<\/p>\n This was a running joke between us as although I had a rare talent I was nowhere near either Eliot or Hopkins<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The other books were a well worn paperback copy of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary <\/em>which had once belonged to friend<\/p>\n And I have to admit that I had never heard of his third book The Youngest County<\/em> published by the LCC in 1951<\/p>\n It would never be published these days as those dark days were also the days of hope but as normal we fucked it up\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n We could have achieved so much but we squabbled and slowly but surely we let the stupid little men take over\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n And that is why we are in the mess that we are in today and this is the reason that I will see my days out here<\/em><\/p>\n Bury me in the sand I do not care where but whatever you do Marc do not let them send me back to London<\/em><\/p>\n Morocco has its limitations but at least I am left in peace and dare I say respected as they are a rather lovely people<\/em><\/p>\n I only spent a few hours with Jack but we were not sad when we parted as it seemed that we had always existed in each others eyes<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have know Jack Henley for many years but had never visited him in his flat in Tangier That was until last month when he invited me to visit him as I was in Morocco on business Although he has been one of the Angry Young Men he had not published for over twenty years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11837"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11841,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11837\/revisions\/11841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}