A Christmas letter to Vernon Scannell

Dear Vernon,

I’m not sure you’ll welcome a letter from me: after all, I’m the guy who wrote Walking Wounded, the Life and Poetry of Vernon Scannell – the guy who has been trampling all over your memories for the last four years, picking over your private diaries like someone peeping in your bathroom window, pestering your family and friends; the guy who has finally dragged your dirty linen out into the street.

We never met, which was probably a good thing for all sorts of reasons, but I would love to have known you – even had a drink with you, though I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. 

I’ve kept telling myself that you must have known before you died that someone would write a biography and go through those diaries – after all, there were a few pages that you tore out, presumably because you didn’t want anyone to see them. So maybe you really were prepared to have the rest of them pored over and published.

Your children, the women you shared your life with, and your friends were all ready to trust me to do an honest job. (By the way, I hope I leave such love behind me when I go – it says a lot for the man that you were!) No one ever tried to stop me putting anything into the book, though there must have been pages that were painful for them to read.

Another poet wrote to me today, distressed about the revelations in the book of domestic violence. “Genial” and “stimulating” were the words he used about you, and “vulnerable, in ways that were difficult to define”. He’d had no idea about the suffering, angry man who was sometimes beneath the surface: “Fellow poets never felt apprehensive in his company on drinking occasions, let alone threatened,” he said.

So was it all worth it? When I see the words “wife-beater”, “drunk” and “deserter” all over the papers, I confess I’m not so sure. “Poor Vernon – those headlines,” one of your friends said to me after a particularly virulent newspaper story. They’ve caused real pain to real people.

And then a reviewer the other day wrote that when he’d finished reading the book, he was left with a new appetite for your poetry – and if there are a few more like him, then the answer has to be a resounding Yes.

Because the poetry was what you cared about more than anything. “All that I am is in my verse,” you said, and it’s true. The miserable childhood, the suffering, the drunkenness, the depression and the violence, they’re all there. And the fun and the humour, the kindness and the incredibly romantic side of your nature as well. Your verse speaks to ordinary people, and the more it’s read, the better.

And now, of course, it’s Christmas – The Spectator published your poem about Christmas Eve this week, the one where you’re disillusioned by the spending, the screaming and the sick in the street. And then you hear the distant church bells and a choir – a bit sentimental for me, to be honest, but I love the last line: “He smiled wry thanks, and settled down, content.” I fall asleep each night with that line in my head.

Wherever you are now, if there’s a bar, I think we can be sure you’ll be in it. So have one for me, smile that wry smile, and raise a glass to the biography if you feel like it. But don’t for God’s sake start a fight with the angels.

With all best wishes, and, more than anything, Thank you for the poetry.

Andrew Taylor