Alan Perry was an artist, art teacher, prize-winning poet and anti-war activist from Swansea, Wales. He was also a mentor to me when I was a youngish English teacher at Morriston School. He encouraged me to write, and was always funny, kind and humble.
Over the years, we lost touch. He retired from teaching, and I moved back to Cornwall. Last week, I Googled him and found out that he had died over a year ago, on 18 December 2023. I checked my phone to see what I had been doing on that day, and I found videos of Amanda and me swimming in the sea in Lanzarote.
Many of Alan’s artworks explored images of his wife, Jean, and him swimming underwater in nocturnal dreamscapes full of rain drops, seaweed and the arcing light of Mumbles lighthouse. His astonishing exhibition in the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, in 1997, was full of such images. It remains one of the most tender and powerful exhibitions I have ever seen.
This poem is a tribute to Alan’s humour and his generosity. Once, he gifted me some similes parodying one of mine. I remember one of them. It was such a funny and beautiful way to correct my poetic excesses. God bless you, Alan.
[Photo: Bernard Mitchell]
Night Swimming
For Alan Perry (1942-2023)
The day I didn’t know that you had died,
we’d spent swimming, underwater, somewhere warm,
in zigzagged sunny Lanzarote light,
far from the dreaming midnight seaweed beds
of Swansea Bay, the pelting rain that hits
the upturned face like little comet strikes.
Once, as a joke, you’d given me the phrase,
A gift-wrapped thunderbolt,
a parody of one of mine.
Like any upstart worth his salt
I’d scorned to use another poet’s line.
But then I heard that you had died.