Poem Of The Week: 'Famous For Fifteen Minutes' By John Foggin

I’d wager that most people of a certain age would recognise the cultural resonances of John Foggin’s neat little examination of the cornucopia of the pub.

Formative for many, including myself, pubs are a social hub, a place of communion, a meeting place for the diverse, the perverse, and the sartorially-scrupulous.

At best, they embody a celebration of colour and character, and the picaresque protagonists of ‘Famous for Fifteen Minutes’ are somehow indistinguishable from the alehouse landscape to which they nightly repair.

Maybe the relationship is symbiotic, a mutual nurturing of kitsch outrageousness which finds its most garish expression behind the concealment of the eye-level frosted glass.



And certainly I have known men who would dress for this one, albeit frequently repeated, occasion, with no sense of irony. Which is why Foggin’s ‘display’ is conducted in near silence, save for the conspicuously noisy inventory of colours which arrests the visual plane of the reader, as it would any non-cognoscenti visiting the bar for the first time.

Exposure to exotica becomes second nature eventually. The drama which does not ‘play out’ in this Leeds boozer is a condition of acceptance. No laughter or taking of the piss is a measure of how things are here, though a subtextual suggestion of violence acts as an unseen corrective, should the mark be overstepped.

These are your best, most reliable friends because they represent the furniture of your memory, and they are inextricably associated with the location of some of your happiest moments. That such moments are often distorted through the beery goggles of youth does not diminish their power to resonate, or capacity to be reinvented. John Foggin’s poem of terse and highly visual observations is, in the end, an homage to time, place and friendship. This is their gig.

‘Famous for Fifteen Minutes’ is taken from the anthology One for the Road and is published by smith ǀ doorstop.