Laureate's poem for TUC approved

It might not quite match the emancipatory sweep of Shelley's Mask of Anarchy or Blake's Jerusalem, but the official offering from poet laureate Andrew Motion to celebrate next week's TUC conference yesterday won a blinking welcome from trade unionists and poets alike.

Titled In a Perfect World, the poem is the first to be written by a poet laureate in honour of the country's largest voluntary organisation since its foundation in 1868, and will be recited by Mr Motion to the assembled trade unionists in Brighton next Tuesday.

Defined by its author as a "public poem in an intimate voice" which "touches on issues of personal and collective freedom", it describes a walk along the banks of the Thames from Richmond to Westminster and the decayed relics of the riverside's industrial past.

But in a more upbeat vein from the unions' point of view, the poet - who will mount the congress rostrum after Tony Blair - also writes obliquely of things being "born again", fathoming "what liberty means" and one voice "catching the echo of others which ring around the rim of the world".

The labour movement has long been able to draw on the voices of some of the greatest poets and singers of the time. Arthur Scargill and Jimmy Airlie, the late engineering workers' leader, once traded quotations from Shelley across the floor of the congress.

But union leaders and activists seemed tickled yesterday by official recognition and were quite relaxed about the potentially painful references to a "world of rust", "smoke-scarred walls" and "disused warehouses".

"It's earthy, rather than lyrical," said John Edmonds, leader of the GMB. "It makes a nice change from some of the glitz and glamour often associated with the New Labour movement. That's no bad thing - even Jerusalem had its dark satanic mills."

Vic Gammon, Leeds university expert in working class cultural history, thought it reminded him of William Morris and William Blake's poem, London. Karl Dallas, labour movement poet and songwriter, said he thought it a "very good poem which resonates with what I believe".

Even mainstream literati were in a relatively generous mood. Critic Frank Kermode called it a "very pleasant".

In A Perfect World

I was walking the Thames path from Richmond
to Westminster, just because I was free
to do so, just for the pleasure of light
filling my head, just for the breeze like a hand
tap-tap-tap-tapping the small of my back,
just for the slow and steady breath of dust
fanning on flints, on cobbles, on squared-off
slab-stones - dust which was marking the time
it takes for a thing to be born, to die,
then to be born again. The puzzled brow
of Parliament filling the distance, ducking
and diving as long parades of tree-clouds
or skinny-ribbed office blocks worked their way
in between. The mouth of the Wandle stuck
its sick tongue out and went. The smoke-scarred walls
of a disused warehouse offered on close
inspection a locked-away world of rust
and sand flecks and slate all hoarding the sun.
That's right: I was walking the Thames Path east
as though I was water myself - each twist
and turn bringing me out on the level,
leading me hither and thither through brick-chinks
into the hush of my clarified head,
into the chamber where one voice speaking
its mind could fathom what liberty means,
and catch the echo of others which ring
round the rim of the world. Catch and hold.
The buttery sun kept casting its light
on everything equally. The soft breeze
did as it always did, and ushered me on.

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