you are in: Poetry Adventure > Black Friday

Listen now: Black-Friday-Steve-Larkin

Black Friday

Way too early for a poet, on the morning of 13th of November 2015, Steve Larkin was invited into the studio of BBC Oxford to be presented with a subject to write a poem about in a short space of time. The poem was to be presented live on air. The preamble involved a conversation that went along the lines of:

Presenter: So you’re a poet; do you make a living out of that?
Poet: Well, I eke a living. For many years my dad would start any phone conversation with ‘So, are you earning a crust?’ like he didn’t believe that it could be a valid profession.

The subject given was the news article about fashion retail park Bicester Village’s decision to opt out of bargain shopping day Black Friday after the previous year’s carnage. This poem was the result of a barely conscious, sleep-deprived brain’s struggle with time constraints and the real world.

Clogging up the roads,
arteries blocked,
the flow stops,
like black pudding.

A coagulating disease,
perspective lost,
counting the reducing cost,
like the Black Death.

Bring out your dead,
don’t let it spread,
Bicester starts the revolution,
like the Black Panthers.

But from Lanarkshire to Hampshire
the cheap things shine at the end of the week;
the roads will be rocked
before the Black Sabbath.

A poet carves verse
about the bargain basement.
This is the death of entertainment,
like Black Lace,

the poetry equivalent of ‘Agadoo’.
I’m sorry, Dad, it’s what I do.

And, what’s worse,
Black Friday doesn’t even work;
it’s bust and boom
before the inevitable absurd advertising chorus of Have a Merry Christmas with B&Q!
Black Friday – a short-termism-spawning, global-warming-causing, treading-on-your-neighbour’s head, a-four-by-four-on-Santa’s-sled, pushing-a-pensioner-to-her-knees-for-a-few-quid-off-a-cheap-TV shopping day pandering to wanton greed.

Meanwhile – Children in Need!