By John Bruce.
JPF – John Peter Frederick – Goodman
16/3/1960 to 7/9/2023
I’m sure there are people reading this who knew JPF far longer than I did, and who know more about him, but these are my reflections on a friend and poet who died recently.
We met at the Art House, at Moving Voices, in July 2013. I’d come over from dropping my son off at his mother’s in Bournemouth, and decided that Southampton wasn’t that much out of my way on the return trip to my home in Salisbury. Besides which, that week I’d attended the inaugural Poetika open mic poetry event in Salisbury, and I’d found it so untraumatic that I thought I would FINALLY give Moving Voices a go.
I was outside during the break when this bearded and bespectacled man, in a crumpled light coloured suit and trilby hat, had come wandering along, with a rollup cigarette in his hand. We got talking and soon bonded over both wishing we’d been twenty years younger when we had met our muses, women who’d made the mistake of giving us the time of day, thereby enthralling us. Ten years later, mine is still a battle of wills vs will-nots, but JPF’s faded away, all too soon.
I don’t know much about his early life. He’d attended a minor fee-paying school, trained as an English teacher but failed to get the qualification. He spent some time in Greece teaching English, then had fallen into supply teaching on his return. But he was a serious and erudite poet, the seriousness in his work tending, sometimes, to give it an unjustified air of pomposity. He also wanted to change the world for the better, so many of his poems contained advice / instruction – and not everyone wants to be told what to do.
He lived in one of the tower blocks in Northam, a cigarette ashy council flat lined with bookcases of classic and modern literature, mostly hardback, some in those matching bound series of complete works designed for people who want pretty bookshelves, rather than things to read – though I suspect in JPF’s case, they were a cheap way of catering to his appetite for literature.
He had no airs and graces, and never turned away anyone needing help, no matter how ‘unsavoury’ others might have thought they were – this meant broken sleep at times with people coming to crash at 3am, lent money (and phones) never returned.
As teaching work dwindled, he supplemented his money with crack of dawn starts unloading luggage from cruise liners down at the docks, and for a number of years he was the Echo’s amateur drama production critic, going under the pen name Ham Quentin, which paid him just enough to cover his bus fares to the productions.
Once we’d become friends I was able to drive him to some of the shows he’d review, a wonderful mix of very amateur and effectively professional productions all over Hampshire and into South Wilts. I was there to nudge him when he fell asleep due to having worked at the docks that morning, and the occasional free drink to win his support, spread to include me (a note by two glasses of red wine at Chesil Theatre, Winchester, simply said ‘For the Boys’).
Sharing a glass of wine with JPF wasn’t restricted to dramatic occasions. His poetic connection with the John Hansard Gallery meant invitations to their Private Views – and when they were still based at the university these were sumptuously catered – real treats for our restricted means. We went on to attend other art PVs in the area, as much to mix with crazy artists and their supporters as for the art (and wine) itself. The craziest was the fabulous HaHa gallery in St Mary’s, now many years on sojourn, but at one time the place to go for naked artists, plaster penises, projectile vomiting as performance art, and, of course, poetry.
So we’re back to poetry. Once we’d met, I joined JPF in attending many of the local poetry open mics and events, including Moving Voices, Apples and Snakes, Artful Scribe, the Candle Club, SO:FEST, Write a Note, and I even dragged him up to Salisbury for Poetika one time. He headlined at the Tea Poets in Romsey, was chosen to read at two of the John Hansard Gallery Poetry and Art events, had a series of ‘Poetry and Prose’ at Mettricks, and was a regular performer at LEFT FEST. Some of these performances can be seen on his YouTube channel – youtube.com/@JPFGoodman
In the last few years JPF had a lot of problems, he broke his arm at a family party, had psychotic episodes and then a stroke that permanently paralysed the left side of his body. He finally died in September, as a result of further strokes and lung cancer, in a nursing home where he’d been committed for the last year or so. I used to visit and smuggle him in the single malts he liked, but the limit of interest in his life had become watching Columbo repeats.
I have access to much of JPFs work, and perhaps one day I’ll put together an anthology of it (with the family’s permission). He already has one publication – Poetic Imagery – a pamphlet which pairs poems with pictures that some of his artist friends painted in response to the poems – soon available on Amazon – just search JPF Goodman. Meanwhile, some of his work is on his blog at jpfgoodman.wordpress.com.
- There is a celebration of JPF’s life and work at the Art House on Thursday 9th November from 7.30pm: click here for details.
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