2019: Lyrics & Poems

By Andrew Robert Chapman

A collection of over 90 poems and rhymes from 2019, written mainly as song lyrics, although many "poems" were also amongst the number authored. All song lyrics, for now at least, are completely missing a musical melody.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Robert Chapman
• Release date: Dec 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463388174

Andrew Robert Chapman

Having earned an upper-second-class BSc Honours Degree in Computing Science from Stafford University (the then Staffordshire Polytechnic), I worked for several English manufacturing companies before accepting an offer of work in Germany in 1991, where I have been living and working for several blue chip financial institutions based in Frankfurt am Main till this day. As a result of my career I wrote and self-published “Cobol: Optimised and Maintainable Application Programming” in 2003 and “JCL – STEP by STEP” in 2008. In 2012 I was asked to write lyrics for several rock band projects, an adventure which led to the role of singer/songwriter in WildScreW and the composition of several hundred lyrics, the majority of which are patiently waiting to be put to music or self-published.

Book preview

History

My late, great-aunty Jean was an avid fan of literature, language and especially poetry. Nevertheless, despite her persistence, cajoling and seemingly endless off-by-heart recitals from her many favourite and famous bard’s literary masterpieces, and although I did possess an unhealthy interest and certain talent for English language and literature in school, I always considered my sister the more gifted poet and artist and myself more adroit in the (especially then new computer) sciences.

Sure, in my late school years and youth I’d occasionally pen a poem, compose a clerihew or write a rhyme, but always for specific purposes: love letters in the main but also a couple of songs for a my schooldays band Guillotine. But, as demands from career and life’s many other interests and distractions gained the upper hand, my literary efforts were restricted to computer program documentation. But there was always a book burning away in the back of my head and, after several aborted attempts at fiction, I decided around 1998 that I’d be best writing about something I know, which resulted in two self-published technical books in 2003 and 2008.

These tomes combined with (too) many years of unsuccessfully trying to master the German language, resulted in me falling heavily back in love with my native tongue. As essays are not my forte and technical reference books a labour of four or five years, I began writing poems and rhymes for my own pleasure and therapy.

My jottings and ideas were randomly scattered about various electronic devices, books and scrap pieces of paper and, in 2010, I stumbled across the term blogging and specifically WORDPRESS and decided the free application was also a perfect, practical and localized way to store and work on all my poems and lyrics.

In 2012, and quite coincidentally to my personal rhyming efforts on WORDPRESS, I was asked, solely because of my native English skills, if I was capable of writing lyrics to original songs melodies. Luckily for me I decided to blow my own trumpet and confidently replied that I could. I thus found myself writing lyrics for several band projects, one of which was to lead to the formation of the rock band WildScreW and culminate with the production of a studio CD, "Writing On The Wall"*, at the end of 2016 with myself as vocalist.

Furthermore, the CD’s title song was to become a finalist in the 19th Great American Song Contest in 2018.

*Paperback readers must navigate themselves manually to the hyperlinks embedded directly in the eBOOK by referring to the "Contacts and Links" section, or use the QR codes, where all relevant hyperlinks can be found, including the location of any audio files.

Method

Before I started to marry my lyrics to musical melodies I used to take an inordinate amount of time fettling my rhymes so that, at least to my mind, the metre, the rhythm, the pace, the meaning, everything which I considered vital to the flow and comprehension, was as close to perfection as I could engineer.

I was effectively writing poems.

I was quickly to learn, however, that as soon as a poem is put to music, the strict rules which applied to it can be relaxed or even completely ignored. The poem’s words, which now wrap themselves around a musical melody, can, indeed sometimes must, be shortened or lengthened by the articulation of the vocalist in such a way which can only be conveyed to a reader by linking the words to sheet music. A poem’s written form alone is not enough to convey this, although I sometimes attempt to highlight such areas (to myself) by breaking up words with hyphens or compressing them to phonetics. Furthermore music producers and studio requirements place further demands on a song’s structure, which often force the songwriter to perform last minute lyrical rewrites and polishing.

Thus it was I decided, after my experience with WildScreW, that I would purposely leave all my poetic efforts in a much rawer and less-polished state. Should the occasion arise that such a poem be put to music, then that would be the time to go the extra mile and invest the final effort refining, polishing and honing the words.

Over the years I have also discovered that it is best to literally dump to (digital) paper what ever words and ideas are coursing through one’s mind: Effectively not applying a filter. When I started writing poetry I too often thought of reasons why I didn’t want to progress with whatever idea had pushed its way to the front of my mind. For myself that invariably led to a writer’s block, as my work on a different idea would be hindered with interfering thoughts about the themes of the poem I’d decided not to progress with. By starting (although not necessarily finishing) any ideas which come into my head, my mind appears to find closure and is free to move unencumbered onto the next idea.

The downside of my method is there will be a certain tally of my poems which are in (sometimes dire) need of polish, fettling and some which even contain unfinished words, lines or rhymes.

Why this book?

When I starting compiling this book’s content I was asked for whom I was writing it.

I replied Myself.

Contrary to all advice concerning writing eBOOKs, my motivation is not to appeal to a wide audience, achieve international fame nor make a fortune, large or small. The song lyrics in this book were written with the hope and intention that they one day achieve immortality on a professionally produced studio CD, but their number has swollen to the extent that any such plan is hopelessly unrealistic.

Thus, instead of them languishing hidden, unread and unheard of, I formulated a plan to make them accessible to the world via a self-published eBOOK. Should just a single word, line, stanza or refrain from the book’s lyrics move you to tears or raise a smile, give you pause for thought or even manage to inspire, then my time and effort have been more than worthwhile and rewarded.

Preamble

Songwriting, or more specifically lyric writing, in 2019 was hindered by my work in retroactively compiling the material for my Lyrics & Poems series and other eBOOK publications. Combined with holidays and, seemingly, an invitation to attend a party or anniversary every weekend, in addition to my normal commitments to work, life, sport and hobbies, my lyrical output suffered.

However, once the bulk of the eBOOK work was finished, rhymes and lyrics started to trickle back into my mind and, unfortunately not as often as I’d have liked, I took the opportunity to expand them into song lyric shells.

By the end of the first three months of the year I’d written just six complete rhymes but the second quarter saw the tally rise to over 40. I even considered publishing this book in a half-way-house edition.

Although I’d promised myself to, literally, do nothing in my summer holiday, events overtook plans and twenty-one, what I mainly classified as poems, were penned on a cruise without the aid of my usual digital authoring aids (online dictionary, thesaurus, rhyming and idiom webpages).

The rhymes continued to steadily flow with an additional twenty poems by the end of October. A solitary rhyme was penned over the last two months of the year and, on boxing day, a Christmas based lyric.

Nevertheless, the middle of 2019 was to mark my 300th rhyme and, although quality is no guarantee of quality, I’d posit there are a couple of rough diamonds amongst the year’s efforts.

Proem

Until the day arrives when the songs are recorded in a professional music studio and cast in the digital stone which is a music CD, my work on polishing the lyrics is ongoing.

The eBOOK song titles are all hyperlinked to the current internet version of the lyrics on my WORDPRESS site SONGANDVERSE. The internet versions of my lyrics use a colour code to optically highlight the various song parts. Thus the simply typed PRE-CHORUS and CHORUS serve to reflect the text contained in their equally colour coded counterparts at the start of the song. BRIDGE and PARLANDO parts of a song are also uniquely coloured, in order to visually separate them from the other song parts.

For eBOOK compatibility, all text has been coloured black/automatic.

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