Have you ever read a poem called YgUDuh by EE Cummings?

I read it years ago and loved the unusual style. It’s written in the slurred speech of a belligerent racist drunkard, presumably from New York, and it really has to be read out loud.

Give it a go. It’s fun, and a great exercise in performance poetry.

So I wrote a poem in the same style – it has to be performed or read aloud – spoken by a woman who loves her son, but she’s troubled because he’s not as loving towards her as her idol Elvis Presley was to his mother.

I thought it up in a Scouse accent because I’d love my old friend Julie to read it. It’s certainly not meant to be a regional stereotype, or to suggest that all mothers from any region are lonely and bereft like this one, any more than Cummings is suggesting that all New Yorkers are drunken and racist. Of course they’re not. It’s about a single imaginary mother’s suffering, and it comes from empathy, from how much we love our kids.

But have a go at reading it. Try any voice and accent you like. See what you think.

Here it is.

In Common

Elvess luvd is mammy sunne

E elderr ‘and an tukker to Graisland

Ee gave err presents to fill err spaces:

You keepe me ouse emptee wit cowld

*

Elvess coppied is mammys dark locks

Ee ad raven blak eir from a bokkle

Ee wanted to luk lyke err inis arte:

You scalpt off the red cirrrls I gave yer

Tho myn iss wite now wit wurry

*

Elvess idolised is mam

Wen she diyd ee was a god broken

Is songs about err wud crack yer very core:

Yer never eard my wirds – yer were too bizzy shouten

*

Elvess ad gunz

Ee fired them in is anger so I erd

Ee smashed stuff wenee wus vexed:

Well thir we are now

You an Elvess av sumthin in commun