Uploaded May 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Bill Pritchard ’The Wind’
taken from "Bill Pritchard Sings Poems By Patrick Woodcock", out on the 5th May 2023.
Video Director: Luke Hodgkins
Wind was written in Baku, Azerbaijan where I taught for two years. It is an extremely windy city. There was not a day I did not have to run from, or navigate around, something falling from a building, balcony or construction site. From the safety of a store front I would watch other’s fleeing the chaos raining down upon them only to turn and watch my red Aran scarf being raised until it looked like blood flowing out of my neck. The lyrics are a chaotic, surreal scramble of images, syllables and stresses whose trainlike rhythm was captured perfectly by Bill. It ends with the image of a drunk parading down the main boulevard where the tanks roll on May Day – his stumbling gate corrected by the wind’s crutch. (Patrick Woodcock)
A great grandmother
scrambles to shelter her princess
surrenders her body
to strengthen the carriage
The plant pots that plummet
the dirt clumps that follow
aren’t red kites and black kites
a snowcock or swallow
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you into
I cursed all I dodged
I cursed deaths debris
and fled from the shiplap
to the Caspian Sea
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you into
Wind, water and wheel
most fled you all, most fled you all
but I was forced to reflect
in a prismatic spill, a prismatic spill
Then an oriel’s echo
of the scarf around my throat
let me watch as it levelled
and the claret pour out
I hacked near a ferris wheel
spewed where few lay
then paraded down the boulevard
like a drunk tank in May
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you into
Taken from - 'Farhang Book I’ - ECW Press, Toronto, Canada, 2023
Bill Pritchard ’The Wind’
taken from "Bill Pritchard Sings Poems By Patrick Woodcock", out on the 5th May 2023.
Video Director: Luke Hodgkins
Wind was written in Baku, Azerbaijan where I taught for two years. It is an extremely windy city. There was not a day I did not have to run from, or navigate around, something falling from a building, balcony or construction site. From the safety of a store front I would watch other’s fleeing the chaos raining down upon them only to turn and watch my red Aran scarf being raised until it looked like blood flowing out of my neck. The lyrics are a chaotic, surreal scramble of images, syllables and stresses whose trainlike rhythm was captured perfectly by Bill. It ends with the image of a drunk parading down the main boulevard where the tanks roll on May Day – his stumbling gate corrected by the wind’s crutch. (Patrick Woodcock)
A great grandmother
scrambles to shelter her princess
surrenders her body
to strengthen the carriage
The plant pots that plummet
the dirt clumps that follow
aren’t red kites and black kites
a snowcock or swallow
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you into
I cursed all I dodged
I cursed deaths debris
and fled from the shiplap
to the Caspian Sea
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you into
Wind, water and wheel
most fled you all, most fled you all
but I was forced to reflect
in a prismatic spill, a prismatic spill
Then an oriel’s echo
of the scarf around my throat
let me watch as it levelled
and the claret pour out
I hacked near a ferris wheel
spewed where few lay
then paraded down the boulevard
like a drunk tank in May
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you
Wind is what it turns you into
Taken from - 'Farhang Book I’ - ECW Press, Toronto, Canada, 2023
