A writer has immortalised one of Stroud’s true mavericks in a poem.
Stroud-based poet Adam Horovitz, who has published a range of books and commissioned works and is central to the district’s cultural and literary scene, was moved to write the tribute to former mayor John Marjoram after his death in May.
John had been the very first Green Party councillor in the whole of the UK (voted in at the same time as Richard Lawson in Somerset – which of them was actually the first councillor in terms of their respective vote counts later became the subject of friendly rivalry), and there was an upswell of emotion across the town as the news of his death spread.
On Monday 2 June, John was the focus of a very Stroud-like celebration of his life, his energy, and his spirit of resistance as hundreds of people gathered in the Sub Rooms and then wound their way through the streets to the cemetery at Bisley Road.
Adam was one of the many denizens of Stroud who was moved by John’s death.
“I knew John a little bit for a long time,” he recalls. “He became friendly with my parents in the 1970s after we moved to Stroud, and he was always there for a chat or a pleasantly heated discussion about politics, for most of my adult life.
“He was very supportive of my work in and around the town, particularly of the public poems of mine that went up around Stroud in the late 90s and early 2000s.”
John was a keen activist who moved to Stroud in 1968, and the town’s nonconformist spirit made it a natural place for him to settle.
“When he arrived here, Stroud grew into him and he grew into Stroud,” explains Adam. “He became a deep part of the mycelial network of the town, politically and socially.”
Adam himself has lived near Slad for most of his life; his parents knew Laurie Lee and the writer used to occasionally slip him a fiver “to get drunk and write poetry”.
“I arrived here aged three months old in my mother’s arms and was dropped in the long grass of a garden in a thumb offshoot of the Slad valley, and have (for the most part) been here ever since. People like John are why I stayed, though; he was the epitome of acting locally while thinking globally.”
Although Adam has created work for all kinds of situations, he says he’s no Auden; memorial poems are not his natural oeuvre. He says he’s written “a few; it’s not something that comes easily. I have to be surprised or moved into writing this sort of occasional poem.”
“For this poem, for John, it came naturally and speedily in the wake of his funeral, the evening of that day, with the beautiful procession through Stroud hot in my thoughts. I kept notes of things that mattered – the Quaker silence, the rose petals cast into his grave, the sounds echoing off the walls of Lower Street as we followed the band to the cemetery. It simply fell into place.”
Once Adam had committed words to paper, he started to think about what he could do to commemorate John more formally.
“Once the idea that it might become a poster formed, I naturally asked [Laura, John’s wife] and John’s daughters, for permission before embarking on anything, making clear that the intention was to use all profits from the sale of the poster to raise funds for a charity that John would have approved of.”
While he was musing about which charity to choose, Adam chatted to Stroud entrepreneur Clare Honeyfield, who replied without hesitation, “Stroud Valleys Project!”
John had worked with Stroud Valleys Project (SVP) for many years as a keen volunteer at one of their community allotments; SVP’s focus on people taking collective action for nature clearly resonated with him as he’d also been one of the charity’s trustees until the mid 1990s.
“It just seemed the most natural, obvious fit, given John’s deep interest in, love of, and commitment to the world that immediately surrounded him (as well as all that lay beyond!),” says Adam.
“John’s family were very happy about this arrangement too, when I proposed it.”
Adam’s memorial poem for John Marjoram has been printed on eco-friendly paper in a shade of green ink, and a small number of prints are available to buy at SVP eco shop for £10, with all proceeds going to the charity’s work across the district.
