John Rawson
John Humfrey Berrisford Rawson was born in Middlesbrough, on 4 December 1929, the second of two sons of Stanley Walter Rawson and Phyllis Adeline, nee Bargate. His father, born in Sheffield, was later knighted for 'services to industry'. The family name has been traced back to Tickhill.
John's brother, the late Philip Stanley Rawson, was a specialist in oriental art and culture, and the author of many books on these subjects. (Obituaries in The Times and Daily Telegraph).
Not of an academic frame of mind, John Rawson attended Horris Hill Schoool, near Newbury, and Shrewsbury School. For three years he worked on a farm, at a time when farm-work was not mechanised, and thereafter he worked in a London bank and later in the office of an electricity authority.
Always interested in social insects, he commenced beekeeping at the age of 16, and by the age of 31 had enough hives of bees to set up in the business of honeybee-farming - an occupation which he has followed ever since. He was elected Chairman of the Bee Farmers Association of the United Kingdom and served for two years in that post. He also served for two years as Vice Chairman and as a Committee Member. He became a member of the Bee Husbandry Committee of the British Beekeepers Association, and has been Vice President of Salisbury And District Beekeepers Association.
At 23, he married Pamela Deidre Richmond, by whom he had two sons. There is also an adopted daughter.
John Rawson has had many short poems published in various nationally-circulated poetry magazines, including Candelabrum, Envoi, Wayfarers, Orbis International and Poetry Nottingham. In 2004 his poem Giraffes won the Wiltshire Libraries Association prize for best humorous poem.
In June 2005, two volumes of John Rawson's poetry were published by Bedeguar Books. These were From The English Countryside, Tales Of Humour and From The English Countryside, Tales Of Tragedy. Each was a splendid collection of stories told in the form of traditional narrative verse.
2008 saw the publication by Northern Bee Books of The World Of A Bee Farmer by John Rawson, an enjoyable account of some of his experiences arising from over 60 years of beekeeping.
John Rawson has recently assembled all his poems (over 180 in number) in a collection he calls A Music Of Words, Lyrical Poems From The English Countryside. He is currently writing a humorous novel called Trouble On Tayside.
“THE MEETING""Scant rain had fallen and the summer sunHad scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn,That August nightfall, as I crossed the downWork-weary, half in dream. Beside a fenceSkirting a penning’s edge, an old man waitedMotionless in the mist, with downcast headAnd clothing weather-worn. I asked his nameAnd why he lingered at so lonely a place.“I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasonsI roamed these windswept downlands with my flock.No fences barred our progress and we’d travelWherever the bite grew deep. In summer droughtI’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-topTo find a missing straggler or set snaresBy wood or turmon-patch. In gales of MarchI’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs.“I was a ploughman, too. Year upon yearI trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts,Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead,Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a songOf lark and pewit melodied my toil.I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawnTo groom and dress my team: by daylight’s endMy boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint.“And then I was a carter. With my skillI built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hayFrom the dense-matted rick. At harvest time,My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horsesBack to the master’s barn with shouts and cursesBefore the scurrying storm. Through sunlit daysOn this same slope where you now stand, my friend,I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields.“My cob-built home has crumbled. HereaboutsFew folk remember me: and though you stareTill time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me stridingThe broad, bare down with flock or toiling team.Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers:Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble,On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur,In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.”My comrade turned aside. From the damp swardDrifted a scent of melilot and thyme;From far across the down a barn owl shouted,Circling the silence of that summer evening:But in an instant, as I stepped towards himStriving to view his face, his contour altered.Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stoodNothing of flesh, only a post of wood.”