Your voice comes from the clouds
Like rain falling on grass
By the edge of a forest
When the dogs are quiet

There, near the lake.
The moon is rising and the wind
Seems to shake the birches.
But it's not a breeze - it's me.
Perched on the telephone wires
Unable to come back down to earth

*

Olive oil dripping
Between your breasts

Naked skin slipping
Into a lake.

Magnesium calming
Jangled nerves

A butterfly unfurling
Inside your heart

A horizon of mountains
That are actually clouds

Cool vodka
On a dry tongue

*

It wasn't hard
One look in your eyes
And I was already weightless
As soon as you touched me
I grew wings.

It wasn't hard
Taking off with you
Circling the earth
Eight times in one day
Flying all night
Wing to wing
And on the second day
Breaking the sound barrier

The boom rolled across the horizon for ages

None of this was hard
Our only rule was
Breaking all rules
Breaking all records
No expectations no promises
No limits no ends.

Flying is easy
The hard part is landing.

Peter Jukes 2003-6

Among your many admirers, all
who flock and hang on your every word,
who laugh and call your name out loud
sits one, like a shadow on the wall:
a drink his only company all night,
and regardless of what you say or do
keeps a watch on your every move,

Till, when the juke box comes alive
Drums beat, bass strums, he turns
to the window and recalls the light
blotted out by the approaching storm
and disturbed by your dancing moving form
thinks of the poems he has yet to write.

Peter Jukes - version of a poem by Alexander Blok

Jean Jukes 1926-2004

Wisdom has been called

Learning how to die

But death is stupid

Forgetting everything

Unlearning all those lessons

How to eat

How to wash yourself

How to defecate

How to breathe

Like an orchestra in reverse

Losing tempo, expression

Measure by measure

Detuning the instruments

Breaking the strings

Until all meaning is lost

Vague, inarticulate

Half formed on your lips

Something... no it's gone

O death is so stupid

Forgetting who you are

You who taught me

Everything

Peter Jukes March 17th 2004

They tramped across the fields behind the church
On a damp day - the wind blowing north-east
Played on patches of snow left in the ditches
And on the banks of the old canal
In the shadow of the big hill
Embraced.

Desperately he said: `I love you
More than I love myself'.
And her eyes
Widened
Incredulous

He wasn't lying.
What love could you expect
From this tender adolescent who barely
Liked himself?

But your eyes
Opened
So wide.

Overhead, clouds gathered, winds veered
It was late.
And having gone too far to turn back now
They heard
Hemispheres mutter and gyrate

We knew they would not wait

And now there's nothing left
And nothing's
Changed

Peter Jukes 1979 and 1986

And one time he was leading her through the darkness
And then another time she was leading him
The first time he reached out to touch her
She withdrew but searched and found his hand again

Towards the certainty of never
From the uncertainty of now
Through the certainty of pain
To the uncertainty of joy

Not Orpheus and his muse
But two lost children
Like Hansel and Gretel
Walking through the dark

Their hands only parting
Searching on the path
For whatever breadcrumbs
The birds might have ignored

Peter Jukes 1999

My CV was probably my first great work of fiction, and I've been constantly inventive trying to keep despair and insignificance from the door by trying to recompose my variegated and frankly unreliable career into some kind of compelling, believable and progressive narrative. I'm not sure it really works. By the time you've accomplished anything of value, it ceases to matter, and hardly guards you against mortality and personal destruction.

When I was in my teens and early twenties, I thought that if someone wrote an article or book about me I would be somehow immortalised. Then I worked in the old British Library reading room and discovered Parnassus was a crowded place, and doesn't guard against insignificance.

Significance is a political construct. I know this because my ridiculously detailed Wikipedia entry is a result of a political war between bloggers after the Obama election. So here goes for more politicised vanity. I partly feel like putting up all my CVs just as an example of pure career creativity.

My latest is here

But to show how temporary, and temporalising, these things are - here's also my CV from 2008

Peter Jukes: Biography

Background

Peter was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School before becoming an entrance and foundation scholar at Queens' College, Cambridge. While still a student, Peter won the 1983 RSC Buzz Goodbody Best Director Award and he graduated from Cambridge with a double first class honours in English, and lived in India for a year on a Harper Wood Writing scholarship, working with the Habib Tanvir and Naya Theatre Company in Madhya Pradesh. In 1984 his play CHAPLIN v LLOYD won an Edinburgh Fringe First and toured all over the country. He worked as a producer for BBC Radio from 1984 to 1985, producing readings, plays and documentaries. From 1988 to 1990 he was a visiting lecturer at Westminster University, co chairing a creative writing course with the novelist Mike Phillips.

THEATRE AND RADIO

In 1987 Peter's play ABEL BAREBONE AND THE HUMBLE COMPANY was premiered at the Traverse Theatre and revived for the Edinburgh Festival. SHADOWING THE CONQUEROR, starring Siobhan Redmond, opened in June 1988 and was revived for the Edinburgh Festival. The play was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and premiered in the US at the Washington Playhouse. He also wrote the book for the Olivier award winning musical MATADOR which opened at the Queen's Theatre in 1991, directed by Elijah Moshinsky. His play, A MAN IN THE TREES, starring Juliet Aubrey, Bernard Hepton, Henry Goodman and Miriam Karlin, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1994 and subsequently broadcast in Norway, Holland, Ireland and Slovakia. Peter has also appeared as a guest presenter on specials of Radio 4's Kaleidoscope, and a reviewer on Front Row with Francine Stock. He co wrote the musical SANCTUARY with Marcos D'cruze and it had a showcase at the Limelight Club in 1998. Along with Kwame Kwei-Armah he was the judge for the playwriting section of the London Prize in 2004.

BOOKS, PUBLICATIONS, SPEECHES

Peter's non-fiction book about urban life and modernity, A SHOUT IN THE STREET, was published in 1990 in the UK by Faber and Faber, and by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US. It was described as "a dream of book" by JOHN BERGER "lucid and courteous... A new kind of book" by THE NEW YORKER. Parts of it were translated into German for the 1994 book UBER DIE GROSSEN STADTE.

Peter is also a speaker at conferences and public debates and has been invited to speak at conferences in the US, Italy, Germany, Poland, Spain, Holland, Romania, Bosnia and Armenia.  These include regular appearances at the Remarque Forum, , the GMF Tremezzo Forum, and Café Europa. He also worked a as a speechwriter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown on the theme of British Identity and is a fellow of the British American Project and a member of the Writer's Guild of America.

JOURNALISM

Peter writes features and book reviews for national newspapers and was a regular contributor to THE NEW STATESMAN. His essay 'Shock and Awe: Apocalyptic Thinking' was published by the influential German Periodical INTERNATIONALE POLITIK in 2005, and his ‘Journal of the Flame Wars' about the US democratic Primaries is to be published by Prospect Magazine this September

FILM AND TV

Peter's main career to date has been in TV and film.  In the 1990s his output included dramatic reconstructions is the Newsnight series MEMO TO THE MINISTER for 1992 General Elections, six episodes of The Chief (Series III and IV) with Tim Pigott Smith and Martin Shaw, two episodes of 99-1, devised by Terry Johnson, three episodes of CALL RED and two episodes of HOLBY CITY, including the opener of series III (described by the Guardian as 'the TV equivalent of crack cocaine!).

More recently (i.e. this century) Peter created and wrote the bulk of the three seasons of the primetime BBC1 series crime and undercover series IN DEEP - nine of the eleven two hour films which are still broadcast across Europe. In 2002 he was commissioned to write a pilot for an American version for the USA Network with the Oscar winning director/writer Paul Haggis. Peter also wrote the first episode of the first series the Emmy award winning police and forensic series WAKING THE DEAD starring Trevor Eve and redevised the characters and format of the Scottish Bafta award winning second series SEA OF SOULS starring Bill Patterson in 2005. His episodes of the INSPECTOR LYNLEY MYSTERIES provided the climax to season IV and the opener of season V in 2005/6. SLAVERY:  THE MAKING OF for BBC Radio 4 with Lenny Henry, Adrian Lester, Brian Blessed and Greg Wise was broadcast in 2006.

Peter is currently writing more episodes of BAD FAITH, a dark comic drama about a disillusioned police chaplain played by Lenny Henry ("The best radio drama in ages" - The Sunday Times) and working on several film and TV projects including Naming Names for Origin Pictures, the true story of the police's misuse of the witness protection programme to silence an innocent man.

Aug 2008