‘A song for England’, by Andrew Salkey.jpeg

This photo shows my hastily-copied-out transcription of the poem ‘A song for England’, by Andrew Salkey.
He was born in Panama, to Jamaican parents, but he moved to England in the 1950s.
He worked as a teacher here, as well being a poet and novelist.

I wrote this poem out on a sheet of 80gsm Rhodia ‘High Grade Vellum’, taken from a No. 13 Bloc Pad.

The pen is my Pelikan 400, from 1954. Its ‘F’ nib has a cursive-italic grind, which was the standard Pelikan nib-grind in that era. It is delightfully crisp, and the 14k gold nib is ‘springy’ too 😊

The ink is Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black.

The ebonite feed that supplies the ink to the nib if this pen is so ‘wet’ that it really puts the ‘black’ into ‘blue-black’ 😁
It also overcomes the capacity of Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire to demonstrate ‘shading’, rendering that ink as a solid, bright, ‘gemstone’ blue.