Honorary degree for centenarian dubbed ‘Bard of Albert Avenue’

HONOURED: Maurice Rutherford

By Simon Bristow, Co-Editor

University of Hull Chancellor Alan Johnson has spoken of his admiration for a city poet who received an honorary degree at the age of 100.

Maurice Rutherford, who was born in Albert Avenue in 1922, was among those bestowed with honorary degrees at a ceremony last summer.

Mr Johnson has now paid tribute to a poet he has dubbed “The Bard of Albert Avenue”.

He said: “Why was I unaware of Maurice Rutherford? I thought I knew about all the great Hull poets; those born in the city such as Andrew Marvell and Stevie Smith, and those who came here, most famously Philip Larkin, Andrew Motion and Douglas Dunn. But I’d never heard of Maurice Rutherford.

“Having read And Saturday is Christmas, an anthology taken from his many published books, I wonder even more why Maurice isn’t better known in his home town.

“Fortunately, he had a greater appreciation of the Hullensian approach to literary celebrity.

“In View From Hessle Road, he describes Larkin as ‘Old Bikeclips’ and imagines a typical Hessle Roader’s response to the Bard of Hull writing about them (‘Oozee?’). The Autumn Outings is a brilliantly constructed and biting (yet affectionate) parody of The Whitsun Weddings.

“Whether in his love poems (Love of an Autumn Afternoon) or his intimate understanding of working life (Ship’s Husband), Rutherford never disappoints and always entertains.

“Thankfully, this Bard of Albert Avenue hasn’t been discovered posthumously. In his centenary year Maurice Rutherford was made an honorary graduate of the University of Hull. I like to think that the university’s former librarian would have appreciated this belated association with another great craftsman of his art.”

Asked how he would like to be introduced when receiving his degree, Mr Rutherford, who is now 101, replied: “Well I was born at 101 Albert Avenue, what more is there to say…?”

Just a few years earlier, Mr Rutherford had a dream in which he received a degree in Hull, which he committed to sonnet: “My dream last night decked me in cap and gown, hoiked me away to Hull my native town.”

Mr Rutherford, who began writing poetry in his mid-50s, started his working life as a clerk at Hull Graving Dock. He fought in North Africa and Italy in the Second World War.

He married Olive on his return to Hull and spent most of his working life as a technical writer in the engineering and shipbuilding industry on both banks of the Humber.

He said he began writing poetry due to “the fact that I couldn’t write poetry and I needed to find out how. Because I’d been stung by somebody reading my work which I thought was very good and it was absolute c**ap. And he told me so.

“I went to the library and… I realised that you could get books that were about poetry writing… First: know the rules before you set about breaking them. Because if you know what the rules are and can break them still within the broader realms of poetry, then you’ve got something going for you”.

Praise from Carole Rumens and John Osborne was cited by presenting officer Dr Edmund Hurst, lecturer in creative writing, at his graduation ceremony.

He said: “There is in Rutherford’s oeuvre a fund of human sympathy, a generosity of spirit, that amounts to an unblinkered but sustained affirmation of life; what Larkin, in another context, described as ‘an enormous yes’. Maurice Rutherford is a poet of celebration. And today, we celebrate.”