Yesterday was National Poetry Day; late again.

I was browsing in a bookshop today and picked up a book of poetry, by Seán O'Brien. £12.99 for the proverbial slim volume, no danger of my acquiring a copy. I'll look for it in the library.
One of the poems listed was called 'Cahiers du cinéma', a phrase of some weight to one with a predilection for the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In fact the poem was about afternoons spent at the cinema in younger days. As Professor O'Brien's boyhood and youth were spent in Hull ( I knew his dad, we didn't get on), references to the city are sometimes found in his work, and so it was in this case. A mention of the Criterion picture house, 'Cri', in this case.

"Above the gulfs and Thrones and Dominations of the grim Criterion
I wondered at the vast occluded system of the secondary stars,"

also

"Arriving in the middle I could always leave when I came in,
Collapsing time into the image of an arrow shower
Curving out of sight, as in The Charge at Feather River –
Modernism, yes, but this was Hull: no 3-D specs for us."

Yep, nothing but the second best for us second-class citizens.

The whole poem is here on the net, the source of these quoted lines.