Author: Barry Tebb

I Through my bedroom window The coal carts jolted over the cobbles A slow heavy rhythm full, Light and fast […]

There was a hope for poetry in the sixties And for education and society, teachers free To do as they […]

Pulled from a life some leaves in evergreen Or dressed like fragrant crinoline draped Over shadows by di Chirico, stolen […]

(To Paul Sykes, author of ‘Sweet Agony’) He demolished five doors at a sitting And topped it off with an […]

I had a father once, the records say. He has gone away down the long avenue Of death, on the […]

Poems do not always satisfy the soul, The feel of cobbles underfoot is at this moment more Than all of […]

Rivers, tow paths, caravan parks From Kirkstall to Keighley The track’s ribbon flaps Like Margaret’s whirling and twirling At ten […]

Sorry, I almost forgot, but I don’t think Its worth the effort to become a Carcanet poet With my mug-shot […]

In sleep I dream the gratitude I know I cannot say Now you are in a latitude where palm trees […]

THE WALK TO THE PARADISE GARDENS 1 Bonfire Night beckoned us to the bridge By Saint Hilda’s where we started […]

It was like chucking-out time In a rough Victorian pub Cherubic Dylan was first to go Lachrymose but with a […]

I am waiting for the sky to flower Like poems in a winter mind: And yet they come, maybe trailing […]

Just a family get-together in a terrace house in Bradford High tea with a few stuffy aunts I hadn’t seen […]

As milled silver I was welcome In every gutter, tinkling over cobbles I rang the truth loudly on solid-oak counters […]

I never did fit in – at six or sixty one – I stand out in a crowd, too young […]

I thought of my ‘faculty of poetry’ As of the eye The bream or white-bait showed In its hysterical dance […]

I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY […]

For Barbara I step off the pavement Like a precipice Engage the darting sunshafts In a duel In the wall’s […]

To Thushari Williams Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us Will never be forgotten, the long days you […]

Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors […]