SCHOOL SMELL
Composed of chalk dust, Pencil shavings and The sharp odour Of stale urine; It meets me now and then Creeping down a creosoted corridor Or waiting to be banged With the dust from piles
ENTANGLEMENTS
Why is it that in dreams I have visited – As teacher or pupil – almost every college and school In our once so green and pleasant land? Hardly a subject from art to
LEEDS 2002
What ghosts haunt These streets of perpetual night? Riverbanks fractured with splinters of glass condominiums For nouveam riche merchant bankers Black-tied bouncers man clubland glitz casinos Novotel, Valley Park Motel, the Hilton: Hot tubs,
Bridge Over The Aire Book 3
THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART 1 The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you? I am the mad
ASYLUM SEEKERS
When Blunkett starts to talk like Enoch Powell I think of Harold Wilson’s statue in Huddersfield Station Caught striding forward, gripping his pipe in his pocket, Hair blowing in the wind. Could we but
TO MARGARET, UNFORGOTTEN
Two nights I have dreamed of you Once as an adolescent, evanescent Yet tangible still to the spirit’s touch, Then as a ten year old in the shared Secret garden of our imagination.
WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE
I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written
MY ONLY VALENTINE
Your voice on the telephone Hushes the storm in my heart Lightning strikes twice In the same place. I cannot picture your face No photograph, no keepsake, No letters scented with your smile, No
MY PERFECT ROSE
At ten she came to me, three years ago, There was ‘something between us’ even then; Watching her write like Eliot every day, Turn prose into haiku in ten minutes flat, Write a poem
INCOMPATABILITIES
For Brenda Williams La lune diminue; divin septembre. Divine September the moon wanes. Pierre Jean Jouve Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce: This is one September I shall not forget. The
Bridge Over The Aire Book 1
AGAINST THE GRAIN “Oxford be silent, I this truth must write Leeds hath for rarities undone thee quite.” – William Dawson of Hackney, Nov.7th 1704 “The repressed becomes the poem” Louise Bogan 1 Well