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Famous Clearance Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Clearance poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous clearance poems. These examples illustrate what a famous clearance poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...jolly deep chest,
But who argues now on appearance?
A blow or a thrust or a stumble at best
May send me to-day to my clearance.
Then it's heigho for the things I love,
My mother 'll be soon wearing sable,
But give me my horse and my dog and my glass,
[Pg 49]And a bright eye over the table.
...Read more of this...



by Tebb, Barry
...On a May morning

Puts the road back

Forty years.





19



The Bridgewaters and the Falmouths

Are scheduled for clearance

The word has gone out

From the City Fathers

In the Council Chamber

To the City Engineer

The last photograph ever

Has been taken by order

Half the houses boarded up

Half with chimneys smoking.





20



Grass is growing

Between the cobbles

Clotheslines are empty

The props have fallen

Our mams raised up

Like a draw-bridge

For the c...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...on the move, half the neighbours

To the new estates or death, newcomers with

Rough tongues from over the bridge slum clearance.

A drive-in Readymix cement works bruised the Hollows,

Ellerby Lane School closed, St Hilda’s bulldozed.

The trams stopped for good after the Coronation Special

In purple and gold toured the city’s tracks and

The red-white and blue on the cake at the street party

Crumbled to dust and the river-bank rats fed on it

Like Miss Haversham’...Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...ain. The guns on tripods; 
the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating 

data about you, waiting for the squawk 
of clearance; the marksman training down 
out of the sun upon you like a hawk. 

And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed, 
as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall 
on the black current of a tarmac road 

past armor-plated vehicles, out between 
the posted soldiers flowing and receding 
like tree shadows into the polished windscreen....Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...on the move, half the neighbours

To the new estates or death, newcomers with

Rough tongues from over the bridge slum clearance.

A drive-in Readymix cement works bruised the Hollows,

Ellerby Lane School closed, St. Hilda’s bulldozed.

The trams stopped for good after the Coronation Special

In purple and gold toured the city's tracks and

The red-white and blue on the cake at the street party

Crumbled to dust and the river-bank rats fed on it

Like Miss Haver...Read more of this...



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