Best Gateshead Poems

These steep hills are part of me
Where I learned to ride a bike
And gazed over the industrial haze
And ice-dammed the steep melting  streets
So the toy boat couldn’t
Drift out of control downslope.

Now,  like snow  in  June  -
Uninvited, unwelcome, unmanageable,
Smothering crocuses and...

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GATESHEAD  1954


My home’s  between vinegar factory
And a small-time scrap metal dealer
This town   is  an ugly and  grimy
Industrial place - and it doesn’t get any realer

Like rich woman next door to a poor  one
Newcastle’s  ashamed of her dowdy...

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GATESHEAD    MUSIC



Not a storybook place of rhymes and chimes of bells 
My childhood England was dark  and dirty, 
And instead of the skirl of bagpipes or the weeping fiddle, 
There were factory sirens     
And clashing steel loads...

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GOING  HOME  IN  GATESHEAD  1952


Boy and mother walking home.
Sounds  muffled,  closed  intimate silence.  It was snowing.

Street  lamps’  light of warm orange   blazed a trail 
Of modern life across the sorry, inner city of...

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