Long 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...

Read More

IN THE BLUEBELL WOODS AT SHOTLEY BRIDGE

Shotley Bridge woods must  no longer exist
Though I looked for them often as an adult.

Eventually  I stopped looking fior the woods.
However, I often recalled them in my...

Read More

GOING     BACK



It  was not an endearing place, a storybook place
With little cottages and
Loaded fruit trees from which apples could be casually filched, 
Nor were there  sparkling streams for pushing...

Read More

THINGS    THAT    HATE    ME

Spaghetti,   for I don’t allow it to outrun my utensil
I chop it all to inch-long pieces then use my fork as...

Read More

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...

Read More

BUT   ESPECIALLY   EAST   LANSING


Cell phone with a woodywoodpecker ringtone;
Russian style  of guitar-playing with strummed beats;
Regina-Saskatoon red-eye with “collapsible” seats;
Getting a ticket for 2 minutes in a Lansing no-parking...

Read More

SEASONAL    PLACES


Spring is found in the Lowland valleys with gowan-filled braes of Scotland
When the early-reaching flowers bloom in cool freshness,  and
The air is bracing and always new-washed-glass clean  -
With the...

Read More

WHAT’S IN A NAME  ?


Who can ever define  what they really are? I‘m   . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . a….?
Even God wasn’t...

Read More

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...

Read More

FOUR   LOVE AFFAIRS

The French health food shop
Near Vasilyastrovskaya metro,
With a tiny patio garden bench   -
Fell in love there with the language of the French.
Closed now for property development.
 
Ironbridge Folk Club,
In...

Read More

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...

Read More

SHORT    TRIP   TO   CULLERCOATS  HEAVEN


Summer day in  Gateshead  grim
Go  with  limping  uncle John
Leave  the slums and  factories  dim.
Train to...

Read More

THE SOUND OF TOWNS


Announcing  my address in Gateshead
Usually started me feeling half dead.
The flames crackled as the Detroit  River  burned to Toledo
While my soft guitar chords echoed over  Rio de Janeiro.
But...

Read More

THE  OCEAN   OF  THE   CHILD  MIND

Mirage of shimmering hot air 
Between the bus stop 
And the newsagent's shop
Above the tarred road there. 

Saltwell  Park lake shipped
Me out...

Read More

TWO      ENGLANDS



                      Sinewy towns and men with tight muscles...

Read More

ONLY TWENTY  YEARS 

Who  can know the future of  twenty years
And discount the dim offerings of Gateshead?
What  12 year old can imagine
The emptiness of prairies in Montana
Or  smell from fifty...

Read More