Spotlight on Andrew Smith

Each month at Kulturá we feature one of our Open Mic poets on the blog.
July's Spotlight fell on Andrew Smith.


















Andrew is resident of Queensbury on the Halifax/Bradford border. A diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome at the age of 41 has not stopped him from pursuing a love of writing poetry, monologues and short stories. He is a regular performer on the Calderdale poetry circuit and combines his love of writing with a love of fell running.

I Run

Because the sun shines high in a clear blue sky

Because leaves rustle in the cooling breeze
Awaken sleepy birds from their daydream

Because dew raising through the morning mist
Moistens my dry lips and I can breathe again

Because the cat meows making the dog bark
And the mouse runs under the skirting board

Because the children play in parks and fields
Unaware that I am even there or even exist

Because the gravestones stand to attention in formation
All proudly displaying names, dates and family history

Because the artist does not care as he paints with madness
The blue sky black and the stream running into the sky

Because cars stop and start, go left, go right
Backwards and forwards in a multicolour ribbon of metal

Because they are there, everywhere I go, every single day
Every single night, wherever I go they are there

Because girls stand on street corners smoking and drinking
While boys ride motorbikes down back alleys

Because four walls encase me leaving me lifeless,
Soulless, motionless, breathing in stale air drenched with sweat
Through walls thick with yesterday’s newspaper headlines

Because every hour of every day it is there and I am here
Listening intently as it calls me constantly, never ending
Like a wolf howling in the night for me to come and kiss it
And feel its breath enter my body and touch my soul.

© Andrew Smith

Spotlight On Eileen Earnshaw

Each month at Kulturá we feature one of our Open Mic poets on the blog.
June's Spotlight fell on Eileen Earnshaw.

Eileen Earnshaw photograph by Pyramid Arts

Eileen is a Rochdale writer and poet who facilitates the Weaving Words Creative Writing Group at Rochdale Central Library and appears frequently at poetry and spoken word events across Lancashire and Yorkshire.  She is a leading member of Rochdale Co-operative Members Group and spearheaded the Reading The Century series of poetry projects and events to mark the Gallipoli Centenary.

Saddleworth Moor

The devil rides over Saddleworth Moor.
Rocks melt with the pain of his passing,
turn brackish, mud sucks, claggs, clings to trouser legs.
Trees are stunted, moss and lichen blackened.
Heather, lifeless lies in putrid swathes,
an infected haematoma.
Oblivious, the curlew calls,
sheep huddle close, draw warmth from each other,
lifting their heads, crying.

The devil rides over Saddleworth Moor,
thunder roars, pounces, valley to ridge
to bruised black clouds that strike
with electric intensity, pissing their contents
on sodden ground. Moor grime slides,
schemes its way into hearts, minds.
Sinews stiffen, muscles slacken, resolution dies.
There are no dreams on Saddleworth,
just desires that crash, burn in unseen chasms.

Visions, a childish form lost beneath the earth,
a wind that screams its agony
against evil, the cruelty of men.
The devil rides over Saddleworth Moor.
He has left his mark, diminished us.

© Eileen Earnshaw November 2014.

Spotlight On Michael Conley

Michael Conley was our feature poet in June.

Michael Conley is a teacher from Manchester. His work has been published in a variety of magazines, including Magma, Rialto, Interpreters House, Bare Fiction and New Welsh Review. He came third in he 2014 Bridport Flash Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Melita Hume Prize.

Aquarium, published by Flarestack, is his first pamphlet.

Elizabeth Bishop Knew 

how love lurks behind everything
the way a vague ache might squat just behind the eyes
of a longshoreman who woke at four-thirty
and has spoken to nobody all day
the tips of his fingers glowing white
as he grips crate after crate
dreaming that the sea breeze
at the back of his neck is the breath of a sleeping lover;

that there is tenderness even
in the cold slap of fish guts
hitting the bottom of a bucket
in the cathode-ray light
of a Northeastern midwinter morning
a volley of herring-gulls flickering overhead.

Evan Jones

Evan Jones was our Guest Poet in May.

"Canadian poet Evan Jones has lived in Manchester since 2005. He is the author of Paralogues (Carcanet, 2012) and was co-editor of the anthology, Modern Canadian Poetry (Carcanet, 2010)."

Cavafy in Liverpool, by Evan Jones

Here is your sad young man:
he is ship-to-shore, he is buttoned-down
in tweed and scarved, eyes closed
when the Mersey wind
calls his collar to his ear
on the strand near Albert Dock,
some January, some winter day
we recognise but take no part in.
Here is your boy at the end of the shore
while the waters continue
touching place and nothing,
hold something dear and don't,
the desire and devotion
to an island he never dreams.
Not summoned, not answered,
he searches the world growing dim
as the river swells and recedes,
like closed eyelids shifting during sleep.
One less wave, he thinks, one less,
and then the Persians can get through.

(from Paralogues, Carcanet)

Spotlight on Steve Ely

 Steve Ely was our Guest Poet at Kulturá in April.

"Steve Ely is a poet from the West Riding of Yorkshire. His book of poems, Oswald's Book of Hours, is published by Smokestack and was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2013 and the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry in 2014. Englaland, his second book of poems, was published in April, 2015, also by Smokestack. His novel, Ratmen, is published by Blackheath Books. Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire: Made In Mexborough, a biographical work about Hughes's neglected Mexborough period, will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in July 2015."

Etcetera, by Steve Ely

Great Britain impoverished to post-war prosperity:
everyone working, but nobody earning and nothing
to buy. Capital needed Labour for its unsocial
dirty work, but the natives wouldn't shift or shovel shit.
Jamaica & subcontinent took up the White Man's Burdens.
Race-rioting Teds, half-devil and half-child; Mosley,
that infantile Satan, master of puppets. Elite psychology
of fascism: malleable masses dependably deployable in the service
of their masters, to know - and keep - their place. Send them back!
Roman foreboding largely unwarranted. It naturalised
to jargon - multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith
- and reality on the ground, common humanity working
its warmcockle nostrums. People simply got used to it,
to each other, cordially embracing, ignoring or hating.
A provisional peace of geniality and ghettos,
subject to periodic eruption. I was born to this.
The young know nothing else. This is England.

(from Englaland, Smokestack Books)

Spotlight on John Foggin

John Foggin   was our Guest Lecturer in April 2015.

"John lives in Ossett, West Yorkshire. He has been a teacher, lecturer and LEA Adviser for Drama and English. he has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Leeds, but learns much more from The Poetry Business and all the poets he has met there. His poems have appeared in 'The North', 'The New Writer', and 'The Interpreter's House', among others. He was First Prize winner in the Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition (2014) and of The Plough Prize (2013). His first collection of poems , a chapbook: 'Running out of Space' was published in April 2014, and his second, Larach was published by Wardwood in November 2014."

Bric a Brac, by John Foggin

My one grandmother made roses
out of paper, wrote nasty letters
with a fountain pen and violet Quink.
She had a tasseled, velour tablecloth
whose colours changed and flowed
like barley in a breeze: green and purple,
port-wine red like the teardrop flasks
in chemists shops. And the paperweight.
It filled both my hands. A cool glass lozenge.
Like holding water if water could be still.
I liked its smoothness, and the aquatint
of Blackpool Tower inside. The spidery
rollercoaster, delicate Big Wheel.
I can turn it in one hand.
The colour's faded - merest pinks, blue-greys.
Stopped somewhere between wars and out of reach
it grows remote and pale, The Pleasure Beach.

(from Backtracks)