A chance to lift all our moods

And talking of time marching on, it is almost exactly two years to this month that I started the Bards of New Brighton poets' group - now expanded to include a few singers.
It was April 2007 that we held our first meeting in the cosy snug bar of the Ginny in New Brighton.
Of course, that pub closed suddenly (though almost as quickly it reopened under new mangers) so we Bards had to find a new home for our monthly meetings.
Out new gaff turned out to be the old back folk music / dining room of the Magazine pub in New Brighton.
If you haven't tried the Bards yet I do urge you to come along ... it sure beats watching the crap that's on the telly these days.
As you'd expect at a New Brighton gathering, the poems have a lot of passion and quite a bit of eccentricity. There is also a fair bit of soul, philosophy and humour in our readings.
These Bards nights are very uplifting of one's mood - and I think we need that in these straightened times filled with great anxiety.
The meetings nearly always have the fine local singer Dave Gilbey also in attendance - as well as poets from across the Wirral and beyond (from places as exotic as Liverpool, Runcorn and Warrington).
The next meeting is on Monday, 13 April 2009, starting at 8pm. Admission is free. Please do come. You'd be very welcome.
As a sample of what's on offer here is a new poem of mine that I will be reading at the next meeting....
Backstreets of the heart

Terraced houses, home and hearth,
They used to limit my ambitions;
Now they sharpen my horizons,
Make me love that I belonged
To something so good.
Gladly will I dwell among them still.

Each day I see back yard walls
From my kitchen window,
And there the cats patrol
Like restless, homesick legionaries
On the ramparts of Chester
Two thousand years ago.

Dirty red bricks in the westering sun;
God has provided no beauty quite like them.
Of the earth, crafted by men,
Anointed by fire;
Their power binds me to a culture
That some would throw away. Not me.

For millions of us, the unloved,
The beloved, northern English,
Red-brick terraced homes
Are sacred to our memories.

Even in their boarded up,
Wrecked, disrespected senescence
The ghosts of past glories
Dance down drug-raddled alleys.

These were ...
These are...
The backstreets of our hearts,
The bedrock of our identity