Summat a bit different ... and thanks to Billy Butler

By Steve Regan on May 9, 09 01:39 PM

Wedding couple.jpg
MY pals Dicky Dunnit and Raven Smokieyes (pictured) are going to share their feelings of LURRRVVE for each other at the next Bards of New Brighton poets' and songwriters' evening.

Made of marzipan these newlyweds might be ... but they have soul.

Come join us Bards at our session on Monday 11 May, 8pm start, at the Magazine pub, Magazine Brow, New Brighton CH45 1HP.

If you have soul and want to share it, welcome. Come dazzle us with your poetry and feel the benediction of Magic Realism that pervades all of New Brighton.

When the poetry finishes at about 11pm some of us dart off to the nearby baroque late bar, Tallulah's lounge overlooking the Marine Lake and Fort Perch Rock.

Poets and songwriters are most welcome to come to the Bards and perform. Warning: we are not like other poetry groups!

New Brighton, eh? It's, well, it's like this...

The last resort and now I'm here.

I don't mind there isn't a pier,

That the place has gone somewhat queer.

And there's no tower.

Because where Mersey meets the sea,

Is still a much-loved place for me.

The lure of New Brighton you see,

Has such strange power.

- Thanks to the great Billy Butler for inviting me on to his BBC Radio Merseyside show on the day (Tue 5 May) when it was broadcast live from the Floral Pavilion, New Brighton.

I read three of my poems on the show, and have had most feedback (really quite a lot!) to this one called Backstreets of the Heart. It's about growing up in a redbrick terraced house.

Here it is ...

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.

Anyone wondering about the picture on this post? It features wee figurines atop a wesding cake. I took the photo though the window of a cake show in Chester a couple of weeks ago.