Before the Clocks Struck Three (Mr. Eliot Had an Apparition in Salford and It Was Very Foggy) Salford is the rainiest place, getting Inside my shoes, wetting Tired feet in undarned socks. Yesterday, before the clocks Struck three, three old horses Munched wet grass Among the relics Of Clifton’s Wet Earth Colliery: Which on reflection, Were beautiful objects Of rust, time and toil. Fog swirls, curls Around the clock tower, The quays, the trees —

The Art of Seeing: Visions of Manchester The seventeen works presented below originate from black-and-white photographs I captured across Greater Manchester many years ago. Through digital brushes and filters, these images have been reimagined and transformed, shifting from documentary records into expressive artworks. Each piece reflects both the architectural memory of place and the creative act of refashioning, where the familiar urban landscape is rendered anew in color,

Image: 'A grey day on the Mersey' by Radarsmum67 (Wikimedia) Cast Iron Shore (the 'Cazzy') Where the river of tranquillity meets the lake of fire, There arises a bronze sea, from which headless Monsters of bad dreams emerge onto the Cast Iron Shore. Amazing how many broken ships run aground, all rusted And kelped by the red water. Saint Michael looks down, Amidst battlements and parapets, a sword in hand, ready to scrap.

A Skein of Black Water A Skein of Black Water The moon appeared to float on a skein of black water and a wind sang a high pitch B, 246.94 Hertz. And something else – a distant police car? Or a muffled bell tolling the lost river Dene?

The North Is Rain strikes terraces stacked in brown brick And wind blows through the underpass. Two fat-breasted pigeons Fly over York Minster; a single seagull Squats in Speke. I’m out there burying neolithic arrowheads On Kersal Moor & freshwater shrimping In the Irwell, or I’m cruising Upriver, crazy as a Lune & sauntering A Sunday Through Morecambe Bay, my bat-black cape Flapping all the way to Whitby Abbey. Of note is tonight’s Full fr

Night Sketches Over Lytham St Annes, Liverpool and Leeds, Manchester too, there's a full moon in white light suspended and all tonight’s stars are out, wannabe stars on dirty side-streets in designer gear, in dirty black cabs on dirty black roads. Drive too fast brother and you don’t see a cat’s green eyes rub past the dustbins; or a fox ethereal in light electric, sniffing a chicken bone. High on pleasure of the sensuous kind, they go on, each

Lancaster bleached by rain – a wet wind blows through a line of washing. Fog frost, petrol odour, urban towertops vanish in the aerial grey

Death on the Pennines To live this hour beneath a cold Pennines sun requires the dead hills to flow behind us. To see the mighty crow and not look back means the death of something strange. We twist and turn. Shadows drape over us – ugly cloaks of lies that suit nobody. We are mired in bloody hearts. The crow comes, picks at the pieces. I am that crow, that symbol of death. I am the one that turns over corpses and flies away.

Time and Rust Fog swirls, curls around vans, cars, slips ghostlike through bare branches. A neighbour snorts into a handkerchief made (he says) from Greengate cotton. “Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of the Wet Earth Colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.”

Relics Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of an abandoned colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.

The Irwell - a river poem Rock-solid ground loosens, shifts to liquid, slips fast away beneath my feet. The water dreams of boats, of willow banks, not a foul stream of refuse but a seam alive with freshwater shrimp, roach, and brown trout. A mallard halts — strums his feathers, beats the air into rhythm, poised to rise above this stretch, this blue-lined artery we call the River Irwell.

the air is raspberry sweet it swarms with wings

A mallard stops, strums His feathers, beats his wings, Ready to fly over this stretch Of blue-lined water