Three Poems from the Archives of Poetry North East

Your Words

your words like echoes across an empty carpark,

torturing the trees that made us sleep,

     lost pines, scenting the evening

     falling secrets from your wet mouth.

your words like small whips against my back,

swaying in the dead music,

     a harmony of sour wine,

     shines, and stands up to boast.

your words like raindrops against cracked windows,

seeping quietly through my loud skull,

     the virgin and the widow within

     can only tell me of love.

your words like marching ghosts from their graves,

tearing hearts with invisible hands

     a clash of dark weapons beneath the sand,

     the smile vanishing quickly into space.

your words come and go like passing ships,

slotting into violent grey seascapes,

     impossible pathways, twisting back the head

     to see the last movement of lips.

your words

your words will live forever

     as soon as I see what you say.


                                        Paul Harland


Sunset In Chopwell Woods



The sun is balanced on the straight edge

Of a distant hill;

A filmed dancer in tip-toe pose

She collapses into herself

With slow serenity

Like a moving picture

Whose projection has slowed.



And last left

Is a curved lip of light

And the afterflow

When the audience flows

With delight to applaud

And the curtains close

On a perfect show.


                                        Wendy Zoula



Visitation (Leazes Park)



In the early chapter of a mid-winter’s day

only the bird-choirs erase

the stillness of trees.



Something moves and you consider.



With this existence evolves the judgement

of thought

after the acceptance of memory.



                                        Gordon Phillips





Demolition of Sunderland Town Hall


Such a building as you were

Demands an epitaph

As much as sealed copies of The Times,

Sovereigns and musty ideas of the future

They launched you with a century ago.

Your citizens won’t miss you,

Though you were their Hall,

To a stranger – well

It happens all the time.

Another hotel? What the hell,

We live in suitcases,

Who needs pillars?

The bells hanging from the end of a crane

Toll surprisingly deep, rhythmic, unnoticed.


                                        Michael Standen