Simon Williams, author, radio host and latterly poet, has been performing his poems around Greater Manchester to much acclaim, with seemingly a rhyme for every occasion. Now the Salford wordslinger has collated them all into an anthology of almost forty works, on subjects ranging from regeneration to romance...and everything in between.
The cover for My Salford: Poems From The Heart features kids running down a back alley, and this collection very much recalls those daze and all that has occurred since, with some history, John Cooper Clarke thrown in and more on the side...
'It is one of life's mysteries
Why I can't go down
In Poetry History
I have read
Wordsworth Tennyson Blake and Shelly
But the ones I like the best
Are on the Telly...'
Yay, there's humour in there...And, yay, there's anger in there too...
'Old Ordsall, Weaste and Langworthy all but gone
Councillors hang your heads in shame
what have you done
Social Cleansing of the highest degree
but there are plenty still here just like me...'
Add a bit of Willows and Salford Reds stuff...
'Will never forget the smell
at the side of the Shed
far too many Greenhalls
for them dressed in red
Moved us away,
out of town,
most of the fans now have a frown
Atmosphere gone
fans rocking no more...'
Add a pinch of sloppy lovey dovey stuff...a dollop of Peterloo...some tattoos, a bit of war, some homeless folk, lots of drink, drugs and rock n roll, and it gives a flavour of this collection...
But it's more than that Williams wears his Salford heart on his sleeve, and you can feel the back alley ambience and more than a touch of ire about what is happening to his city...
'Where has it all gone
As a dad
I said to my son
There was the Carlton Pictures
there were the docks
that was down Weaste
they now call them the Quays
yuppies and the BBC
councillors said 'Yes please!'
they sold the soul
ripped my city apart
how this breaks my heart...'
Anyone who wants a sniff of the Salford zeitgeist needs to read these words...
My Salford: Poems From The Heart
By Simon Williams
£4.50 from Amazon click here
To watch Simon Williams reading poems from the book see the YouTube Channel My Salford Poems click here
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