Author: Harry Gallagher

Charmed as children, we follow the river
and fall across a fairytale

A salute to you sir,
from one human to another.

It didn’t begin with uniform wearers,
armband bearers; that’s just where it ended,
with proud keyholders
to blandly wicked gas chambers.

Hoist the flag over the food banks,
tell the world just who we are,
paint the breakfast clubbing hungry kids
red, white and blue;
then snap them all in two
to check they’re British through and through.

Little fishingboats, like minnows
around the Nissan ship’s leviathan,
skim the sea’s silver top coat as they
skate into the hungry rivermouth.

The blackbird on our fence
is protesting freely
across several keys
about excess competition
in this morning’s song contest

She came in peace to reclaim the night,
with her sisters, a candle and a thimble of hope,
which wept itself out under flashing blue lights.

Striplight eyed, Eve tumbles out
to mourning’s waking arms,
home to bed’s hollow belly,
the longnight’s deadweight
gushing from her soul
into the pillow’s soft shoulder.

For all the zipped-up body bags,
for carrying your country without pause,
for tending all those beds,
for tending to our dead
you get 1% and a round of applause.

My original home town, Middlesbrough, built a couple of hundred years ago from nothing and peopled by outsiders from all over the world who came to work, has been home to many different cultures for as long as I can remember. Over recent years, somehow the football club attracted a fan from London, Yusuf Jama, […]

One soon sunny day,
hugging will make a comeback.

This is what hope looks like,
two wee cinnamon dots
clutching mom’s hand tight,
peering out at the wide, wide world
through childish curtseys and wonder,
not stopping to think about
white hooded badmen
now drowning in shame.

That everyone could see
we are all ants scurrying
round the palm of a sometime
benevolent mountainside.

There are moments profound,
tissues all round, talk of hope, coping strategies.

The North, chipped and scavenged in these standing stone days, does not fall asunder nor domino down in sight of barber surgeons with their slingshots, chippings. Long abraded by high seas, we stack lean as limestone, holding our breath like we have held our noses, impassive in the face of this flitting ephemera. We Danelaw […]

From Peterloo to Tolpuddle, Jarrow to Orgreave, there’ll be no further uprisings today sir, we read the press, know what to believe. The daily tales spin an almighty weave about who’s to blame, wouldn’t you say sir from Peterloo to Tolpuddle, Jarrow to Orgreave. We’ve learned when to smile, when to grieve and follow our […]

But the children of Albion
are English to their bones,