Tear up the lace
Adam Strickson
- ISBN:978-0-9558400-3-6
- Format:Paperback
- Published:March 2011
- RRP (UK):£6
Poems of strange loveliness illuminate lives drawn from the margins of British society and beyond, from teenage lovers kissing in Haworth churchyard to Ulysses taking an afternoon nap.
Trained at Dartington College of Arts (Theatre), Sunderland Polytechnic (Sculpture) and the University of Huddersfield (MA in Poetry), Adam is a poet, librettist and producer. He has worked as a freelance writer and as Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing (.4) in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds.
After an early career as a performer and maker with theatre companies like Horse and Bamboo and Satellite Arts, Adam co-founded Chol Theatre, the pioneering inter-cultural company based in Kirklees, and was artistic director for 13 years until 2002. He led projects throughout the north of England and in India and Bangladesh. He has written plays for the Oldham Coliseum, Peshkar Productions, Chol and an acclaimed trilogy for Burnley Youth Theatre. He has completed four writing and short film commissions for Integreat Yorkshire around regeneration themes.
In 2005, his first collection of poetry, An Indian Rug Surprised by Snow, was published by Wrecking Ball Press (Hull) and he was poet in residence at the Ilkley Literature Festival. In 2006, he was writer in residence for the town of Boston, Lincolnshire and in 2010 schools poet in residence for Bridlington Poetry Festival. He has won the Yorkshire Prize in the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition and has had a poem featured as 'podcast of the week' by 'Anon' and Scottish Poetry Library.
Adam regularly collaborates with composers and his opera, 'Green Angel', was premiered in Leeds in January 2011. His popular poetry readings are often accompanied by South Asian music.
Mr. Sunny
Suraj, my name, once sown in sweet corn heat, means 'sun',
a proper Yorkshireman, a good Kashmiri son.
With battered book in hand, back home from school I'd run
to drive the oxen, a ploughboy berried brown by sun.
And then this foreign home - unspoken rules: keep mum,
don't answer back, sweep dust and never see the sun.
In just a year, I gained a weaver's rapid thumb
and learnt this awkward tongue in bone-tired daytime sun.
I taught my friends our new home's words and spread my sun
among their bread bun roti, cool Bismillah sons.
By selling door to door in wind-blown streets, I've done
what we all hoped: grown shops and vans in English sun.
Now retired, I phone around and sort out everyone,
advise a bit of 'when in Rome' in different sun.
So why do some see hidden bombs and rattling gun
when this Halifax man roams the streets in showery sun?
If others ask what's in your homespun heart, Suraj,
don't speak of heavy rain; uncloud the sun.
He places his find in the rock cabinet
Joshua home-schooled
adds his cube stone
to plant furl stones basalts and granite
two ammonites from Jard-sur-Mare
and banded ironstone two billion years old
before oxygen before limbs fins rust
I watch him and think back
to Half Moon quarry on Foxcote Hill
my first find my belemnite
I chipped the mollusc spire from honey stone
rubbed it clean weighed the sea in my palm
ocean arrow sleek fossil
Devonian squid cuttlefish cousin
perfect swimmer from the Old Red Age
Joshua becomes motionless
stone bound
© 2011 Adam Strickson