YOUR POEMS

Written to support Derby’s bid for City of Culture 2025. Culture: ambition of an alchemist; mixture in a Petri dish: all of this and more.

See the metamorphosis of inner-city streets and hidden places, where spray-can Canalettos light the darkness.

Discover it here: seek the hidden gems of them that are forgotten or overlooked by the mainstream. Dare to dream. Inspire a city.

Beat-box Binge and do the Wright thing: paint it; hear it; speak it; sign it; rhyme it anytime it shouts out screaming like a backstreet muse, waiting to get out.

Amusements arcades in gaudy hues, callout tunes in ring-a-ding win or lose.

Far removed from verdant parks where concrete marks the place of long-lamented bandstands.

Pity those who kick the Petri dish, until it lands face-down to reveal the mixture turned solid gold.

Largely untold; undersold until now: our story; our time.

The world, turned upside down by Our Industrial Revolution; Our Enlightenment.

Culture: here and now in this place, in every face you see or touch.

Here it begins. Again.