Author Archives: colinhopkirk

In Andalusia  tucked below  a mountain village there is a bridge a child has drawn. It’s span? No more than twenty steps across an icy torrent. A simple crossing for sheep and men  built with love from impossible trees.

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They detoured us  through side streets around the orange Mobylette the jackknifed truck Les prix bas! CARREFOUR the driver weeping at the kerb and somewhere in this little country town a cooling stove a swinging door.

I’ve been catching up on Ian Hamilton’s poetry. Lesser know as a poet, more as a sportswriter and journalist. Few poems for a lifetime of writing, but they’re diamonds. No padding, no rambling. You might give him a google and see what you think? Stay well, be safe, do good stuff.

After the long hot summer of rioting with cities in flames Bristol    Liverpool   Birmingham Nottingham  and the rest  we thought we’d have one too. On St. Giles Estate  four boys scaled a roof  to let off fireworks no one saw. It was mid-afternoon. In the City Centre around 4 pm there was evidence ofContinue reading “Lincoln Riots 1981”

The playground’s gone  where once I was a bird and flew  from long chained swings to land in a Sahara of sand. No paint-chipped monkey bars.  No jungle  where my evening gibbon-call could light a hundred windows. It’s cleaner now the flats are brilliant white and where the playground was is an oasis treed withContinue reading “A recent photograph of Wickrath flats”

At my third secondary school after two really shitty ones the first just dull the second frankly terrifying      feeling uncertain and different I began tapping the walls just between lessons in complex odds and evens a system of syncopated rhythm with its own internal logic like snail shells or Pi. Or Gene Krupa Continue reading “Internal Logic”

Today we harvested horseshoes  big as side-plates fists of limestone  shards of tile  blue and white crockery the bone handle  of an old eating knife  rusted bedsprings a tortoiseshell barrette and a tin of lead soldiers dead Hussars headless Dragoons riding broken horses You couldn’t plough them back they wouldn’t fit  not even in yourContinue reading “Harvesting”

Clouds plough the sky fast as steam trains The air is furious  devils raise dust  in the fields thrashed trees leaves turned inside out straining at the roots  hold on by letting go We walk in green lanes hedged safe  sheltered from the gale until the gate-gaps when all bets are off

Weaving lazy figures of 8  circling the empty concoursethe skater boyswho are young men glide through evening lightStripped to the waist sweat-sheened full of cocky pride they’re in the zoneSecurity guards arrivedrawn by the clack and rumbleof wheels on slabs the deep insistent boomof drum and bass exchanging glances they lean against the wall drop their jacketsloosen ties and smileWe are allContinue reading “Midsummer skaters at the University”