NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Set firmly in his native north-east BIG BELLA'S DIRTY CAFÉ has universal resonances. His many readings in and around Newcastle have established him as both a popular and necessary poet, as have his music collaborations with Dave Hull-Denholm.

The key, to this, his second collection, is to be found in his direct, no bullshit approach to poetry. Telling it as it is in OCTOBER SONG where he revels in his own childhood nostalgia finding evocative lines like:

	old archie wets a conker with his spit
	& polishes it to a racehorse sheen

	we were deranged looking,
	ragged kids in badly fitting blazers,
	all skinhead & broken nose,
	segged brogues & Jam badges.

	wants to be a beachcomber
	on some lonely coast 
	debs saw him in the library—
	the library! Searching for Tahiti
 
	dan saw him yesterday, crouched
	on the pier, staring hard at the long
	horizon, hunting the curve, knowing
	that somewhere in the sea's grey haze
	the lost arc is cradled by blue.

	stormclouds steal impotent light of shrinking days
	the hiss of prospero's bitter spells in requiem dirge

	it is the type of afternoon
	a man could paint himself grey
	become invisible.

	over denwick,the sun,a burst yolk
	sitting its gilt on dampened wheat,
	pinting sapphires on the magpie's flanks

	cold basalt whalebacks on the beach
	a lime-washed tern surfing the thermals
	& caedmon's porly host sipping mead
	finding philosophy in the movement of the dunes,
	bernicia's surrendered forts, fading cup stains
	herding their summits like busy collies

	the stuttering corpse whispers a ballad,
	conjures memories, bruised with dirt.

	old man
	is dying of something he cannot spell

	There are no pockets on a shroud

	outside & above, sky, the colour of failure
 
	grey boughs recoil & leaves submit
 
	the worst mask ever made,the most futile.