✦ verse from West Yorkshire ✦

Ian Clegg Walsh
Poetry

Lyrical, reflective poems that grew out of a life
lived attentively — landscapes, memory, and the space between.

Read Poems

About ✒️

I started learning the rules of verse, then quickly abandoned them. These poems distracted me from my artistic endeavours for a while — and I am glad they did. Based in Batley, West Yorkshire, I work as a contemporary artist across monotype, oil painting, and experimental printmaking. The poems grow from the same impulse: close attention to the world as it actually is.

Poems 📖

Meadow
After tea we'll go let's leave the picnic behind. time will darken the skies it's a fair drive
Clover flexes and releases by some unknown life. cruise control holds us in lane
A hawk hovers and is so still until I grab my camera! this patch of ground is waiting for the collector
Down on your knees on an open mat a multitude of flowers. all the same, all unique, you and I were so different
I like to watch you happy and excited as you run after the butterflies. there's one you've never seen before
The meadow slopes so steeply when I run my legs struggle to keep up. I see your face from the side is there a garden as glorious?
Friends are not here family were not informed, just you and me and the bees. oh how we walk around not holding hands, butterflies and plants in summer sun
A Mess of Mars
A blurry mess of Mars. come close my love, keep that pink tongue inside, wigger denied
Last time there was an ice cap, we can't work it out New York, New York Olympus Mons a blurry mess of mars
Jupiter is okay, but outta sight I see old stars on a big screen feel no shame to cut and paste their fame, who put the 'M' in mars?
Chip chime mercifully tonight no corduroys. release the planets black square black keys sharps
We walked on Mars where we tuned our guitars cosmic man! unfortunately cosmic rays! mournful equipment never mind..
The Barnsley Engineer
Lathe your power on me turn and turn wet and cold you ride meanwhile the ginger's husband is snug between the sheets
Grey days out of the blue a zebra crossing. metal curls spiral down, seven degrees of everyday freedom
I'm not a man because I don't get to eat the steak. it won't be long son before the devil comes knocking at our tvc14 door
A lost memory wakes the smell of your overalls, metal and grease. the Barnsley Engineer Garellis all the way home. any one for egg and chips?
The bits they started to wander, concerns they spin and the filings flew. you've got a cheeky, upon it rolled your eye
The page turned so suddenly a fictitious chapter began, of UFOs and Alsatian dogs. condoms in your pocket dismay confidence!
You have no confidence she said, don't bother to come back he thinks. all this you can't grasp it's some geological period in the rocks at a time long gone
When no one answers the telephone he suffers, and the confident air you see as lacking, well to me it was quite disturbing
Stick with your fate you who had no mind of her own. is that what I found in a tin somewhere? bits and drills and rubber soles
A tragedy starts to unfold a man who worked hard to keep his family together, let down in a working town. not intentional it was centrifugal force man, myth and malice
Teen hormones potent as steel. the phone rings and rings and no one is collecting. the moor girl takes note the one true malevolent. you're an anvil, all the rest just slivers of metal flying around
What is it you make that makes us money are we so ungrateful? does anyone in that firm remember you? I'm not embarrassed, I'll watch her now
Those fine delicate adjustments, well they're no longer needed. just now those feet rise and turn
Heavy Rusted Steel
Do you fight? the night sky is so dark here. big dipper is hidden by clouds when are you coming around?
Blade of tongue old man! some of us have work to do when did the peacemaker call it a day?
Do you fight? I'm not about to apologise peck me on my cheek shudder and go when you leave
Pull a joke from a cracker grab too much to win win win see the light, when a colour plays by ear
go man give her what for! an offer she can't refuse when you're heavy rusted steel.

The Book 📚

Heavy Rusted Steel book cover
Heavy Rusted Steel
a first volume of poetry

Over 50 poems. 280 pages in PDF format. A collection of original poems — lyrical, reflective, and stubbornly unruly. Written alongside a life in art. A second volume is in the wings.

£3.99
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