Bloom Town

 'Bloom Town', published by Yew Tree Press, is my first collection of serious poetry. I explore a wide variety of aspects of my home county, Shropshire, lifting the lid on some of it's many intriguing secrets.

The overall approach is predominantly pastoral in feel and yet there is an urban flavour to this first volume, hence the title, which is taken from my piece set in Shrewsbury, Shropshire's medieval county town. The poem Bloom Town describes Shrewsbury's park and the sunken garden known as the Dingle (a repurposed quarry pit, often referred to as the Quarry). Some of my earliest childhood memories were formed in this evocative Victorian landscape and I am drawn back there constantly.

Locations covered also include the Iron Bridge Gorge, Lyth Hill, the Long Mynd, Wellington, Dawley, Badger, Wenlock Edge, Acton Scott, Bridgnorth, Uffington, Newport, Allscott, Ludlow, Alberbury, the Wrekin and Wem.

Shropshire like any other county in the UK is a rich vein for the poet, having been historically overwritten many times in terms of landscape, architecture and culture. The area is bisected by the Britain's longest river, the Severn, embracing moorland and peak reaching as high as seventeen hundred feet, and more often than not, crowned with the familiar ring ditch configuration of the enigmatic Celtic hill fort. The plains are equally dramatic, irrigated by rich water ways, meres and mosses -  home to a spectacular population of wildlife.

Bloom Town takes a tour of the landscape, stopping to muse on Shropshire's industrial and literary heritage. There are some famous names; 1930s long distance flyer, Amy Johnson who flew gliders on the Long Mynd, Mary Webb well known for her Hardyesque novels and exquisite poetry, Percy Thrower, the most memorable face of the BBC's Gardener's World program - he was the second presenter from 1969 to 1976, and of course the poet Philip Larkin who spent his first three formative working years at the Walker Street Library in Wellington, a place where I also spent many page thumbing hours as a teenager.

Bloom Town is illustrated with my own pencil sketches, some drawn on location others relying on an ever increasing photographic archive. I've tried to hint at things rather than depict too broadly, zooming in on detail in the same way that I hope the verses do.

This volume has 32 pages, is staple bound in silk finished stiff card and contains 21 poems with 21 accompanying monochrome graphite drawings. The water colour cover design uses a Rampion or Rapunzel flower (campanula rapunculus) as a motif and reflects Shropshire's county colours, Yellow-gold and dark blue.

Bloom Town can be ordered directly from Yew Tree Press (just hit the link on my website) or if you have a UK address, you can request a signed copy via bardsleyart@gmail.com, price £6.50 + £1.20 UK p&p. You can also pay via Paypal to the above email.

The Squatters Cottage, currently re-erected on a new site at the Iron Bridge Gorge museum.

 Squatters

We love to put ourselves there,

stooping over humility’s threshold,

drawn to the fire inside.

It does us good – life on a human scale;

two rooms, an eight out of nine survival rate -

notable for the time.

A family content to survive

beneath stones and boughs,

safe in each others arms,

counting themselves wealthy,

imagining themselves free.