Location: Along the canal between the town and the playground at Pooley Country Park.
Brickmaking Remembered
Sonorously ring you truly fired bricks,
fit harmoniously the builder's hand.
Bond English, Flemish, stretcher, header, bat,
plain or diapered spring the craftsman's trowel.

Clay, mute, heavy, viscid, overlying
older seams of coal, narrow-bladed spades,
gloved by iron fists, dug from shallow pits
in winter's harsh chill for use next summer.

Itinerant families once made bricks
locally wherever needed, hand pressed
in beech moulds, and fired with logs in clamp kilns,
their red heat glow lighting seven evenings.

Behemoth brickworks, dusty, dirty, hot,
noisy, polluting, ousting itinerants.
Industrialisation, mechanisation,
transformation.  Life's clay is remoulded.

Cold mists of bitter competition quenched
Polesworth's kilns in nineteen seventy one.
In their place, new bricks, new homes created.
Brickworks remembered; Kiln Way, Ensor Drive.


Peter Grey
Pooley Hall
Burdened under its own weight
remaining walls hunch tight,
glimpsed.

No hunting hounds howl, nor boars squeal,
words of war, knaves and knights lie
unheard.

Collapsed seams groan no more, exhausted.
The Plover's wings flutter where  Kings’ Standards once flew,
only morning dew offers the hint of a glint of Cockayne’s sword,
its simple truth vanquished in mortal duel.

The Hall finds its place and
takes its turn.


Gary Longden
Unrippled
It's nesting time. Sun has unloosed the clouds
so they've bobbed to rest on water.
I stand and stare as swans search the canal banks,
looking, like me, for silver linings;
their elegant necks bowed in prayer,
or looped in a giant question mark.

I wonder how many others have trodden this ground;
clothes daubed with clay, boots Pooley Pit black.
Do I share footprints with the abbey's medieval nuns,
John Donne or cyberpoets yet to come?
And do I ponder the same things: the whos, hows
and whys that hoot like owls in the night?

A swan stops; lifts slightly, flaps angel wings.
I unloose my worries in the bird's wake,
hear it fold away ruffled feathers
to a heart on its back.
Still water returns my reflection unrippled
as sunlight swims in through the senses.


Sarah James
Women's Memories Of Mining Menfolk
Black coal – Black blood – Black water – Black clothes.
​
Us women have black blood in our veins and “miners’ smell” filling our nostrils,
memories as bright as fires banking our chimneys, drying clothes, keeping us warm.

When the pit-buzzer signalled the end of a shift we waited for our men to come home,
searching eyes scoured streets if late.  Fear. Fatalities. Broken hearts. Relief.

Hot water was ready in a tin bath by the fire, in the causey or back yard in summer,
pit coal-dust scrubbed off with carbolic soap, sweat and grime poured down the drain.

When pit baths were opened to everyone’s relief, we still washed black, filthy clothes,
soaked them for days but still grime remained, until the coal board offered a service.

On washdays, in black overalls over everyday aprons, pit clothes were washed first;
then whites - boiled, blue-bagged, starched, pegged out to dry, ready to be ironed.

Sandwiches for snap time were packed in snap tins to keep out hungry pit-mice,
lard, homemade dripping, cheese or jam filled the bread - but sausages on a birthday.

We sewed, knitted to make ends meet, made Sunday’s joint last through till Thursday.
Allowance coal, tipped out the front, was barrowed round to store in the coal house.

Children helped mums make colourful peg-rugs cutting strips till fingers ached,
Clothes used were replaced from jumble sale bargains or suitable hand-me-downs.

Our men gave us their wages each week, money back for Saturday night at the club,
once a year they had a day at the races, wives and children to Blackpool or Skegness.

We miss our way of life since the pit closed down, community spirit, galas, days out,
but our memories are alive as dancing flames and black blood still flows in our veins.


Dea Costelloe