Here is some bumf on my newest collection from Red Squirrel Press

I KNOW THEIR FOOTSTEPS

Tom Kelly was born in Jarrow and now lives happily up the Tyne at Blaydon. This is his seventh collection and sixth published by Red Squirrel Press.

I Know Their Footsteps tells of Kelly’s home town of Jarrow and his family: father, mother and grandparents, desperately seeking love. He displays an honesty and directness for a past that for Kelly is never past.
Reviews of his most recent collection The Time Office-New and Selected Poems
Kelly’s work is rooted in his native north-east, especially Jarrow, where he was brought up. His short, spare pieces speak in a direct, unfussy voice and Kelly continues to excel when he is fusing emotion and location, a wonderful alchemy that touches on a range of experiences common to us all…. From harrowing tales of POW camps retold through a father’s letter to his children, to aphoristic pieces written in the broad Geordie dialect, Kelly is a versatile writer. Taken together, these poems are a raw, direct assault on the senses.
Poetry Book Society
Kelly’s poetry invokes the spirit of our region…The Time Office sees the Jarrow-born author continue the themes of place, loss and longing… It’s powerful, moving and emotional stuff… Newcastle Journal

The North–East of England is brought sharply into focus in its rawness and its compassion and you had better not mistake that last word for patronising near-relation ‘Pity’: these poems present a world that is known from the inside and the poet’s accuracy of detail and concern prowl around the edge to prevent any easy attitudinising. Tears in the Fence

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly was born in Jarrow, Tyneside, and now lives further up the Tyne in Blaydon. This` is his seventh poetry collections and sixth from Red Squirrel Press. In addition he has had over a dozen plays and musicals staged at the Customs House in nearby South Shields. His short stories have been published in magazines including Dream Catcher and Chimera, and on BBC Radio 4. He now writes full-time and works on creative writing projects, most recently Men of the Tyne for the Customs House, commemorating those who worked on the river through stories, songs and film. The show, after being staged at the Customs House, toured the north-east early in 2013.
Website: http://www.tomkelly.org.uk/
Twitter: @tomkelly60

Two Poems

“I know their footsteps”
(Alden Nowlan)

Granny Kelly’s blue-grey proggy mat
ripples in front of the coal fire,
my unmarried uncles beeing around,
as if it’s July not Christmas,
smelling of debt and loss.

This fake, jolly air makes me feel nervous,
a lone child crossing a too-busy road,
it won’t go away, even now. Granny’s home
a working class museum:
deep maroon brocade tablecloth,
toilet paper, precise squares of newspaper,
curled-lip of brown canvas in the kitchen,
sweating dank coal-house.

I am inches away from them,
not sharing their Merry Christmas.

Today: 1936

I am seventeen, standing by your door, squinting at sky,
right beside me, lifetimes apart,
that’s the picture. Hunger eats you,
shoes soak, you spit venom
at the pavement and cannot understand
what is not happening.

You decide to walk the streets,
shelter from rain by moving, not speaking to anyone
is the only way.
You feel your head is too heavy,
falling on your shoulders.

War on the horizon and streets make hate you can taste
like the nothing you are not living on.

I feel your arm, taut under your worn-out jacket,
face drawn, skin sprayed on. For the first time
you look at me closely and decide not to speak,
walk quicker as if that resolves anything.

This isn’t really happening, you say, a piece of fiction,
dolled-up to look like the truth. A man pisses against a wall,
steam rises and all the rest I could describe but I leave that
to your imagination. You can trust it. It is truthful
as this bike I’m riding. Let this truth win the day,
regardless of what I say. No matter what I do.

Tom Kelly