‘Dreamers in a Cold Climate’
http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/index.php?dreamers

‘The Wrong Jarrow’
http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk/books/kelly.html

Reviews of ‘The Wrong Jarrow’ from Smokestack Books:

“Kelly writes with an uncomfortable rawness and directness… an honesty we are much in need of.”

Matt Simpson, Critical Survey

“Jarrow is in his bones… there is heartache and pain in these poems”

Jim Burns, Ambit

‘Dreamers in a Cold Climate’ is his new poetry collection from Red Squirrel Press.

“And I was absolutely swept away by the long sequence, Geordie in which both character and dialect are really compellingly evoked. It held me right to the end. I felt that it deserves to be illustrated by some sympathetic cartoonist who really knows and loves the Tyne and its working men – now so often unemployed or grown too old in the shipyards and engineering works that were once the glory of the Tyne. I think Tom Kelly is a unique poet – who ought to write a novel or short stories…”

James Kirkup

“The first half of Tom Kelly’s Dreamers in a Cold Climate is a series of bleak, tender monochrome portraits of growing up in Jarrow in the 1960s. Speak when spoken to / worry when teachers shout. You joined the gang or ran every play time away from fists and kicks.

“The second half of the book is a long sequence about a Geordie everyman, a skilled worker and grafter who is bewildered by ‘life after work’. Th’ Japanese took wa ships / giv’ us bloody karaoke / Not much of a swap. It is a beautiful elegy to work and to the industrial working class, Thatcher was shameless / Greed: mak’ th’ rich richor ‘Where’d that leave us?’ / Ask every miner / steel workers at Consett / shipyards: aal gone / Black days and neets.”

Andy Croft, 21st Century Verse, Morning Star (21/05/2008)
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/free/culture/arts/the_everyman_and_the_empire

His next collection from Red Squirrel, ‘Love-Lines’, will be published in February 2009. A new play, Nothing Like the Wooden Horse is to be produced by the Customs House, South Shields, in March 2009; it will also be published by Red Squirrel Press.

He has poetry and prose recently and forthcoming in RAIN DOG, POETRY NOTTINGHAM, DREAM CATCHER, PENNINE INK, PENNILESS PRESS WEBSITE, POEMS IN WAITING ROOMS, POETRY SCOTLAND ,

And a poem in a new FIVE LEAVES ANTHOLOGY, The night Shift
http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/the_night_shift_baron_michael_croft_andy_swann_jenny_eds_i019694.aspx

Plus a monologue, THE MACHINES, which features in Wireless Monologues – a new book published by the Wireless Theatre Company. The book, is available here:
http://www.lulu.com/content/4035317
See Wireless Theatre Site
http://www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk/

Nothing Like The Wooden Horse a new play which will be produced by the Customs House, South Shields from Wednesday March 18th to 21st
http://www.customshouse.co.uk/default.aspx
The play will be published by Red Squirrel Press

In addition he has recently had a DVD, VOICES with the WMDJ writer’s co-operative.
See http://www.wmdjmedia.com/