TOM KELLY was born in Jarrow in 1947 and his poetry,  prose, plays, lyrics and 
musicals have appeared on Radio Four, BBC TV, albums and in many UK magazines including, Stand, Rialto, Other Poetry, Headlock,
The Yellow Crane; Smiths Knoll, Iron, Red Lamp, Envoi and in the pamphlets ‘Their Lives’ from Tears In The Fence; ‘
In The Distance’and ‘That Time Of Life’, KT Publications; ‘John Donne In Jarrow,’ Here Now; ‘Poetry from the North East’,
Raunchland Publications.

TV/ Stage work includes KELLY a musical with Alan Price, the subject of an Arena Documentary; TOM & CATHERINE, a musical with John Miles and 
THE MACHINE GUNNERS, another musical written with Miles’ and staged at the Edinburgh Festival. 

Most recently SECRETS and LOVE IN NE32 a series of plays staged at The Customs House, South Shields, which won over critics and audiences 
alike and broke box office records.

Tom has a new poetry collection THE WRONG JARROW from SMOKESTACK BOOKS: http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk/books/kelly.html
And a new collection, DREAMERS IN A COLD CLIMATE, due early in 2008 from Red Squirrel Press www.redsquirrelpress.com 
The 'Geordie' poem, part of which is appears in this issue of Interpoetry, features in DREAMERS IN A COLD CLIMATE.

He has only just completed a new musical DAN DARE (with music by John Miles), which will be staged at The Customs House in March 2003.
 		
He now lives in Blaydon and works as a Drama Lecturer at South Tyneside College and is married with three children and two cats. He is a 
lifetime Sunderland supporter.



 

Geordie Everyman is a working class voice often talked about but rarely heard. 
This poem looks through his eyes as we see the changing face of the north-east.  Geordie has worked over forty years 
in engineering, witnessed highs, lows, redundancy and their impact upon him, his family and community.



Geordie fell asleep on the bus,
somebody was reading ‘The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby,’ and ‘Trams and Buses of the North-East.’

In the background 
a song he couldn’t put his finger on,
he raised his hand
as if in class
asked, 
‘where wa goin’?’
		
He was aware of his wife
smelling his breath
saying, ‘I’ve got to get back to work’.
		
He focussed on a crumpled piece of paper
by the side of a wall,
walking home he was hard pressed not to stop
in the middle-of-the road, 
he felt hot and old and believed levitation was possible,
imagined his mother was alive
shouting at him for shitting his trousers,
days were longer than he never imagined
sneaking by on its finger tips,
search-lights were strapped to his eyes
but he couldn’t see a way ahead.

A stranger told him of a constant dream he was having,
in his mouth a cactus began to stir somewhere near his larynx,
his shirt clung and his feet were floating,
he tried to believe he was his dead father, 
thought he could tip-toe on water,
saw divine inspiration in street lights
and the lager can in his pocket began singing ‘Songs From The Shows,’
and they gave him an invitation to a musical,  ‘The Marriage Feast of Cana’,
and he sensed his blood was being drawn from him,
sinking into concrete slabs
lined up outside the fish and chip shop.


A woman pressed pound coins into eyes,
kept saying she had lost her purse on the bus.
Everything was racing and still, silent and opaque,
so alive and dead,
that’s when he turned
into a pillar of salt
and he began to shout, ‘Not aa lot aa can do.’
				
They rang his wife at work,
she stayed with him
until his eyes opened.




‘Doesn’t matter what you do, do it well’,
is what his mother said.

It had stood him in good stead.
Forty-odd years of work,
those words stayed.
					
Foreman with power fixations,
self-obsessive managers
with degrees in ignorance,
his motto kept him going.
‘How de ye do nowt well?’


This is th’ picture aa want:
smiling, pint in me hand.
Aa lass wi’ aa arm roond me.

Aa lie in grass, dead warm,
sleeping but know everything round us.

When aa get up. Blue sky.
Me mother holds me close.
Ah’m aa bairn.