Poetic licence in village where verse comes on tap

Professor Alan Prout found it on the menu at the Moose Cafe in Marsden.

They do a Bloody Mary sandwich there, and a streaky bacon toastie with a fried egg on top, so he committed the food to verse and they framed it for the wall.

It wouldn’t have made the Oxford Book of English Verse, but that wasn’t the point. In Britain’s first poetry village, it’s the taking part that counts.

Marsden is a pretty, former mill community in the Pennines that has been home to two “professional” poets, and now fancies itself as doing for verse what Hay-on-Wye has done for prose.

Tomorrow evening, as part of a drive to promote itself as a literary and cultural destination, it will stage readings in three local pubs and place poetry books permanently on the shelves for browsing while drinking.

Simon Armitage, the locally-born Oxford Professor of Poetry thought by some to be a possible future Poet Laureate, has declared himself a supporter. Some of his verse is already etched on to “stanza stones” on the moorland route to Marsden from Ilkley.

The 19th century dialect poet Samuel Laycock, who was born on a farm above the village and a memorial to whom stands in Marsden Park, would also, presumably, have approved, having written of its “running brooks and murmuring rills”

Julian Jordon, who runs the national poetry organisation Write Outloud, and is helping to organise tomorrow’s event, said: “People love the place because it’s in the hills and there’s a poetry trail around the village taking in Laycock’s home, which is still there.

“They turn up with their rucksacks after trekking in past Simon’s stones, and we thought we ought to be doing something for them.”

There is already a thriving poetry community in the village, and the annual Marsden Jazz Festival in October boasts a “poetry jam” among its events.

“Thousands of people write in secret and are afraid to admit they are poets,” Mr Jordon said. “We run a successful poetry night here where people come out of the woodwork, shaking and quaking with a bit of paper and wanting to know if their poetry is any good.”

Alan Prout, a professor of childhood studies at Leeds University, didn’t need a critique as he scribbled a verse over his lunch at the Moose Cafe.

“I noticed that some of the phrases on the specials menu had a rhythm and rhyme that with a bit of tweaking could be turned into a poem,” he said.

“I was actually thinking it would be something that might inspire the primary school children in Marsden.

The words he liked were prosciutto, salami Napoli, tomatoes and focaccia bread. He wrote:

“These words were found on a menu, The Moose Café in Marsden the place, Proving it part of the Poetry Village, Where odes just appear out of space.”

David Coldwell, a poet and artist who chairs the Poetry Village group, said: “The idea is very simple: we aim to celebrate our cultural heritage and enable people to discover new and exciting ways to enjoy poetry.”

The group plans to put poems on posters in the windows of shops and cafés for a fortnight either side of the jazz festival, and invite anyone to send submissions which it hopes to publish in an anthology.

The poet Robert Graves observed that there was “no money in poetry, but no poetry in money, either”, and Mr Jordon said that although some had gone on from “open mike” poetry nights to careers, most used them as forums for expression.

“People go to these events and they hear other people and learn form them,” he said.

“The motivation is to express themselves, to share with others something that they enjoy.

“Sometimes they have been secret writers, secret poets, and this is a forum where they can come out.”

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