Matthew Clegg - Poet

Date of Birth; 13/05/69

Summary;

1996
First ‘Five’ Published Poems appear in an anthology of five Sheffield-based poets with Chris Jones, Peter Boughton, Tom Rhoder and Adrian Head. Funded by Yorkshire and Humberside Arts and printed by Peepal Tree Press, Leeds.

1997
Received an Eric Gregory Award (for promising poets under 30) from the British Society of Authors.

1998
Second ‘Five’ published as above, with Andy Hirst replacing Tom Rhoder. Funded by the Arts Council of England and printed by Peepal Tree Press, Leeds.

1999
Became Writer in Residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, Cumbria. Became involved in education work, performance and the organisation of the Trust’s Poetry Programme. Over this period performed readings with fellow poets including Jo Shapcott, Paul Farley and Roddy Lumsden.

Contributed a poem, ‘Turning the Corner’ to ‘Walking and Paradise’, a modern art exhibition at the Wordsworth Trust.

Collaborated with The Royal Festival Orchestra on their outreach project, ‘Springtime in Cumbria’. This involved writing a lyric, ‘Build a Bridge’, which was set to music by Edwin Roxburgh.

2000
The Writing Residency with the Wordsworth Trust is renewed and extended under the Year of the Artist.

Read passages from Wordsworth on the film ‘The Mind of Man’, filmed and directed by Nick May and screened at The Theatre by the Lake, Keswick.

‘Warm Words on a Cold Night’, a collaborative performance of poetry and stories with Taffy Thomas, one of the North’s most respected traditional storytellers.

The Wordsworth Trust wins a Stanford Award for its education work, especially the Special Creative Visits set up and run by Nancy Martin and Matthew Clegg.

2001
Collaborations continue with Taffy Thomas, including a performance at the Lancaster Maritime Festival.

‘Divining’, funded by The Samling Foundation, exhibition at University Gallery, University of Northumbria, Newcastle.

Kids of Wallsend

Between the shipyards
And the humbler factories
There’s a path – a strip

Of pristine tarmac –
Sloping a ruler-straight line
down from Swan Hunter

To a sci-fi yard
Where ice melds into metal
On nitrogen tanks

And the sagging wire
From an electrified fence
Nags at the railings,

Sparking them alive.
This is where they play, the kids
From graffiti-land –

Thieving ‘Danny’ whose
Sister’s ‘a slag’, maybe, ‘Wayne’
Who’s branded ‘a grass’

(read it on their homes.)
They switch off their play-stations
And bomb on silver

Scooters down these runs –
One leg frantic, the other
Poised, as if to stand

Ground always shifting
Underfoot. And if you think
You know this game – your

Mind striking rapport
With some reflex that it shares –
Down where The Wall ends

The stiff prosthetic
Arm of a digger scrabbles
The surface, joggles

A claw full of muck…
Above it, stalling in space,
Drifts a fleck of white –

a fibre-glass spore
shed from bulk massives below,
Too slight for this place,

But falling to earth,
Losing its grip on the air.
Now cut to those eyes

Steering the scooters.
Is it such a long shot to think,
that those kids, knowing

this, might still look up
from their narrow road ahead
At cranes – long lifting

Well under their weight,
And see them as they were, giants –
High-fiving the sky?

 Crossing the line

The footpaths, the fells
Are barred. A virus hitches
On our clothes, our shoes –

Air-born on our breath’s
Ungovernable outbreaks
As we guess and hint

At cases within
Our region. Here, in Grasmere,
Every sheep we see

Stirs new sentiments;
Prime-cuts dwindle on the shelves,
And the space is less

Cosy in between.
We feel more and more restless –
Cooped in homes, gardens,

Gazing at mountains
Snow-glossed and eerily cleansed
Of all trace of us,

As we trudge along
Surfaces not even germs
Can get a grip on,

Feeling robbed. Break ranks
With this and you risk a fine –
A farmer’s whole stock.

A line has been drawn
Between man and beast and most
Of us won’t cross it.

In Longtown, Penrith,
Truckloads more stoke the corpsefires –
Smoke blears dawn to dusk,

Dioxins giving
An edge to that nutty smell
Drifting into schools.

So think of that card
Mountain rescue had to bring down,
Injured, from Snowdon

(Into the papers),
Or the family, we saw,
Building their snowmen

On the common ground.
Is it any wonder, then,
That sheep seem to be

Spilling onto roads?
One, blockading the traffic,
Drinks from a cat’s eye.