(Photo by Leonardo Zorzi on Unsplash)

The train doesn't stop here long.
Its harsh glare closer to sunlight
Than monochrome town has ever seen.

Rebel weeds escape concrete tombs
in a vampiric tar pit.
Strangled hopes trampled underfoot; 
Victorians live in their houses,
breathe coal dust until they faint.

Time isn't kind to boards, battered
on shattered windows; neither are splatters of spray paint.
This place is dashed with desolation.
The workhouse crumbles with its art.

And then the doors slam closed quick.
Fleeing from imprisonment,
choking roots depart
from the aged wrinkles between
weathered grey bricks.

Writing process

I wrote this poem inspired by conversations about Stoke-on-Trent’s atmosphere, with its trademark historical feel. Stoke is for many a stop rather than a destination, and its uniquely sad mood was inspiring to me as someone who often prefers to write as an expression of emotion.

Although I was initially inspired by Stoke-on-Trent in particular when I began writing, my experiences of other towns in the UK came into play when exaggerating the decrepit and neglected feel of Stoke. In particular, Rugeley and Wolverhampton inspired the imagery of weeds escaping through the cracks of concrete, as this is a common sight in semi-abandoned industrial areas around both of these towns. Victorian- and Industrial-era buildings with boarded windows can often be seen alongside this, and I thought back to when taking a walk through areas near the Staffordshire University campus last year where I saw what seemed to be more historical, crumbling structures than inhabited ones.

I used the metaphor of escaping weeds to mirror an urge to escape a suffocating and grey place – an over-exaggeration, of course; Stoke-on-Trent really isn’t that bad at all. In fact, the desperation and haste with which I present the people on the train was actually inspired by being on a train which stopped unexpectedly in Rugeley for half an hour. I know, my luck with trains is abysmal, and at the time, I thought, so was Rugeley – at least the bit that we were stuck at was. Nobody on the train wanted to be there, and my friends and I had booked an event which we didn’t want to be late for, causing all of us to long for escape as soon as we arrived: I wanted to channel that feeling of being trapped in an unwanted and abandoned place in this poem. (Seriously, if you are from Rugeley, I am so sorry.)