Tees Valley Writers

Andy Croft

Andy Croft lives in Middlesbrough, where he has been active in community-writing projects for many years. He has worked in hundreds of schools – primary, secondary and special needs. Writing Residencies include the Great North Run, the Hartlepool Headland, the Southwell Poetry Festival, the Combe Down Stone Mines Project and HMP Holme House.

He has given many poetry readings, including in Potsdam, Sofia, Moscow, Novosibirsk and London's Poetry International. He writes a regular poetry column for the Morning Star and runs Smokestack Books.

For a recent interview with Andy Croft, see Now or Never! no 14 (October 2008)

PUBLICATIONS

His books include Red Letter Days, Out of the Old Earth, A Weapon in the Struggle, Selected Poems of Randall Swingler, Holme and Away, Comrade Heart, After the Party and forty-five fiction and non-fiction books books for teenagers.

Books of poetry include Nowhere Special, Gaps Between Hills (with Mark Robinson), Headland, Just as Blue, Great North, Comrade Laughter, Ghost Writer, Sticky, Three Men on the Metro (with Bill Herbert and Paul Summers) and Nineteen Forty-eight (with Martin Rowson, forthcoming).

He has edited the anthologies Red Sky at Night (with Adrian Mitchell), North by North East (with Cynthia Fuller), Not Just a Game (with Sue Dymoke) and Speaking English.

Villain-elle

‘Mature poets steal’
TS Eliot

It doesn’t matter if you cannot spell,
And plagiarism’s not a serious crime
When you are writing in a prison cell.

Who gives a toss about the Prize Nobel,
The ladders up which un-barred bards can climb?
It doesn’t matter if you cannot spell,

The individual doesn’t stand out well
Among so many poets doing time.
When you are writing in a prison cell

It’s sometimes rather difficult to tell
Which is a found and which a stolen rhyme.
It doesn’t matter. If you cannot spell

There’s always those who are prepared to sell
A smuggled rap or line at bang-up time
When you are writing in a prison cell.

Because such second-hand materiel
Is that which makes all common art sublime,
It doesn’t matter if you cannot spell
When you are writing in a prison cell.

© Andy Croft

From Sticky (Flambard, 2009)
This poem was written while working as Writer in Residence at HMP Holme House in Stockton