Tees Valley Writers

Bob Beagrie

Bob Beagrie is a poet, publisher and live literature programmer. He runs Ek Zuban, a small independent press with fellow poet Andy Willoughby, promotes new writers from the Tees Valley and runs international writing exchanges between the North East and Finland and The Hague. He has held several residencies including The Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea, The Hartlepool Headland, The University of Teesside and a Virtual Poetry residency with primary schools in Stockton. He has produced text for public art works and sculpture at various sites across the Tees Valley, worked extensively in schools and with community groups and has performed at venues across the UK and Europe.

In 2002 he won the Biscuit Poetry Prize and in 2003 was granted a Northern Writers Time to Write Award. He has been involved in lots of writing, reading, publishing and cross art-form projects across the Tees Valley. Bob was literature development officer at Cleveland Arts from 1997-2002 and now works as a freelance writer while teaching creative writing at The University of Teesside.

PUBLICATIONS

Gothic Horror (Mudfog 1996)
Masque: The Art of the Vampyre (Mudfog 2000)
Huginn & Munnin (Biscuit 2002)
Endeavour: Newfound Notes (Biscuit 2004)
The Isle of St Hild (Hartlepool Borough Council 2004)
Perkele (Ek Zuban 2006 ) a collaborative bi-lingual pamphlet written with Kalle Niinikangas, Yoik (Cinnamon Press 2008).

A further collection entitled The Seer Sung Husband is due for release in Feb 2010 from Smokestack books. Some of his work is featured in the new Iron Anthology, North by North East (Iron 2006) and his poems and stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies.

Enter Estonia, 14 June

It is the national day of mourning.
Flags hang limp with the damp weight
of all those the Soviets killed and deported.
There are still wolves in the forest and lynx
and the trees stand singing folk songs
that run through their rings. Back then
everyone was a spy spying on the spies,
especially the lying spy inside. Now,
so few people, so many ghosts.
The anaesthetic of home is wearing off.
Seems where I am is where I'm not,
so we call into the supermarket
buy bottles of beer and wine, where
every shopper trails an ancestor
like a reluctant toddler in their trolley's wake.
The basket on the arm of a queuing woman
at the check-out is brimful with beating hearts.
I act as if I've seen it all before, though I haven't.
I act as if they're just a pile of sweet potatoes,
and the cashier is working for the Wolf.

© Bob Beagrie