Tees Valley Writers
Gordon Hodgeon
Gordon Hodgeon is a poet who has been active in the literature and publishing scene. He is currently an editor at Mudfog Press. Born 1941 in Leigh, Lancashire, went from Leigh Grammar School to read English at Durham, then taught in the West Riding and Lancaster. Moved to Teesside in 1972 to work in the education service. A founder member of Brotton Writers' Workshop and of Hall Garth Poets. A former Northern Arts Literature Adviser and chair of the management board for New Writing North. Also did stints as a director of the Poetry Book Society and of Cleveland Arts. Now working on the editorial board of Mudfog Press and writing some poems.
In 2003, Subhadassi wrote: ‘I love Gordon Hodgeon's vigour and singularity, the way particulars become universals without any straining. The poems have their feet on the ground and their hearts and heads in the skies.’
In response to his most recent book, Winter Breaks, Andy Willoughby commented: ‘Many of these poems have that Philip Larkin effect, the "I can't believe he just said that" feeling, such is the shift from the mundane or even the lyric to the bald existential truth or vice versa. Poems that demand instant rereading not because you didn't understand them but because you want to experience that moment again.’
PUBLICATIONS
Women and Children First (Perkin Poets 1, Leeds, 1969)
Platform Poets 3: Andrew Stibbs and Gordon Hodgeon (Platform Poets, 1970s)
Poems by Gordon Hodgeon and Andrew Stibbs (The Haworth Press, 1978)
November Photographs (Platform Poets, 1981)
A Cold Spell (Mudfog, 1996); Winter Breaks (Smokestack, 2006).
Poems also published in Behind The Lines, Continuum, The Northern Drift, Outposts, Phoenix, Poetry Durham, Penniless Press, Yorkshire Review, Crossing The T's; Thoughtweavers (OUP); New Writing From The North, A Hole Like That (Scratch), Red Sky At Night (Five Leaves Press), Smelter (Mudfog 2003), The sensitively thin bill of the shag (Biscuit 2003), North by North-East (Iron Press 2006), Night Balancing (Blinking Eye 2006), Speaking English (Five Leaves 2007), The Wilds (Ek Zuban 2007), Blood Line (Blinking Eye 2007), Ink on Paper (Mudfog/mima 2007). Winner of the Mirehouse Poetry Prize in 2004 and 2006.
At the Window
Here I have watched
these trees grow large
and wide, the five
the space allowed
that with each year
carry a greater weight
of branch and leaf,
blossom and fruit.
They make my plot content,
their unrelenting lack
of second thought
about expansion, height
assuages growing pains.
Now in mid-May
they scatter drops of shade
over the mossy grass
that needs another cut
and over older man
who planted it and them
thirty-odd years ago
and never dreamed
we’d still be here,
garden and gardener.
The children up and gone,
fencing renewed,
neighbours removed or died,
the most solid timber
split down with lightning
which will strike again
or storm or novel flood
sweep us to bonfires.
Today the earliest roses bud
beyond this window glass
the trees obscure.
© Gordon Hodgeon
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