Michael Haslam’s new collection Scaplings, Star Jelly and a Seeming Sense of Soul was launched last evening, the day after his 70th birthday, at the Stubbing Wharf, Hebden Bridge, in the company of a large audience of poets, friends and family. Michael’s poems (collection available from this website in a day or two) take us historically, linguistically and topographically around the upper Calder Valley, its cloughs and groughs, sikes and slacks, royds and goits and lumbs, and much more. He was on great form, explaining his 36-poem sequence, in particular his fascination with the enigmatic star jelly.
Guest poets were Peter Riley, who read a dozen new Pennine Tales, in which there are still lights in isolated farmhouses, moorland buses (the 594 Crimsworth Dene) and the Hare and Hounds at Lane Ends, and Mark Hinchliffe, with his paeans to Ted Hughes, Billy the Kid and others.
Thanks to all who came along; especial thanks to Michael Haslam and his poems.