The poetry competition is now closed – thank you to all who submitted entries.
The winner for the best poem was Jane Callaghan – congratulations to her. The two runners up were Kevin Flaherty and Kate Fox, well done to them too.
Here is Jane’s winning entry –
On westerly moors
Rise Chellow, Pinch, Pitty
Energy once harnessed
To power this wool city
Goit and beck in parallel
Power in, waste out
Spectral Saxon elders
Recall speckled trout
Disregarded water
Here barrel-vault encased
In pure flow below Sunbridge
Fish once chased
Culverted, covered
Lost underground, hidden
The clear sparkling beck
Degraded to a midden
Fouled by industry detritus
Long ago so clean
Under our city lies
A misused, abused stream
Though clean again
The beck stays always dark
Water sighs, eddies, races
Unseen, unremarked
So small a waterway
For Bradford dale drained
Beck fed the canal basin
Its miasma ill-famed
Skip across the broad ford
-Bradford is named
Listen to Ed Butterworth talking about the scheme on BCB 106.6fm Radio
bradford-beck.org 