The Salford Routine
At a Glance
- • A poem about Salford (Pendleton, the Irwell, the Quays) and the quiet conviction that somewhere else the real life is happening.
- • Author: Tracy Singleton
- • Form: Rhymed quatrains, three stanzas
- • Setting: Salford
- • Published: Tales From A Harrogate Caravan
The drizzle settles down on Pendleton,
On terraced bricks and pubs with boarded glass,
On matchstick crowds that Lowry once drew on,
And smoke-grey skies that slowly overhead pass.
Another week of bins out in the rain,
Of waiting by the Irwell's sluggish flow,
While Joule once measured heat and toil and strain,
And Albert Finney trod the stage below.
We walk the Quays where factories used to roar,
Convinced that somewhere else the real life is,
While time slips past us on the shifting shore,
In rooms grown dusty with our own small histories.
About Tracy Singleton
Tracy Singleton is a poet from Salford. She writes about the city as it is rather than as it is remembered, the drizzle, the boarded pubs, the walk along the Quays, and the quiet suspicion that the real life is happening somewhere else.
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