Victoria Park; or "The Northern Pride"

Victoria Park; homily to James Hargreaves*

from a collection by Gary Knapton entitled "Erudite Lessons in Rhyme"


Nestled on glebe in the heart of Stretford

Huddled off a humdrum street

Much like Greenwich where it borders Deptford

Grace and suburbia meet


Rise above the wails of the ice cream vendor

Afford your vision it's height

And you'll get a sense of Victorian splendour

Married to Mancunian might


Funny now to think how

Anyone whose anyone

Bought into the park life boom

Strolling to be seen

Those cotton mill men

Out of earshot of the deafening loom


Roving weavers down from Blackburn

Eyeing up the warp and weft

Soaking up the air by the crown green bowlers

Clinging to what day light's left


Shipping out 'greys' to the

Calico printers

Down on the London docks

Shoring up fuel against all their winters

Long before the railroad stocks


Work is our poetry

We're not Stratford

Wealth from industrial toil

Marble and gold in the churches of Bradford

Water is this century's oil


Spinners from Bolton

Wanderers of empire

Buying up the global rights

From new Saltaire to the Derwent valley

John Kay's Flying Shuttle climbed heights


Bankers in the City going pound to a penny

On Britain's Imperial birth

Fast flowing rivers and the new Spinning Jenny

Holding all of Lancashire's worth


When the heavy woollen men of Leeds

United with the dockers on a Liverpool wharf

Hail Manchester barons and Blackburn rovers

Pulling all the money up north


Think on when next you're walking the dog

How history leaves it mark

How the men from the hills

Paid all our bills

Then chilled out walking in the park


And never stand still because the dance goes on

Forerunners of the silicon ride

Get wised up and if you're from round here

Walk tall with the northern pride



*James Hargreaves from Oswaldtwistle Lancashire, England, invented the Spinning Jenny in 1764. Weavers could now handle 12 and soon, 128 looms at once. Inventing the factory and spurning a series of events that gave birth to real "sit-up" global trends such as the weekend, the British empire and the summer vacation, this poem is in honour of him.

Old Money, or; "The International Style"

from a collection entitled “Secrets & Lies” by Gary Knapton

Cool embalms your great metropolis

Style is the star of your show

Forget New York and the Asian wannabes

Only one place you gonna go

Money long-soaked through your dark cavities

Wealth bubbled over your bile

We call you a gimmick

We then try and mimic

Your international style

Might is a brand and it's name is London

Built on maritime ties

Rarely looking out at the rest of the UK

Wouldn’t wanna sully your eyes

Bow your heads to the landed gentry

Tailored in the Savile Row stitch

Berkeley, Grosvenor, Cadogan, Portman

The unapologetic old rich

Hedge-fund boys with their Hampstead helipads

Only count as “nouveau riche”

That’s so vile we say it in French

Old money is a water-tight niche

Russian billionaires blinged up in Belsize

Does not a pretty sight make

All the money in the world never bought class

To the un-inherited fake

On Golders Green

‘Cross Mayfair boulevards

Hidden down the cobbled street mews

The Garter and Crown owns half the island

Quietly collecting its dues

Here for the season

All the progeny

Effortless, anonymous, chic

Wrapped in the glare of their androgyny

Far from the maddening clique

Round the elegant curves of Regents Park

On the corners of your Square Mile

We doff our caps

To the capital chaps

With the international style

24/04/2014