Written on July 7, 2009 / by Barry Reynolds

Milner Place

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Milner Place contributed six poems to “The Great Refusal” published by Flux Gallery Press in 2005. Milner began writing poetry following many years of travelling, including eleven years as a captain of operating sailing vessels, including yachts. His first poems were written in Spanish and he was in his late fifties before he began to write in his native language.

His poems have been widely dispersed in magazines and have been broadcast on both Radio 3 and Radio 4, on television for Bookworm on BBC 1. He has had eight previous poetry collections published, the most recent being “Certain Matters” published by Belfast Lapwing in 2007.

Currently, Milner is engaged in producing a book, concerning a three poem cycle centred around Huddersfield, the area in which he now lives. During July of 2007 he has recorded these poems for release as a spoken word accompaniment to the limited-edition version of the collection, entitled “Odersfelt”. “Odersfelt” is due for publication by Flux Gallery Press in May 2008 in two versions, the first hand-bound with the spoken word CD, the second as an ordinary perfect bound paperback.

Deer Hill – from ‘Odersfelt’

A vibration starts up, vague and insistent
the west wind’s singing through the ling,
a curlew weeps its notes, the millstone grit
against my back bears scars
of mason’s wedges, of the unnamed men,
scavengers of stone, weavers
of fleeces and salubrious dreams
who slaked the thirsts of hunger
with thin ale, the women racked,
bent, blinded at the wheel,
the childrens’ fingers raw
and blistered.

And I happen to know that
the young blonde and brunette
in the Rose & Crown are discussing
the merits of the car ferry from Hull
or Dover if you’re going to Belgium.
The old man in the corner moans
how things ain’t what they were,
and that is the lie of it.

Deer Hill sleeps in the sun.
Someone is renovating a weaver’s cottage.
Interest rates are rising.
Kiwi fruit
is on offer at Tesco’s.

In Odersfelt Godwin had six carucates of land for geld where
eight ploughs can be. Now the same has it of Ilbert but it is waste.

There’s water dogs about,
they scurry over Buckstones Moss
and Garside Hey, licking
at Goat Hill, they course the sky
off on a run past Birchencliffe
and Ainley Top, a straggling pack
of grey-backed hounds without a voice
or whipper-in, but sure as hell,
as Billy Prest might say,
the wild horsemen of the rain
will follow as night falls
on day.

All through the wind shout
voices from the past, grey cottages,
grey chapels, ruined mills;
a hooter’s morning moan,
crack of a bargeman’s whip,
clatter of looms, whine
of wheels, hum of spindles,
serpent hiss of steam.