Barry Woods 

Birkenhead, Wirral, England

 

Barry Woods is a Merseyside Poet who has worked with local councils and cultural teams promoting poetry. He has curated spoken word events for Mersey River Festival,  Williamson Art Gallery and Birkenhead Town Hall.  

He was awarded a Poetry Medal of Honour in 2019 by Wirral's John Gorman for his work on The Quality of Mersey project, which was later developed into a short film.

 https://vimeo.com/465059978

 

Written on 22nd October 2020

 

Off The Peninsula

 

I drift to Hilbre,

lose noise of the mainland.

 

Sand ripples at feet

and black green carpets stretch out

laid down by some giant Goddess

with a seaweed obsession.

 

These islands remember me as

a bucket and spade kid,

a detached teen

then a loved-up softie in my twenties.

 

The walk, in my fifties, is meditation.

 

And the years haven’t changed here;

red sandstone layers,

pirate caves I once hid in.

 

An isolation

of abandoned buildings;

the ghostly heads of seals bobbing

and scanning;

 

sometimes it's easy for me to reach this space

and other times I am cut off by the tide.

Impossible.