Heartlines

You wanted a quiet life
To be left alone
They wanted to hound you
To make their presence felt
To make you disappear.

Doorways gave you shelter
They always found you
Moved you on
That did not satisfy

Fear being the father of cruelty
Concocted a plan
They would chase you
Chase you until there was nowhere else to go

Across the bridge
The River Aire beckoned
Into the water you would go
Further and further in you’d go
A homeless black man
Until…

Drowned
Murdered was the decision
Leeds City Police Force
Produced a first!
The first successful prosecution of British police officers
for involvement in the death of a Black person.

Your name kicked its way into Leeds United Fan repertoire
The River Aire is chilly and deep -OL- U-WA-LE
Never trust the Leeds Police force -OL-U-WA-LE
And
Never trust the Leeds Police Force
Oluwale
Get in the van and don’t dilly dally on the way

Reggae Dub poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson
Drummed the story
The pattern was clear

Your legacy has ebbed and flowed
but you are immortalised
In books, songs,
Plaques
Sculpture, Memorial Gardens
A bridge over the River Aire
Bears your name.

They wanted you gone
Instead
You are forever a part of Leeds.

Myrna Moore

Back to Leeds Line by Line – Leeds Lit Fest 2026 collection

He was nowt but a lad from the hairdresser’s shop.
Travelled north on his lofty pilgrimage.
It’s a no brainer at twenty-two.
Abbeys, castles, cathedrals abounded up north
He set out with his great coat, top hat,
sketch book, a box of paints
into the green wetness of Kirkstall
to shelter where a group of cows
shelter in the ancient dormitory undercroft
arched like a Moorish palace pierced by yellow sunlight,

flooded by cobalt blue
then sketch after sketch and the abbey was embalmed
in light strokes of graphite and brush strokes of colour.
Scintillating blue and gold tumble
from abbey to river weir. Ruined walls clothed in ivy and light
and the church tower glowing impeccably white
like the finger of an angel pointing to the sky
Here cows graze innocent fields.
Later will come wool, coal, industry, wealth.
He came with a box of paints and a dream.
To be an artist.

Eileen Neil

Back to Leeds Line by Line – Leeds Lit Fest 2026 collection

Yorkstone, millstone grit,
Rough Rock cut from Bramley Fall.
Carboniferous sandstones topped by
immigrant Portland stone lions
weathered away by time
like the ancient underground
tropical forests crushed
to coal to cast the
fireclay, burned into
redbrick rectangles
to build redbrick
terraced houses
back to back,
tumbling down
cobbled streets
like ridged red waterfalls,
between the woods of Bramley, Middleton,
Roundhay, Horsforth, Ireland Wood, Adel
humming with beech and birch
and hazel and hawthorn
and bramble and berry
like fragments of Elmet
falling gently between the stones
and the streets, washed by rain
peeled open like
the cherry trees in April.

Eileen Neil

Back to Leeds Line by Line – Leeds Lit Fest 2026 collection

We walked, full of purpose, among commodious villas with deep green gardens
Where the latches on the iron gates clunked,
and heavy with hesitant greeting,
the gates grated and squeaked
sending a warning signal, probably on deaf ears.
Up the drives there was moss
in the cracks of the flagstone paths and
dandelions pushing up
through impossible
small gaps
and the ladies who took the church magazine
would take their time in reaching the door with its insistent bell
requesting the subscription in April.
The loose-limbed legs of their youth now slow and heavy,
they would open the door with a shoosh on the patterned tiles of their numbered flats.
There’d be a faint fusty scent as they gathered their purses and opening them with care
fished out a pink 10 shilling note to pay,
then returned to their rooms with framed men in their khaki
and family groups round Victorian chairs.
Back on the Otley Road cars, all black, made a drone of busy-ness
and the blue Samuel Ledgard bus laboured up the hill,
green buses plied to Cookridge, Ireland Wood and Tinshill
and a red bus stopped on its way to Ilkley.
They filled the air with dark fumes, that mingled with a hint of Bryan’s frying on the mist.

Rosie Cantrell

Back to Leeds Line by Line – Leeds Lit Fest 2026 collection

Saturday afternoon 35,000 sing Marching on Together, we’re going to see you win
They sit, they stand, exercising their vocal chords,
in solidarity against the enemy.
We've been through it all together, we’ve had our ups and downs
We're gonna stay with you forever, at least until the world stops going round
On the pitch, players from Germany, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, USA, Japan, Brazil, Slovenia, Bulgaria,
St. Lucia, Wales, Sweden and, oh yes, a couple of English men.
An international squad, cheered on by a mainly white male English crowd.
On all 4 sides of the ground people sing together with a religious fervour,
urging those they love, their heroes, on to victory.
The thousands leave the ground happy.

The following Thursday, some that were there go to vote.
The fellow in the Kop, who sang his swearing heart out,
an accountant, lives an affluent life in Adel,
mutters about immigrants as he puts his cross next to ‘Reform’.
The man in the Norman Hunter Stand, hesitates,
a good union man but feels he must, now, vote Green.
The vicar, who takes his 10-year-old daughter to the Jack Charlton family stand,
worries about the swear word she heard, repeatedly, on Saturday afternoon
and then shouted it out loud during his sermon the next day.
He wishes his sparse congregation were as enthusiastic as the Elland Road crowd.
He plumps for neither left nor right putting his cross next to the Liberal Democrat.
A woman, who now sits, where she once stood in the John Charles stand, having supported the team
for 60 years, through the ups and downs of the song, cannot desert the party she has always voted
for, Starmer notwithstanding.
Marching on together? … I think not…

Malcolm Henshall

Back to Leeds Line by Line – Leeds Lit Fest 2026 collection

On a walk through the squares of Leeds, we entered the one named Woodhouse.
Circular, unspectacular, empty, except for the woman sat on a bench with a child in a buggy.
I was for walking through, on the other side. But Kate set off towards the woman.
As we neared, I recognised the pump that hung from the buggy.
The woman, arms exposed, tattooed. ‘Ben’ on one arm, ‘Harry,’ the other.
We nodded, smiled, stopped.
The boy sat still, staring.
“And what’s your name,” I said.
“This is Ben.” “Hello Ben,” and I touched his arm.
No response.
The woman, we did not get her name, wanted to talk.
Ben, her son, 3 years old, rare genetic disorder, only six hundred in the world.
Can’t walk, cannot talk, cannot eat, often unhappy.
Twin, Harry, walking, talking, eating, laughing at home.
Seven tortuous months Ben had been in hospital, mum with him, every day, every night.
Dad and Harry at home in a Leeds suburb.
He unable to deal with the situation, grieving.
In that park by the Clarendon Wing,
momentous heart-breaking issues were discussed.
Would it be better if Ben’s inevitably shortened life
was allowed to be even shorter, rather than medically lengthened?
For whose sake was Ben being kept alive? Mum asked.
We left, issues unresolved, wishing Mum well.
Heading for Hanover Square,
our lives, once again, put firmly into perspective.

Malcolm Henshall

Back to Leeds Line by Line – Leeds Lit Fest 2026 collection

You cross a checkerboard of stones,
where vagrants seek pennies for visions,
loop ranks of towering knights and pawns,
enter crenellated streets, where citied girls
thrall to stiletto heels and telephones.

The air is hot, it stinks of drying cloth
and through the feudal haze of fumes,
you follow merchants to the corn exchange,
past gilded mansions sprung from brittle bones,
to barter grain for heaps of gleaming gold.

Turn from the main thoroughfare,
observe the sallow faces sunk in ponds,
their severed hands with mangled finger ends
gathered by children in rags, ears clogged
by commerce. Witness their lives and deaths.

Dysentery and cholera slither through slums
while righteous men choke fortunes
from good worsted wool or khaki uniforms.
And, in dark mills, bright summer snow
rots lungs, drops poison onto cobblestones.

This city breathes through warp and weft,
builded with wool from godly lambs,
while cattle graze as ranks of clouds unfold.
Inside god’s house, the pious lift their voice as one,
fletch songs that rise in praise of burnished dreams.

Liz McPherson

Back to Leeds Line by Line – Leeds Lit Fest 2026 collection