Writing the North: Is it Really Too Late? – Column

‘The Dirt’. Image Credit: Natasha Dobson.

Each month Keith Fenton, a Leeds-based performance poet, broadcaster and host of Poets Talking Bollocks podcast, explores the events, people and debates shaping literary culture in the North. This month, he reflects on late beginnings and unexpected journeys, reminding us that it’s never too late to find your voice, push boundaries, and rise again.

I can still scarcely believe that I am a fixture at events in and around Leeds and a frequent visitor to others up and down the country; that I host two regular events, have co-founded a podcast, and manage a poetry contact list a hundred times as long as Mr Tickle’s arm. This is all the more remarkable when, ten years ago, I had never been to a poetry open mic, and six years ago I was only barely beginning my poetic journey in earnest (just as the pandemic was taking hold), especially when I am hardly in the first flush of youth.

I am always going to struggle to keep up with the levels of the incredible young poets on the scene, quite simply because it took me decades to find my tribe, and I simply do not have the time available to develop my craft. But I’m here, doing stuff that I never dreamed I would only a few short years ago. And I’m not the only one. While some older people on the poetry scene are recreational and happy for it to be a hobby and form of socialising (nothing whatsoever wrong with any of that, by the way!), plenty of others who are late to it are keen to progress, to develop, to experiment, to innovate, to mix in diverse circles and to bring on and encourage others.

Some of these were highlighted in the early Poets Talking Bollocks podcasts in 2023. They featured: Faye Marshall, host of Cloth and Coal, author of ‘Throwing More Sugar on the Fire’ and international facilitator having only taken up poetry in her 40s; Rebecca Kenny, who was propelled into poetry and the founding of the Bent Key (now Written Off) press by a period in hospital after a road accident in her late 30s; and Tim Brookes, host of Getting Gobby in the Lobby (now Under the Lobby Lights), co-host (with Faye) of Soul Shed and author of ‘Keep Taking Away Six from One Hundred’, who came to poetry in his early 50s as a way back into cognitive function after a stroke. All of these continue not to sit on their laurels but to push themselves harder to be even better poets, performers, facilitators, hosts, editors and authors than they already were.

The same is true of the last podcast guest of 2023, Jack Horner, whose stage name in spoken word is Leon the Pig Farmer. He took up spoken word in 2019, aged 48, to try to deal with a raft of mental health issues arising from his military career. Our podcast was done just before we did a book launch for his third book at the Chemic on the afternoon of Sunday 17 December. We included an open mic, and the feeling in the room was that Sunday afternoon poetry was a great idea. Two months later, in February 2024, the monthly Sunday event ‘Poets Talking Bollocks Presents’ was born.

‘The Dirt’. Image Credit: Natasha Dobson.

Spoken word is not Jack’s only outlet, however. With his wife Sachiko, he is one half of psycho-punk band ‘The Dirt’ (to choose one of a long list of genres which might also apply). Their performances involve Jack painting machine-gun-speed image reels onto the canvas of Sachiko’s ingenious wall-of-noise guitar soundscapes, filling them out with drum machine and vocal loops. A number of commentators liken them to ‘The Fall’, which is a more accurate description of their recorded work – at the time of the podcast, their first album Agitator had just come out, and Monkey Punch followed in 2025 – than their live act, which is a balancing act between letting the brilliance of his controlled-scattergun lyrics seep into your brain, and allowing your body to succumb to the abandon of demented moshing. 

I must admit I thought my moshing days were over (and I never once moshed at a ‘The Fall’ gig, of which I went to many), but when I see Jack, only a couple of years my junior, bouncing and jerking with such energy and bringing every space he does this in with him, I simply can’t stand still. The last gig of his I went to was this month at The Pack Horse (the one by the University) and I must have sweated half my considerable body-weight, plus my ears were ringing for a good week afterwards.

I picked up a copy of Monkey Punch afterwards, and have listened to it a couple of times in the car since, including the night I am writing this. I was driving home along Kirkstall Road, which is being transformed on one side from a run-down but vibrant row of industrial-era creative spaces, such as Open Source Arts and Freedom Mills, into a soulless, corporate set of high-rise residential developments. Although Jack is from Leeds, he is based in Mossley and much of the protest in his poems and songs engages with the changing landscape in Manchester, which is being devoured by steel, plate glass and corporate land cartels. Leeds seems determined to emulate this, and now more than ever, we need the counter-culture (of which The Dirt is most definitely a part) to stand up and bear witness.

Those of you who read my first column for The State of the Arts will remember I spoke of the place catharsis has in the arts. I mentioned Sarah Rooke and Steve Parkins, both quinquagenarian spoken-word newcomers, and Jack Horner also fits that brief, coming to all this long after many artists have retired. When I suggested to him that it was great to see so many people like me and him – and Sarah and Steve – have a mid-life revival, his expression went solemn as he shook his head at me: “Mine’s not a revival, it’s a resurrection.”

May all of us who thought our best days had ended, rise again.

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