This Is Sheffield

Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet

The famous bridge with its neoned graffiti - Photo Adrian Scott

This is Sheffield 
Aerosol graffiti on a bridge between the blocks 
neoned into a slogan, Jason to Clare at Park Hill: 
I love you will u marry me.
The on-brand developers used his heart’s cry
on cushions and mugs to sell flats, to let space. 

The high breaking light, above us on that bridge 
was not the east and Clare was not the sun;
this is England after all.
She had a panther on her back, died young, 
with her children ink-needled into her skin. 

She lived and jived, loved and died, yet even
this plaintive epitaph was hijacked by the gentrified. 
Re-furbished and re-presented,
the words span two worlds, urban splashed and 
urban trashed, printed on an Arctic Monkeys t-shirt. 

My friend lost his brother off the top of these flats,
like Jason he found it hard to make a life that worked; 
their Icarus flight ended in downfall,
and this graffiti on a bridge that very few cross, 
dividing two households unalike in dignity, in Sheffield. 

A brutalist traverse over a stubborn Styx, separating 
brutalised and gentrified; tough to marry two worlds, 
a marriage that isn’t merely renovation,
but regeneration, a common life where hands clasp 
and voices ring a change of fortunes wound as one. 

I have watched this from Canary Wharf onwards.
The Isle of Dogs had this graffiti before its ‘regeneration’: 
Remember no GPs live on this island!
Couldn’t we be as ingenious for our Jasons and Clares, 
‘til we have made a city more like Blake’s Jerusalem? 


Written after reading ‘The tragic story of Sheffield’s Park Hill
bridge’ (21st August 2016) in the Observer. 

As the Poem says I read this article The Tragic Story in 2016 and it sent me off to the flats to photograph the bridge and begin composing this angry poem. You can find this poem and photo in my new collection. Available at Adrian's Shop

This was before I ever saw Standing at the Sky’s Edge - that has now taken the Sheffield Crucible, the National Theatre and the West End of London by storm. It is really worth seeing. You can view a video of the poem below - with deep gratitude to Andy Selman for the soundtrack and Jack Todhunter for the film.

You can also hear the walk that Matt Carr and I did for our Grim Up North? Podcast that went through the whole area and will give you an insight into the history and future of these iconic flats.

Here are some of my other images from the famous Park Hill flats.

The Entrance - Through a lens - Photo Adrian Scott

Vaping at Park Hill - Photo Adrian Scott

Refurbishment in full swing at Park Hill - Photo Adrian Scott