Place writing

Eleven years ago this month, the fire in the Redcar blast furnace went out. The town didn't go with it. That gap, between what a place loses and what it keeps, is one of the hardest things a poet can try to write. Lean one way and you get nostalgia: rusting gantries in soft golden light, and everything better back then. Lean the other and you get the holiday brochure, where all is well now because there is ice cream. Neither is fair to the people who live there. Below you wil

A curved cliff in the Yorkshire Dales, a grieving Victorian poet, and three habits for any writer trying to put on the page something that is no longer there. Stand at the foot of Malham Cove and you get a strange feeling. You are looking at a waterfall. It has the height, the width, and the curved lip at the top. It is only missing the water. In my last article, beneath the broken tower at Helmsley, I argued that most ruins have human hands behind them, but that sometimes th

Glastonbury Tor is the most mythologised hill in England. I wrote a poem about clay shrinkage instead — and I am still not certain I was right. A realistic wide landscape photograph of Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England, seen from across the flooded winter levels. Glastonbury Tor has been the Isle of Avalon since at least the twelfth century. It carries Arthur, Guinevere, Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail, the ley lines and a great deal of living spiritual practice. Walk

Words by Alden Carrow Welcome back to British Counties in Verse. Today, I want to take you somewhere quiet — the market town of Bedale, in North Yorkshire — and argue something a little bold: that this small place is not smaller than the world. It might even be larger. An artistic illustration of Bedale at dawn Provincialism vs. Parochialism The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh once drew a sharp line between two words we tend to confuse. Provincialism, he said, always looks toward

Carrow’s poems are filled with a warm, natural lyricism that capture the spirit of North Yorkshire. Each piece acts as a window into the region’s varied landscapes, rich history, and the simple moments that shape our lives.