Published by Penniless Press, 'Listening to the Dark' is Street's fifth volume, which includes a diverse range of topics from growing up in Bolton, living with disability, his experience as a war poet in Croatia and voicing the concerns of plants and trees.
At school, Street struggled to spell or do basic sums, and it was clear he had a learning difficulty (it was eventually diagnosed as dyscalculia only five years ago). Street left school at 15, with no qualifications and emerging epilepsy, trawling for work from Cumbria to Kent, and doing jobs that included gravedigger, exhumer, slaughterhouse worker, baker, gardener, hotel porter and tree surgeon.
While in this last job, in 1982, he fell off a wagon and sustained a spinal injury that disabled him for life, but ultimately led to his reinvention as a poet. Recovering in hospital, he befriended an English literature teacher who inspired him to learn to read and to channel his extraordinary experiences into writing.
After belatedly failing his English O-levels, he finally found his voice when a Liverpool University lecturer offered him free tuition after noticing his potential through a charity that Street had founded for aspiring artists with disabilities. Since then, he's led a rollercoaster literary life - as war poet on a humanitarian convoy through Croatia in 1993, writer-in-residence for BBC Greater Manchester Radio, and co-architect of a 1998 Poetry Society project to take performance poetry into fish and chip shops in his beloved Wigan.
So what does he think of the hand destiny dealt him in the end? "Breaking my neck was one of the greatest things ever to happen to me," he says, with a chuckle. "I have been able to take time out from society and learn how to become a poet. I've had a fascinating life. It's been amazing."
'Listening to the Dark' was supported by a grant from the Royal Literary Fund, the benevolent society set up to help professional writers in straitened times. Past beneficiaries have included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, DH Lawrence and James Joyce.
Below is a selection of poems from the collection.
Hallgrim’s Church, Reykjavik
for everyone with Dyspraxia and DyscaculiaThat church from
where I’m standing:
here bottom of the hill
between green
and yellow housessouth side of Reykjavik
I’m sure is the space-ship
Miss Clarkson let me drawin her ‘59 maths class
while other kids were busy
working on fractions.It has a stair case
on the outside like the one
I pretended to climb
sit close my eyesand wait for the count down
Another Sideline – 1957 Bolton
for Thomas Edgar StreetTwo shillings
for every dead dog or cat
run over poisoned even shotwould be waiting with heads on
heads off maybe other bits
missing every timemy nine years entered
his fire-hole where sulphur
smacked me in the noseDad would clang open
an incinerator door turn
pick up Rover or Tabbyhe kept separate from the coal
with a clean cloth
he would first wipe off
any dirt or blood
then giving them a last stroke
he’d throw them in
and I would watchsomeone’s pet melt into nothing.
Mates of ‘58
That outside toilet where mam
used to traipse our night time
piss-pots before workis now redundant after
a posh inside one ganged up
with sink and bathto take over our spare bedroom
it’s now a short walk to my
rainy day place I share
with the old toilet bowlretired bored does nothing
except sit there reading strips
of Bolton Evening Newsstringed on that side of the wooden door
where a paraffin lamp
surrounded by parched strands
of whitewash lights upmy marble assault course
with all the cracks dips
and holes in those stone flags
EXTRAORDINARY MEMBERS MEETING:
AGENDA: COUNCIL OF WAR:
Copperas Lane, Haigh Hall, Wigan"Plant geneticists are finding that plants can communicate with each other as well as with insects by coded gas exhalations"
James Donahue – Living UniverseFirst To Speak
for all dandelions (Taraxacum officinale)I am a dandelion
Yes, one of those who feel
we have more to offer
than this tarmac they like
so much.It’s why I’m here
to see about a peace deal,
compromise,
their last chance – so to saybefore it gets really serious.
Ok, mistakes have been made
on both sides, but whilethey are trying to kill us all …..
well, it’s like this:
we are a big family
with lots of friendswho are also losing patience.
This is their last chance