Paul Brookes

@thewombwellrainbow

Shop asst. Poet and interviewer. Work broadcast on BBC Radio Three, The Verb. Edits The Wombwell Rainbow. #PromoteIndieLit Recent work: The Drey Skin. Forthcoming: "Miner Wattas", "Mashing"

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Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 8d

Hrre's my first contribution to #promptcombo #stand Have a great week @jenthorne.bsky.social Jen.

Outstanding

beachfront property has been constructed by fine, innovative American
contractors who brought many highly skilled
builders to recover desolation.

Purchase these gleaming new build apartments,
in this Golden Age of prosperity
when all awkward negative elements
are replaced with clean positivity.

This remarkable opportunity
is purchased with our usual war grists
of murdered babies, raped pregnancy
told by investigative journalists.

Please ignore folk outside who say this is their home. Their home no longer exists.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 9d

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 11d

for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain and immense thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poems #poetry #BlueSkyPoets

on last train

oiled with alcoholic monsters
old miners prop up their subsiding
faces.

Call centre staff hold their heads
in both hands as if their palms
are headsets.

Shop assistants clock the prices
of metal cans out of habit.

Giggling teenagers hold one
another up whilst taking
selfies they'll regret in the morning.

Girls decide they can't walk on one heel
so both shoes slung in the bin.
Stockinged or barefoot they slope home.

Boys piss beside the train shelter
leave their monster cans on a wall
lig on a hedge as if they've found a bed.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 13d

It's not avant garde it's playful. It's not difficult it's possibility. On Monday at R2W Balby is my introduction to the playfulness of J H Prynne through the playfulness of Steve Spence.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 14d

Just posted the first two sections as my second contribution to this #promptcombo:

i)

She hates him making her safe. Remembers times when she

searched her pockets and the sofa for fag money and the floating

ten pound note she would give to him and him to her when they were short.

"Life is boring when there's no edge to it." she says.

(ii)

"There should be summat to fight for! Who needs an easy road,

without people and obstacles, so there's nothing

to work around, nothing to tell tales,

weep, wail and witter, scrimp, scrape and scratter,

gripe, grieve and grapple about?"

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 15d

Wombwell sky

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 15d

Here is part of "Wild Thrill Seeker" from my collection "She Needs That Edge" for #promptcombo #perseverance and @emteepoetry.bsky.social Have a great time hosting this week.

You're mandled, mollycoddled. Need to be chivied and mithered.

Too long seen you topple your Mam and Dad grab

you up, smartish, to console. Too much smothered

when deep in debt, pulled out the mire,

dusted down and placed on decent path, again.

Not fended and fought, bended and bought,

mended your own path, cleared undergrowth,

tramped and stamped with your own sore feet.

No blisters and sores, cuts and grazes you've picked

washed out ingrained grit, gravel while grimaced.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 18d

I hope the first sitting of The Starbeck Orion Summer Feast is fully digested. Tomorrow the second sitting begins featuring the artwork of Zainab Abdeslem:

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 18d

For with #PoemsAbout #BadHabits, @alanparrywriter.co.uk / @thebrokenspine.co.uk! #poems #poetry #writingcommunity

Toenail

As I cut my toenails I remember
yours. The vast Ponte And Cas Express spread out
on your's and mam's bedroom floor. Perhaps, there
also sat books on your lap opened out

revising for your next engineering exam
and apologising to me that you
can't play, that bills have to be paid and I can
find friends to play with.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 21d

For @rfsmith.bsky.social Ronnie. My second and final response to his brilliant #promptcombo #RealPeople is a sequence from my latest collection with Red Ceilings Press, "The Drey Skin":

He'Dead

I've got money to buy groceries. All's right with it all.

How's your son? The old man with a stick enquires. He's dead. Don't talk about him.

He's dead. You're doing this deliberate. How dare you talk about my dead son. You bastard! Bastard! She kicks his shins.

My supervisor asks her to stop swearing. Bastard talked about my dead son!

The old man hobbled into the aisle with the supervisor. I processed the woman's goods

I'll get the bastard outside. She said and left. The old man bought a packet of sweets. He hobbled out.

Suddenly, there was shouting. Supervisor told me her son was alive,

The Roof

He needs a hit, so

on the roof
of the ex bank, ex post office
needs to break in

sees somebody spot him
so he changes his mind

shouts I will kill myself.

Ambulances and police
talk him down.

A Homeliness

She walks in front of buses.
Says her son is dead.

Her son sits outside supermarkets
asking for money.

Customers buy him a coffee
or a sandwich, or loose change.

With money he has begged
he buys a pack of rizlas
for his upper.

and walks home
to his mam

who thinks he is dead
so walks in front of buses.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 22d

I am putting together with Martin Hayes a special edition of my webzine, The Starbeck Orion, devoted to & exploring his achievement as a writer. I am hoping to collate comments, articles on Martin's progress as a poet. The piece can be any length. Closing date for submissions is 16th August 2026

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 22d

For @rfsmith.bsky.social Ronnie's telling #promptcombo #RealPeople:

Ar Billy

still wears a nappy at seven
doesn't understand
why folk tell him off
climbs through an open

window with his six year old
sister whose dress tears
as they tumble on wet
grass in the garden

amongst the dogshit
and mucky nappies mum
has chucked out the kitchen
door, and they walk barefoot

over broken glass
from beer bottles dad
has lobbed out onto
the asphalt path to the front

garden gate that has only
one hinge and they totter
down the street to the big
sign of the supermarket

where they steal some sweets
and sit outside and somebody
shouts at him and tells him off
and he doesn't know why.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 25d

Off to see The Odyssey. Hope it doesn't take me 10 years to get home afterwards.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 25d

For #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds @thebrokenspine.co.uk

At The Rising

up of the moon
we will forget them.

On special days of Forgetting
we will write down what
we need to forget
for it to be later burned
into oblivion.

We will forget atrocities
by our home nation
as an act of national
forgetfulness.

It is a sombre occasion
as those who cannot remember
cannot rejoice, as they cannot
recall why they are rejoicing.

Joy at what we have decided
to forget is an embracing
of the fullness of nothingness.
We must celebrate nothingness.

Nothingness is not loss
as we cannot grieve
for what we cannot remember.
We will recite poems about

nothingness.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 26d

Already well into this. Reminds me of the best of Peter Reading and his lit acetylene torch sharp social commentary:

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 29d

Here's an extract from a Charles Olson Maximus map poem:

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· 29d

Thank you to @janpsolivagant.bsky.social for last weeks stunning stint. For mine this week please use tags #promptcombo #MapPoem and tag me thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social @bsky.social. A map poem is using the page as topography. You are making a map of words.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 12

Peace Chapel Perch

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 10

For #PoemsAbout #PowerCut @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Candlelit Seventies Without

a thought switch flicked,
and if glass globe works light
and I recall candlelit Seventies
evening in Winter's discontent.

How important during that Winter
electric light, few hours TV,
the extra jumpers and ignorant
thrill of days extraordinary nights

Those nights I recalled stood
underground in Eighties, caplight off
a darkness lively with ghosts
as imagination lit by stories.

Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 7

IMPORTANT MESSAGE The Starbeck Orion Summer Feast is now FULL. The next request for work will be in December.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 7

Hi @janpsolivagant.bsky.social Jan, here's my second response to your superb #promptcombo #Bestiary. Again a sonnet from my forthcoming collection "Miner Watta's":

Kingfishers

Blind peck our way out of into the Dark.
As we grow so did fish bones around us.
One of five to survive Hard Cold I mark
a fish out to gift to Her. She lets us.

Hurtle headfirst at the bank with my beak
a few times, loosen it. Scrape a tunnel
or more. She chooses which one meets
her list of what makes a nest successful.

A movement, I dive into Below, quick
head bob to be certain how deep and how
far my fleeting meal. Caught, I perch and flick
to still my meal against hardness allow

it to slide down my throat. Sometimes Below
rises up drowns my bairns, a sign to go.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 6

For @janpsolivagant.bsky.social Jan and her brilliant #Promptcombo #Bestiary a sonnet about invasive crayfish intimidating local Bullhead species from my forthcoming collection "Miner Wattas":

6 The Bullhead

factory, not discarded and forgot.
Sharp claws snap at my scales, move under
this hard flatness, this safe dark hiding spot
from sharpness cuts my world from another.

Here the claws eat my eggs, my unborn bairns.
We must find safer places and survive.
Despite our shredded skin we must learn
to continue ourselves and keep our lives

I hope she can hear me beneath this flat
hardness the rub of my fin against my
head. Here I have dug a hole in the fast
flow ready for her to lay our young fry.

Old ones say we have overcome death threats
before, so I will tell bairns never forget.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 5

On 10th July 7pm Barnsley Word Circle Staincross prepare for a twenty minute immersive journey with me into local rivers, inside local hedgerows and finishing in the stars.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 5

On 10th July 7pm Barnsley Word Circle Staincross prepare for a twenty minute immersive journey with me into local rivers, inside local hedgerows and finishing in the stars.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 5

Mac stresses that his point in creating Barnsley Word Circle was never about social isolation, rather promoting the creative energy of local writer's, providing a platform for their work. Come and be part of us.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 4

@imcmillan.bsky.social

A Half Sonnet (For J.H. Prynne)

Kestrel. Moiled. Crescent moon. Serpentine.
Stairs.
Emerald. Surfboard. Satellite. Parade. Warm.
Drystone. Tempest. Score. Wind Farm. Augur. Hairs.
Learn guitar. Strum light. Mind the gap. Gel form.

Fast flap. Window moon. Lilac. School Street. Spring.
Dearne. Cross Keys. Yoghurt. Room. Harping. Discreet.
Accordion sky. Improvise lightning.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jul 3

For #PoemsAbout #CheapMotels @thebrokenspine.co.uk

A Double

for a single price,
down Dole Lane

Room no. 3
says the bronze key,

red blanketed expanse of bed,
The bathroom says:

Live every moment,
Laugh evety day,

Love beyond words
to only me,

Red roses, lilies, pot pourri
speak cliché passion.

Clean white sheets, two teacups
two wine glasses upturned,

untouched, unstained.
Three mirrors show

my companion. I stain
one tea cup, crease the sheets.

shave, shower and dress,
spray anti perspirant,

Only one night here.
A double for a single price.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jun 30

Hi @jenthorne.bsky.social Jen, here's my second and last contribution to your excellent #promptcombo #Monument from a forthcoming book :

My Earthwork

relic of another time, workless, expired.
My form hints, teases at what might have been
before I became overgrown, retired.
Do I remember what I might have been?

Almost circular, I have an entrance.
I have both an inner and outer bank
and ditch. Ritual thoughts, sparse evidence.
Quick mark folk primitive and ignorant.

Life has always been involved and complex.
Perhaps I had many changes of use,
beast enclosure, social gathering, lets
have burials and ceremonies, use

your imagination. Test them until
proven wrong by strong evidential.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jun 30

Congratulations to @imcmillan.bsky.social and @iralightman.bsky.social on The Verb making the late J.H. Prynne and his yellow" breeze block" books far more accessible and entertaining. Gives me some great ideas for my forthcoming two hour introduction to Prynne for R2W Balby.

Paul Brookes@thewombwellrainbow· Jun 29

The Wombwell Rainbow is putting out a call for unpublished poems and short prose on your local neglected water courses. What history, geology, industry has effected these streams, becks and rills along their routes. Dig deep. Discover their hidden histories.