Here are the words

Here are the words in the reading bank

He worked on a building site and in a tennis-ball factory before becoming a full time writer in 1981. He has been poet in residence at English National Opera, UK Trade & Investment, Barnsley Football Club and Humberside Police. He presents The Verb, Radio 3’s Cabaret of the Word,  performs on his own and with cartoonist Tony Husband and musician Luke Goss, and writes weekly columns for The Yorkshire Post and The Barnsley Chronicle. 

Here are the words, stacked high in The Reading Bank; there are shelves full of them, baskets bulging with them. Here’s a tottering pile of words that might fall over if you pull one out clumsily, and here’s a bargain bin of words that are demanding to be used.

We should all have access to The Reading Bank; it’s one of my favourite banks because it never refuses you a loan, you can never be overdrawn, and the bank manager is always keen to tell you stories.

I’m lucky because I’ve had an account at The Reading Bank for years and years and that account has helped me to travel to places I never thought I’d visit, and meet people I never thought I’d get to know, all from the comfort of my settee. 

Having an account at The Reading Bank has also helped me to open another account at the bank next door, The Writing Bank; this bank has given me words free of charge to make poems with, and create tales with, and make sense of the world around me with. 

Reading leads to writing in the same way that sunset leads to sunrise and Bolsover leads to Poolsbrook.

I want to see a world where we’ve all got accounts in these two banks; where we’re all readers and we’re all writers because our stories, whoever we are, are worth telling and other peoples’ stories, whoever they are, are worth reading.

Welcome to The Reading Bank; welcome to The Writing Bank. Come in, sit down, and let’s all begin to spend the endless currency of words.