Location: Curry Mile, Rusholme

Indie Kids drift out from Saki Bar carried on a wave of their own pretention
They maraud down the sunset strip we know simply as curry mile
A thousand takeaway wrappers catch a thousand heated updrafts
And drunken artists mix with switched on individuals
Echoing chants originate from the top floor of magic buses
And those with anything to hide find it thrust out in the open
This country’s next golden generation huddle over piles of vomit
As rain clouds threaten but recede and drift by
Neon signs illuminate a thousand hopes and dreams
As you board a 142 to Piccadilly
Blushed cheeks hiding dreams of a quite temperate life
A longing glance at the John Rylands goes unnoticed by all
While the unmistakable stench of Sambuca clogs the air
It’s the heavy breath of human sacrifice
Factory bouncers crack knuckles in preparation for long overdue fights
This is Manchester
And this is Friday Night.

Charlie Rawcliffe is an American Studies student at Manchester University. He’s 19, originally from Nottingham, and has been writing seriously for just over six months.

Location: Worldwide Supermarket, Rusholme

I watch them from my window scuttling
with their arms clutching crying bundles.

They are catching starlight in puddles,
scurrying around full bins and loose tins

and cars and trolleys and the trees with
their beggared branches reaching out, as the

sharp moon scowls. They slosh through
yesterday’s slush prints as leaves mulch

beneath their feet. Pleas sketched on scraps
with white knuckle palms pressed together.

Escape is not an option, there are
no passports for people pending.

As the curtains close, you slide into
the shadows in silence.

Justin D. Dooley has just graduated from MMU with a degree in Business and English. He is one of the founders of UNSUNG, an organisation that has been producing a free magazine and various arts events throughout Manchester since 2008. His writing has been published in Mental Virus, Best of Manchester Poets and Bewilderbliss. http://www.justinddooley.blogspot.com

Location: Manchester Peace Garden, St Peter’s Square

In the peace garden
There is a canopy of trees
And chewing gum on the floor
And it is lovely there
Just for being what it is.

On the outside
It is a different story
And we are scared
Just for being what we are.

A woman walks through
Under the shade
In her tummy a tiny bean
Dances for the first time.

She smiles, remembering the darkness
Of firecracker nights
Resonating in her rib cage
Where now there is joy.

‘I wait for you; my soul waits’
The last man says
As he bursts into flames
And the city melts.

Sophie Le Bec is a scruffy emo poet from the suburbs

Location: Oxford Road

A thousand nameless faces
under which hang
angry clothes
tell a world
what it already knows

not a single smile
just a melody
of melancholy played
through buds which
drift into the saps of youth
and the wood
of huge working men.

Chewing gum stars
inside a pavement’s heavens
shining brightest at night
and every deepest thought
is carried with the weight of sirens
or lost in the flash of city blue.

As God’s rain frowns
complaining that it works
too hard in this city,
resting on each
of those thousand faces
like tears,

leaving
religion’s chime to toll
and the Priest
checking a wrist
and the fading shine
in a lifetime of shoes.

Darren Thomas is a mature student at the University of Manchester. His work has been published in The Mental Virus, in various websites, in and around waiting rooms of Wigan train stations (as part of the NXNW Festival) and is featured in the book The Best of the Manchester Poets, published by Puppywolf in 2010.

Location: Fallowfield

Hear the laughing barging student’s running feet,
heading hopefully for myriad buses. Smell,
smell those buses and hot food and bustle.
Taste the excitement, the urgency, or
pause
briefly for foaming coffee, fuel for it all.
See so many people, damp waving trees,
clouds rushing by in bus-like packs,
and feel the life, feel the snapshot life.

Cathy Bryant is an award-winning writer who is a regular on the live poetry circuit in and around Manchester, and at events around the country. Her poems and stories have appeared in Poems for Big Kids, Midnight Times, The Ugly Tree, and The Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Cathy lives in Manchester and is passionate about the city, language, politics and passion itself. http://cathybryant.co.uk

Location: The main junction in Stretford (where the tram station/canal is)

across Stretford
quarter moon
hilltop
the sign says
no poems please
in the cycle lane
danger of over emotional cyclists

don’t look for meaning
in the canal basin
don’t fall in love
with tattered old buildings
be careful where you ride
don’t get dreamy eyed or tragic
just concentrate on the traffic

Andrew Beswick is a Manchester-based writer who blogs at Moon Printed Shadows. http://www.andrewbeswick.blogspot.com/

Location: Portland Street

People talk to you here
but not in English
and the rain is cold
on the grim streets
that run for their lives
past empty Victoriana,
lost empires.

At night, the city
sheds its humanity, lies
unwashed in the glow
of fag ends, crushed
and dying among
the grey detritus of
northern mouths.

Martin Zarrop is an (almost) retired applied mathematician who started writing poetry in 2006. He is currently midway through an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester University. He attended Rainy City Stories’ recent Writing About Place workshop in Hale, with Nicholas Royle.

Location: Upper Lloyd Street

When I saw you last week in your tired flat
With the heating full on and Tom the cat
Bent over in pain at your kitchen sink:
It made me think

How much time had passed and I’d forgot to
Pick up the phone and say ”Hello Auntie”
When I saw you last week in your tired flat.

I bet you never thought I’d be like this
Trying to be brave, I gave you a kiss
We stood together at your kitchen sink
It made me think

Of how you used to be – fiery, trouble
Double the size in weight, you’d lost two stone
When I saw you last week in your tired flat

The stories you told and the books you read
I’ll have to lie down, will you help me to bed
We walked through your kitchen, what next?
Think, think.

Look Auntie, please… let me make you some tea
We watched the Somali boys playing football
From your kitchen sink, seeing you last week
Well, it made me think.

Belinda Johnston has been writing for two years, mostly poetry, and performs her poems in and around Manchester. She travelled to Japan in 2008 and returned to Manchester last November.

Location: M62, J22 (Lancashire/Manchester border)

You could cut the air with a paper knife
And re-open the wounding word.
Restrained in a windowed envelope
still dying to be heard.

Deja vu on the M62,
as we passed we didn’t know.
That Britain’s highest motorway
could make us feel so low.

With only hard shoulders to cry on
in this day of contraflow tears.
As the two of us crossed over Yorkshire
both red and white roses appeared.

Fog lights reflected our faltering start
and the road noise was unrelenting.
Permanently more than two chevrons apart…
You were never the one for repenting.

Winston says: ‘After living for over 10 years in Manchester I am now a resident on the Rochdale Canal in Hebden Bridge. Among other things, my work is inspired by the Calder Valley, my interaction with the local landscape and by my 10-year-old daughter. I appear regularly as a compére and performer at open mic events in the North West and also work in cabaret and run workshops in schools.’

Location: Redmires Court, Salford

Will you swap me your wild flowers for my graffiti and tags?
Or your lowing pastured cattle for the bark of my stray dogs
Trade me your peace & quiet for the drone of my traffic
Your organic and natural, my synthetic and plastic

Give me your fresh air in return for my fumes
And I’ll swap you Morris Dancers for my bangin’ tunes
Trade your District & General for my A&E
Prefer Agricultural College or Polytechnic University?

Give up your green lanes for my gum-scarred streets
Or the sound of your birdsong for my siren’s wail
Have my sink estates not your landed gentry
My Iron Duke not your Plough & Flail

I’ll swap you my skate park for a memorial to the dead
Your Post Office or my Aleef News
My bagel for your brown-bread
Your one-stop-shop for J.S. Sainsbury
Little England in return for racial diversity

I’ll take your depression if you’ll have my stress
My Time Out & What’s On, your Order of Service
W.I. or Band-on-the-Wall
My E.N.O. for your Village Hall

24/7 or quiet isolation
Horse & Hound vs. Sleaze Nation
Urban Chic / Rustic Charm
E.U. subsidies or a car alarm

A 20-mile drive or my black cab ride
Will it be tower block or barn for our teenage suicide?
Is it Gucci & Prada or Barbour and wax?
Want your tenement farmers or my poll-tax

Would you give up your life for one that looks like mine?
Drink a pint of local bitter or sip New World fine wine
Want to trade?
Want to swap?
Want to give it a try?
No?
No,
You’re right,
Neither do I.

Neil J. Donald is Manchester born and bred – Chorlton and Salford – now exiled to Heywood. He says: ‘What defines Manchester is what gives its children strength.’