Northern voices
A conversation between Ian Humphreys and Kim Moore
Ian Humphreys, Kim Moore
And dark and true and tender is the North
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ian Humphreys: Is there such a thing as northern poetry?
Kim Moore: I don’t know if there is, and in general I shy away from making pronouncements about poetry. Usually because every time I do, I think of an exception to the rule. But perhaps one of the things I notice is that a lot of the poets based in the North that I most admire seem to walk that edge between sentiment and true feeling – so in their work they run that risk of being sentimental, but instead pull off emotional weight and heart. But I don’t know if that is a ‘northern’ thing or just a ‘poets that I like’ thing! I think the north is such a huge place (obviously) that how could we sum up the poets within it as doing one particular thing? I’m thinking of one of our mutual friends Mike Conley (who should be much more published and known than he is) whose writing is subversive, playful, dark, funny – he’s probably closer in terms of style to Hera Lindsay Bird than any northern poet I can think of.
I’ve just moved to Yorkshire from Cumbria – two rather large places in the north. I spent twenty years in Cumbria so I know the poets working there fairly well, and I couldn’t even say there is a ‘Cumbrian’ poetry. It’s a huge place, and you have poets like Polly Atkin who is deeply engaged in writing about landscape, and the body and disability – based in Grasmere. And then you have someone like Jennifer Copley based in Barrow in Furness who writes using surrealism and fairytale – often tiny little narratives that are I would say more focused on examining people and the strange spaces that spring up between them. What we did have in Cumbria, is a very active community that turns out to support each other. If I put a workshop on in Barrow, poets from as far away as Grasmere or even Penrith would come to take part. The large geographical distances meant that we had to show up for each other, even though we lived at different ends of the county.
I’ve been in Hebden Bridge for two years now, and there is that same sense of support here with poets showing up for each other at readings and events. I’m not sure this answers your question, but this has always felt more important to me than whether there is a style of northern poetry we can all huddle under.
What do you think? I get the sense that you might have more firm opinions as you’ve spent more time editing anthologies and perhaps had that chance to step back and get a better look at the landscape?
IH: I edited an anthology of prose poems last year featuring northern poets, and didn’t spot anything you could describe as a northern poetic sensibility. I was a bit disappointed about that. Your observation that some northern poets you admire seem to walk the line between sentiment and true feeling is fascinating though, and warrants further research on my part. I think the strong poetry community here in West Yorkshire, which you’ve touched on, is what makes me warm to the idea of northern English poetry as being a concrete thing. As you know, I co-host a monthly poetry night in Mytholmroyd (near Hebden Bridge) with Carola Luther, and the audience is really engaged and generous in their support of guest readers. People regularly come from Halifax, Huddersfield, even Leeds and Manchester.
You mentioned Michael Conley – yes, a very underrated poet. To me, Mike’s work often has a wonderful deadpan humour, which could be argued is a time-honoured northern literary trait (Alan Bennett, Sally Wainwright). Actually, he and I chatted recently about poets, like ourselves, who studied creative writing in Manchester a decade or so ago. Back then – and I appreciate things are different now – the traditional lyric style was often held up as the ‘preferred’ way to write. We discussed how a lot of graduates ended up writing either towards the lyric – or very much against it. This made me wonder if creative writing courses can influence a region’s poets as well as individual writers.
But you’re right about the North being huge and disparate. There seem to be several northern ‘centres’ of poetry/literature/creativity, each with their own distinct vibe or identity. Manchester has the Writing School and the Poetry Library, Newcastle received funding for a Centre for Writing, and Leeds is developing a National Poetry Centre. It’s probably unrealistic, impractical even, but if they all found some way of working together, perhaps the North as a whole might benefit somehow. Apart from this investment in creative infrastructure and the community, are there any other advantages to being a poet in the North? And what about disadvantages?
KM: I studied on the MA back in 2010 (can’t believe it was that long ago!) I loved the time I spent there and just soaked everything up, and I’m now teaching alongside the tutors that I met during my time on the MA. I never felt that pressure you speak of to write in a particular way during the MA, but I wonder if I’d have noticed anyway! I was so excited just to be there and coming into the course very green – still teaching music full time. I just remember that evening being my favourite part of the week – it felt like I was stepping from this ordinary existence and into a wilderness where people just sat around and talked about poetry! It felt very subversive – it still does feel like a radical thing to me.
I’m also thinking about writing towards the lyric or against it – perhaps that’s all any of us can do? We all position ourselves somewhere along that line of lyric and decide what we want to privilege in our work. I also think it’s interesting that many of the poetry tutors working at Manchester Met now are now also writing more non-fiction and hybrid lyric essays which I think may also have helped in terms of expanding those notions of what poetry can do or be.
I think the new developments in Newcastle and Leeds are really exciting, and in general like to think in terms of abundance – that more spaces for poetry creates more poetry, which can only be a good thing! I do worry about poor old Cumbria, which often seems to get missed out or forgotten in terms of large literature initiatives.
In that way it’s not possible to talk about advantages of being a poet in the ‘North’ because it is so huge. Martin Kratz from Manchester Poetry Library did some research and found that if you lived in Manchester you could go to a poetry event every night of the week. In Cumbria, there were probably less than ten people in the whole county organising poetry events and working really hard to sustain a live literature scene.
Having said that, I love living up here – many of the poets I read when I was first starting writing live nearby or I work with them. We have amazing literary organisations that support writers – I’ve worked with Word Up North who run Ilkley Literature Festival for many, many years and they have supported me throughout my development as a writer, and I know they’ve been important for many other writers around here. There’s also Lancaster Lit Fest, the Poetry Business – these organisations are the ones doing grassroots development and finding and nurturing early career writers – and then more importantly, continuing to support us as we move into whatever comes next.
The main disadvantage for me is my constant frustration and annoyance at not being able to get to other parts of the country and back again, which isn’t so much about being in the North as it is about a privatised and failing railway network. One thing I would love is to be able to go to the Forwards or the T.S. Eliots without it being a huge expense. It always involved not only an extortionate train ticket but a night’s accommodation because there are no trains to get back up north on the same night. So I do feel as if poets based up in the North miss out on these big events, unless we are very rich and don’t have anything to do the next day.
How do you feel about the advantages and disadvantages? I know you work as a freelance writer now so you must also feel that frustration of physically being able to get to places to do the work?
IH: I loved my time on the MA too. I came in a complete novice and couldn’t have asked for a better deep-dive introduction to poetry. I did the campus route and it was great to feel part of Manchester’s buzzing creative community.
I know what you mean about the logistics of attending events in London. The last time I read there it was great fun to catch up with friends and useful I guess in terms of networking – it can do no harm to occasionally show your face to poetry’s gatekeepers (a disproportionate number of whom are based in London). That gig paid a small fee plus travel, but as is often the case – and understandable – not accommodation.
The multiculturalism of events in London and some other big cities is something I miss. I grew up in a semi-rural village in Cheshire so I’m used to the comparative lack of diversity where I live now. But I know some people worry about travelling to places where they might be ‘othered’, and this can pose a challenge when putting on local events. Although I guess I’d file that under ‘small-town disadvantage’.
For me, a big positive of living where I do is the landscape. The West Yorkshire moors are on my doorstep and they’ve definitely informed my poetry over the last four or five years. When I’m walking on the moors, I have a sense of being rooted in ‘the North’. The peatland and bogs, the stark beauty, the weather, all feel intrinsically northern to me. Of course, that could be due to some hidden, deep-down yearning in me to belong. Not that I’m territorial in any way – or even proud of living here – it’s more about being absorbed by the landscape. It’s the same way Willesden High Road seeped into my psyche after living in north London for such a large chunk of my life.
Another plus for me – our particular corner of the North has a rich poetic and literary tradition, and I’m cheered by its association with writers like Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Brontës. I like to imagine there’s something in the air, apart from the aroma of flat whites and freshly baked cronuts.
Perhaps we should end on the late Tony Harrison who was born in Leeds. When I was initially thinking about northern poetry he immediately came to mind. I would confidently call him a great northern poet, although I might be conflating working class and anti-establishment traits with northernness. Maybe he’s one of those northern voices who tread the line between sentiment and true feeling – with added Yorkshire bluntness.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all. You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same, in my new black leather phone book there’s your name and the disconnected number I still call.
Ian Humphreys won the Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry in 2025. He has two collections with Nine Arches Press: Tormentil and Zebra. He was Writer in Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum (2023/24), and is the editor of Why I Write Poetry and co-editor of After Sylvia: Poems and Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath, both with Nine Arches.
Kim Moore is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her next poetry collection The House of Broken Things is forthcoming from Corsair in May 2026.
