Biography
Tom Cleary lives in Hebden Bridge. In 2011 he won the Writers Forum/HappenStance Competition and in January 2014 he was featured poet in Orbis 166. The WF/HappenStance prize resulted in a pamphlet: The Third Miss Keane. In 2015, Tom Cleary was a winner of the prestigious Northern Writers' Award, one of six New North poets. In March 2016 his poem ‘Black’ was long-listed for the National Poetry Competition. Publications: The Third Miss Keane, HappenStance 2014
Samples
The Silence Since the scream, he hasn’t moved. His hoe lies where it fell in the shadow of the elm. Behind him, squares of sheet hang on the clothes-line in front of the blank windows. The slow howl of a train carries on the breeze. Under the elm, he strains to see, to listen, cupping his ear, crooking his jaw. When he was last in town, he heard the slap of police truncheons in the street. The soldiers’ fingers tapped out tunes on gun handles. A brick arced through the air like a fat bird. Clusters of men, grumbling, gathered at doors. He dropped his eyes to the ground and hurried on, down a street of tattered curtains, through the turmoil of ragged boys swift on their bare feet, and on out to the edge of town past fields full of clods and the clamour of crows rising.
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