Three spoken word performers – two established and one newcomer – are being sought in Lancashire for a performance at Preston’s bus station, a 1960s building in the "Brutalist" style that is facing demolition despite hard-fought campaigns to save it. A survey by the Lancashire Evening Post in 2010 found that the bus station, which includes a multi-storey car park, was Preston people's favourite building, but an attempt to get English Heritage to list it failed. Businesses interested in taking over the bus station must register their interest by 31 January. It orginally faced demoliton because of a redevelopment project that has now been abandoned. But the local council still wants to demolish it because it can no longer afford its running costs.

Northern Elements, a project funded by Arts Council England, has commissioned They Eat Culture and Lancashire Writing Hub to curate and stage a spoken word event in and around the bus station. The event will be centred around a performance of A Journey to the End of the World from writer Phil Ormrod.

The search is on for performers who are currently developing pieces of writing, or who have already written pieces, which fit alongside the central themes of “moments of life”; “apocalypse”; “death” - and maybe even what happens to bus stations when they die.

There will be two performances over the evening. Interested writers and performers should send a sample of work, and a brief synopsis of how it relates to the central themes and/or the location of the bus station to writing@theyeatculture.org by 6pm Friday 1 February.

Meanwhile, in another cultural development involving poetry and transport in Preston, passengers in the waiting room at the Victorian railway station will have something new to ponder, with two poems by modern poets framed and on display, adds Sue Hicks.

Written by members of Preston Poets' Society, which celebrated its 65th anniversary last year, the poems were hunted down by a Virgin Trains manager to grace the walls. The group's pen member Tom Hicks (no relation) won one of four runners' up prizes in the PPS competition to find the official Preston Guild 2012 poem.  It was judged by poet, playwright, librettist, novelist and professor Michael Symmons Roberts, who was born in Preston and has since worked at BBC Radio 4, on newspapers and now as professor of poetry at Manchester Metropolitian University.

Virgin Trains manager Sue Howarth tried to track down Tom after a friend showed her his poem, Score After Score. She rang PPS president Vince Smith, who put Sue in touch with PPS secretary, novelist and poet Dorothy Nelson.

Sue also asked for a copy of Dorothy's poem, Preston Station. “She selected it for obvious reasons and because she likes it, particularly the nostalgic tone,” Dorothy said. “Preston, of course, is a Victorian station, which influenced my poem. It was written, ironically, on a Virgin train when I was travelling to Preston for a PPS meeting . . . I was chuffed when Sue asked if she could frame my poem for her office. You never know in this life . . . I think I'd prefer to win the Booker but this is rather lovely and out of the blue. ''

 

Preston Station

I stand gauging

the distance; arches

and platforms which,

dimly lit, stretch

towards tunnels – and,

so it seems,

oblivion.

 

My contrary mind races

to times when stations,

even this lumbering space,

were coloured by

a kind of romance.

Victorian England up north.

 

Love caught between pillars

in trembling passages;

cradle-kisses, and

cuddles in the dark.

 

Coal-fired hope

and a head of steam;

passions snatched at

on platform edges,

insignia emblazoned on brown

and cream carriages.

 

Glimpses here of a thousand goodbyes,

a tide of windblown scarves.

Funny how this waving off of dreams

seems mournful now.

Dorothy Nelson