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Synopsis
Somewhere in Heaven is Tom Kelly's new poetry collection from Red Squirrel Press. It follows his earlier collections, Dreamers in a Cold Climate and Love-Lines. In this, Tom Kelly's fourth collection and third for Red Squirrel, he displays the qualities much admired in his previous work, his concern with and sense of loss in his north-east community. This is shown in a number of poems, perhaps more especially in Sunday in Winter where a man searches for his past life and wonders if it was a dream, "some stranger's life rifled/ allowed a dream to sneak in,/ filch its corrupt way into this unbearable aching." He walks along the Tyne and charts the changes, the loss of heavy industry and its impact in poem upon poem: "A man with a dog/ held on the horizon,/ his memories a coin, precious to the touch." In Somewhere in Heaven, Tom Kelly moves from individual Catholic childhood experiences out into the wider social sphere, before heading back to the homeland of the heart: the collection is starker than its predecessors, capturing a world we need to hear and see. "Hard luck collides with Kelly's worn down but never quite despairing witnesses to life on the south bank of the Tyne, but so does poetry." Other Poetry Tom Kelly's work, produced by the Customs House, includes his most recent, critically acclaimed, play, Nothing like the Wooden Horse (text published by Red Squirrel); Baby Love; Family Ties; Five By One; I Left My Heart In Roker Park (staged three times); Secrets; Love in NE32; Ride A White Swan (staged twice); Behind the Wall; Autumn Days; and the musicals Dan Dare with music by John Miles and Tom & Catherine (with Ray Spencer) music once again by John Miles, which was staged twice and sold-out on both occasions. He has written two community plays, Tyne Songs (with Carol Cooke) for South Tyneside MBC and The Black Hill for Blaydon Festival. In addition he wrote The Blaydon Bricklayer for the Workers' Educational Association and has been commissioned to write a new play to celebrate their centenary in October. His next production is the musical The Machine Gunners, followed by Talking Tom, a collection of his monologues appearing at the Customs House in March before a short regional tour. Tom will be appearing in the production reading some of his highly praised poetry. Over the past year he has directed with Gary Wilkinson two film documentaries Little Ireland and Jarrow Voices.
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