“You could say Ward writes a Bach-like poem: it seeks for purity of expression. Its leathery language wants to force out the personal, the dramatic so that a near purity of expression allows them their place outside the poem.”
Alan Dent – MQB
This is the official website of Blackburn born poet Mark Ward. Here you can read poems, reviews and blogs: buy books, listen/watch audio video recordings and visit the gallery.
I spent many years travelling the world working in a variety of jobs, including tuna fishing in the South Atlantic, set building for the film and TV industries in Africa and New Zealand and presenting a show on Alaskan radio. For many years I lived and worked in the Lake District where I maintained and interpreted William Wordsworth’s former home of Dove Cottage in Grasmere. I currently live and work in Blackburn. I have published a number of books and pamphlets including two poetry collections: Thunder Alley and The Visitor’s Book (Penniless Press Publications) and A Guide to Historic Haworth & the Brontë’s (Hendon Publishing). I’ve worked and collaborated with a number of individual artists and organisations including sculptors Kate Davis and David Moore, The Wordsworth Trust, The Bronte Parsonage Museum, Signal Film & Media, The Lakes Arts Collective, Lancaster & Morecambe City Council, Blackburn with Darwen Council, Moving Mountains and ARC Refugee & Asylum Centre. I was a founder of the Haworth Festival of the Arts, and recently wrote and project managed the exhibition Lodestar, at the Bureau Centre for the Arts, Blackburn. I have appeared on TV and radio including Made in England, BBC1, Lakes on a Plate, Channel 4, and Accents, ITV Granada Reports. I studied for a Masters at Lancaster University, and hold a Screenwriting Certificate from the Met Film School. I also write an occasional blog My Backyard, about people and place.
If you like what you see and wish to get in touch please do so through the contact page.
Portrait in Black
‘This is the poetry of the Lodestar: as Ward himself says in one of his poems, a magnetic field, an outlet, a pressure valve; here the tensions and release of art and music and the personal history of the remarkable Margo Grimshaw, (and her gloriously infamous Lodestar), find their full expression.
Neil Rollinson
The Visitors Book
“Vivid, sharp, memorable observations of the places that have touched Ward’s eye and heart; the tone is characteristic of the man; poems worth reading!”
Jack Mapanje
Thunder Alley
Buy Mark Ward’s Thunder Alley and you won’t be disappointed. These drawn-from-life poems are sharply written, deftly observed and shot with humour. What more could you possibly want?
John Hartley Williams