These poems were written on the way to work, walking the two and a half miles from near Saltwell Park in Gateshead to Northumbria University in Newcastle. The journey took me through Gateshead's residential streets, its town centre and over the Tyne, often by the High Level Bridge. I'd try to write something in my head every day before I got to work, while still free of the numbing rush of its demands. Sometimes a whole poem would appear, at other times one or two words or lines would shift and repeat through seemingly endless variations, refusing to settle.