HOBO - Coventry Music Magazine’s Neighborhood

Founded- 1983 at Stokesley Comprehensive School by the WEA

(Workers' Educational Association) - Stokesley Branch. It began as a WEA Creative Writing Course and continue as such with the students continuing as an informal group in between  courses. The group were active into the 1990's.

Stokesley Writers Group and WEA branch member Cynthia Wardley takes up the story in the group's first anthology - Leven Lines -

"In September 1983, Maude Warwick, Tutor Organiser for the Workers' Educational Association , arranged a new class in Stokesley called ‘Creative Writing'. The tutor, Ray Brown, required every member of the class to write a short piece each week which had to be read out aloud at the next meeting.

Amazingly, when the six week course came to an end, most class-members continued to meet once a week, writing and reading aloud as before.

The following September, we once again had a tutor, Peter Rushforth 1984; in 1985 - Andy Croft ; and this year - 1986 - Trevor Teasdel. We thank them all for their help and encouragement."

Cynthia Wardley 1986 said in the second anthology In 1988 that the group had Eugenie Summerfield

(who writers children's books) as tutor. Other tutors included John Bond (Playwright / Eleanor Fairburn (author of The Green Popinjay), Mark Adlard (A Leeds University tutor).

Core Members - (included) Core members of the group were -

Cynthia Wardley, Ann Earle, Daphne Franks, Nigel Beard, Stan McMahon, June Wakeford, Pam Betterton, M. Evans, Mary Bassett, Wendy Broad, Melinda Thompson, Paddy Sargeant, Magda Tinning. But members came and went.

Publications - Although early tutors had intended to do an anthology with the students / group, it was Trevor Teasdel (in 1986) who finally started the group off. Trevor incorporated it into the syllabus of the course. He earmarked the last two sessions to it with some work being done at home to complete it. For the last but one session the members were invited to bring in some work both from this and previous classes that they wanted to be considered for the anthology. Trevor outlined some models of editing adopted by other groups and the group voted on the method they felt might work best for them. Two members had brought their Amstrad word processors in and as work was earmarked for the anthology, so they were typed up and spell checked and printed out for the layouts. Any pieces not typed in the class were sorted out when the students got hope for the next session. We also chose a title and one of the student's volunteered their husband to do a sketch for the cover and illustrations. She took copies of some of the poems for him to illustrate for the next session. Next and last session was the layout. We did a manual layout as desk top publishing on the Amstrad was not as well developed as Publisher is on the modern PC's. With graphics and typing complete over the week, Trevor organised them and instructed them on basic layouts. Final touches and amendments were done afterwards and Trevor got anthology printed or rather photocopied. Tutor Organiser Maude Warwick was invited to the launch at the Golden Eagle in Stokesley and over a meal copies of the anthology were distributed. In 1988 Eugenie Summerfield oversaw the second anthology also called Leven Lines. (Both anthologies are available on here as PDF files (or will be soon!).

The cover and graphics for both anthologies were drawn by Wilf Franks whose wife Daphne Franks was also a member of the Stokesley local history study group and Daphne and Wilf had been involved in producing local history booklets including the fascination booklet Printing and Publishing in Stokesley of which Daphne gave a copy and which later on stimulated my interest in George Markham Tweddell who features on this site quite abit.

Latterly the group's secretary was Wendy Broad who with her husband ran the Stokesley bookshop until recent years.

What did members go on to?

In 1986 Trevor Teasdel was in the throes of initiating Outlet magazine and Write Around with Terry Lawson

and was both a member of Tessside Writers Workshop and Write Now. Through Trevor the group members contributed to Outlet and the Write Around Festival as a group they got involved in the negotiations toward Write Around in it's very early days - Nigel Beard in particular took an active part. Daphne Franks gave Trevor a copy of her booklet Printing and Publishing in Stokesley (available to buy from Stokesley Library and worth the read!) which later led to research into George Markham Tweddell - the Stokesley Printer Publisher and Chartist with Paul Tweddell - see side bar links for details.

Links to the Groups two anthologies on PDF soon to added here.

Founded - 1972 - going on until the 1990's

Founding Members - Mike Hollingworth (BBC Housecall Radio Presenter), Greta Thompson (also of Darlington Writers Circle), Fred Brunt, Fred and Lilian Poad and others.

Meeting Place -St Mark's Church Hall, Brookfield Middlesbrough for 6 months, later Norton Centre, Norton Green, Stockton on Tees.

Description and main activities - A number of individuals who were writing poem etc for BBC Radio Cleveland (at that time known as Radio Teesside and based in Linthorpe Rd, Cleveland Centre (opposite Boots approx back then), decided to get together to form the group and call it after the Radio programme which used their poems - henc

e the name 'Housecall' after the programme. They met on the first Wednesday of the month (except August) at 2.15pm to read whatever poems etc members had written on titles chosen the previous month. Suitable ones were considered for Broadcasting in the weekly programme. It should be mentioned thought that poems earmarked for broadcast weren't only from this group also poems that had been sent in separately. All individuals were welcome to send in material

Finance - Each member paid 50p as they attended meetings- this was for a cup of tea and payment or use of the church hall.

Publications - Apart from publication of poems on the Housecall programme, one publication was issued via the BBC with items from members and others - this was at an early stage and is the only one actually produced with the group in mind.

Additionally in 1982 when Ann Wainwright started the Poetic Licence magazine in the area, Mike Hollingwoth was a great supporter of the magazine, advertising the magazine on air, setting a competition theme and offering prizes of a record token each month for the competition judged by John Saunders of Leeds University Adult Education Centre at Harrow Rd, Middlesbrough. The winning poem was read out on air. The radio programme was the source of more contributions to Poetic Licence.

Late Housecall Presenter  Bill Huntersupported Outlet in a similar way - not via a competition but often

read a poem or two from Outlet and advertise the magazine. The Housecall group also invited editor Trev Teasdel to do a talk to the group about Outlet magazine at their meeting in Norton c 1988.

Notable Members - Greta Thompson and Les Parsons of Darlington Writers Circle published a number of books and in more recent times many members published their own books or had poem in a variety of local publications.

Bill Hunter took over from Mike Hollingworth. No payment was made for the poems.

Thanks to Bill Hunter for supplying this material back in 1995.

Founded -  1972 to now (2009). The membership was largely based on a group of Brotton Labour Party members with an interest in writing and one or two additions.

Founding Members - Andrew Stibbs, John Todd, Matt Davidson, Alan Stewart, John Fookes, Eric Turnbull and Gordon Hodgeon (newly arrived in 1972 from Lancaster but knew Andrew Stibbs from English Teaching.) Gordon had been a member of the Lancaster and Morcombe Writers Group, which was run by Norman Iles and included David Craig and Nigel Grey in it's members who edited the magazine

Fireweed pictured here.

Meeting Place - From the beginning the group has met in members' homes. This is still the case.

Main activities- The group meets once every 4-6 weeks on a Friday evening. They share a meal and spend their working time reading and talking about work in progress which members bring. The main intention of the group is to give that supportive but properly critical audience, which can be trusted with a draft and which will encourage further work. Members are asked to bring copies and read their work aloud if it is poetry. With longer pieces for example a longer short story, we try to give out the copies at one meeting and discuss them at the next.

Members - An idea of the shifting membership of the group over that period is given by this listing of members whose work appeared in anthologies over that period of 8 years: Alan Rayson,Alan Stewart, Eric Turnbull, Andrew Stibbs, Gordon Hodgeon, Alan Combes, Margaret Bond, Harold Heller, Mary Heller, Bernard Martin, Molly Maughan, John Todd, David Jones, John Bond (playwright), John Cuthell, Matt Davidson, John Fookes. Current embers (1995) include Pauline Plummer (an Outlet editor) Molly Maughan (Cleveland Education), John Todd, Linda Inness (Cleveland Arts),Gordon Hodgeon (Cleveland Education), John Harrison (Boulby Miner), Mark Robinson (Cleveland Arts), Sue Pierce, Liz Geraghty, Mel McEvoy (Outlet Editor) with others from time to time.

Finance - There is no finance involved.

Publications -At one time a number of small 'gestetnered' anthologies of members' work were produced and sold. These were produced between 1974 and 1982 and some copies are in Middlesbrough Library. These are all entitled Behind the Lines. Since that time there has been no group publication, though a number of members have been published individually or within other anthologies. 

Gordon Hodgeon and John Miles Longden have a volume of poetry in Middlesbrough Library.

Notes - Gordon Hodgeon was responsible for bringing setting up several Writers in residencies up in the area in the 1980's as both a Cleveland Education English adviser and a member of the board of Northern Arts Literature panel. Later he served on the board of Cleveland Arts and Buzzwords. Gordon has a long history of involvement as a literature activist in the area which includes Mudfog Publications and much more. His name crops in relation to quite a lot of things in terms of our recent literary history.

Gordon Hodgeon was consulted by Outlet oregarding Terry Lawson's idea for a children's / school Outlet and Gordon sat on the Cleveland Arts Write Around advisory committee after Outlet took the idea to Cleveland Arts. Brotton Writers Group took part in the first three years of Write Around at a session in Skelton Library consisting of joint readings by three groups - Brotton, Whitby and Redcar and again during the 1997 Merlin's Cauldron Arts Festival which revived the original Write Around session.

Thanks to Gordon Hodgeon for supplying this information.