The Global Digital Village

‘Trafalgar Street Men’ by Maureen Almond is based on Horace’s epode, ‘Beatus ille’ , in other words, Happy the Man. In Horace’s poem the narrator praises the simple life, tells his addressee how unimportant money is and how he though poor, is really a rich man. The irony is that the narrator turns out to be a moneylender. In my version, it is a landlord who speaks, telling the poor, simple man who never had enough money to own his own home, how lucky he is. This poem also sets the scene for the rest of the poems in my collection, The Works which is the story of the demise of the steel industry on Teesside (that too is ironic given the latest news from Corus!), and with it the demise of a whole community.

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