"Kelly's third collection, and his second from the Red Squirrel Press, builds brilliantly upon the themes of his earlier work and resounds with a rawness, pathos, and humour that leaps from the page and seems to whisper charmingly in your ear like an old friend. A proud son of the North East, his poetry is preoccupied with place and loss, with a faultless ear for the nuances of his native Tyneside, picking out the small details of everyday life and making them sing, from memories of awkwardly sharing a urinal with his father to nights spent wistfully looking through photograph albums, gazing at pictures of that 'umbrella the light but stop a long way short of the living'. These are vivid, compelling, and often beautiful poems, by turns sad and uplifting, that certainly deserve a wider readership."
Poetry Book Society Magazine

"Jarrow-born Kelly writes about the layers of family memory, parents, grand-parents and children, hospitals and funerals, 'the same old story' of unspoken loyalties like a 'loop tape refusing/to snap, spool away.'"
Andy Croft, Morning Star

Jarrow-born poet and playwright Tom Kelly has worked with John Miles on three staged musicals, with Alan Price, on Kelly, a musical documentary and the subject of a BBC Arena Programme ("There won't be a dry eye in the house," Lord Mountbatten). He has recently released a DVD entitled Voices by WDMJ, an artists' collective made up Kelly, Steve Thompson and Peter Dixon. He has had many critically-acclaimed productions at the Customs House, South Shields. Red Squirrel Press is also the publisher of Tom Kelly's earlier poetry collection, Dreamers in a Cold Climate, and the text of his play Nothing Like the Wooden Horse, which was first produced by the Customs House in March 2009.