‘Poetry is open to interpretation. Which hopefully accounts aren’t’

And yet there is novelty in an accountant who has just had their first poetry collection published: an accountant like Alan.

His poems are worthy of attention in their own right. But a man trained in the discipline of numbers who makes merry with words provides added interest.

So humour us, Alan. Accountancy and poetry: do the two have common ground?

“Well,” he says, “if you want to try and find a connection... a poem, like a balance sheet, should show an accurate picture of whatever it is you’re trying to write about.

“But poetry is open to interpretation. Which hopefully accounts aren’t.”

Indeed. He adds that “numbers are quite clean. Words are much more interesting tools. When you put a word down you’ve got all the history that’s built up in it. Each word you use, you could have picked a different one.”

There is something methodical about Alan’s words as well as his numbers. His poems are finely balanced. Stripped to the essentials of meaning and suggestion.

“It’s a way of examining the way you think,” he says of poetry writing. “You don’t know when you begin where something is going.

“You’re combining thought with feeling all the time. It’s not just what you think, it’s what you feel about it. Which can often be a discovery.

“Until you sit down you’re never sure what you’ll end up with. I write in hope of locating and revealing the feel of whatever is the subject.”

Alan’s debut collection is called The Lost Box of Eyes. Its first poem is a good example of his multi-layered approach.

“It’s talking about two or three things at the same time. Thinking about philosophy and thought. It’s talking about a tree, but talking about the tree of language. It’s talking about the tree being a world. And it ends with a pun about global warming. You can talk about an awful lot in 16 lines.”

Some of Alan’s imagery takes a bit of unravelling. He describes his writing as “a bit odd”, while pointing out that some of it can be understood without any chin-scratching.

“Poems like Broad Street [about his first home in Carlisle] are immediately accessible, with kids running round the house, that feeling of them waking the house up if it’s been empty for a while.”

The 53-year-old’s childhood home in Bolton may be where his love of language was born. Alan remembers his father’s books: history, poetry, novels. Fuel for the future.

“I probably first started writing poetry as an adolescent. All the world is strange. Poets like John Cooper Clarke [from Salford]. It was the age of punk. It was the fact that anybody could write it. Poetry is very cliquey. Ninety per cent of the time you’re reading the middle classes and upwards. Punk let everybody in.”

Some of Alan’s earliest efforts were written for his girlfriend Kathleen, now his wife.

“She says she’s still got them. What an awful thought! They’re still lurking somewhere in the house.”

The couple met while Alan was a trainee accountant. He had studied biology at Manchester Polytechnic.

Broad Street by Alan Stubbs

the old spiral carpet encircled us there
in the bay window sheltering from rain.
eating chips, poor chips, the smell of fat pervading
the room, as we used up time before leaving
for the train. we clustered awhile imagining what?
certainly not the coming reality of the years
centred on children, young voices, faces, all that care,
but deciding whether or not to move in and occupy
such a property, this long empty cavernous house
so grand after the close council built home
we were leaving. In the end the difference was the trees.
their closeness, the stature of them in single file flanking
the road, a ribbon of wildness breaking into it unevenly by root,
and flagging the season in green, and calling shadow
to chase the suns move through each day, a vague finger
tracing times path over cobbles and pavements, sometime even
to this white door. Or maybe it was the glory of coloured glass
in the hallway; an artisan work flooded by lights streaming
through the summer applying red and blue to walls
or floor, warming their cold skin, that sealed it.
In the pause that followed
our children ran the length of each room, tried all the taps
used the toilet, opened every closet door, accustomed
themselves to the high ceilings, ornate plasterwork,
looked up the chimneys for evidence of fire, heat,
shouted to register the echoes beat so we couldn’t be lost,
caught by the intricate weave of this place, or be held long,
dry and alone close to the city centre; or that the high ivy walls
wouldn’t fold over and enclose us, stifling our naive hopes.
Each touch of their small hands shocked life back into the brick
and the building began to breathe. In this short time
they shot through the house bringing an end to stillness,
laying every ghost, their shrill voices and clattering feet
rebounding in the hall, possessing every brick and floorboard,
gathering us up and with our belongings wrapping them in years,
delivering them here to be with their imprint, and ours. turning all

Cuts to the education budget meant the ecology part of the course disappeared, along with Alan’s interest.

He took a job on the shop floor of a packing factory while studying accountancy with the same firm.

After qualifying, he and Kathleen moved to Appleby then Carlisle, raising daughters Emma, Rebecca and Rachel in the city.

Alan worked as an accountant for APV Mitchell Dryers and Clark Door then ran his own practice for 16 years.

He sold the business and retired, for five years. The 2008 financial crisis decimated his pension. Now Alan works part-time for Right Balance Accountants, part of Cumbria Council for Voluntary Service.

This leaves time to think and write. He carries a notebook to capture ideas and observations which may bloom into poems.

The subjects are “anything and everything. Poems about people I’ve met. Poems from places such as Cuba, New York, Madrid and Prague. There’s a 16-page Cuba poem I’ve been fiddling about with for a long time.

“A lot of poems from nature, from rivers, from lakes, about birds, trees and animals. We’re in Cumbria. It’s constantly interesting, that constant changing of things.

“At the end of the day we’re all just a ball of molecules. When we’re buried, hopefully plants will come up using our nitrogen and hydrogen. We’re all part of the natural world.”

His most recent notebook entry was inspired by the sight of worms wriggling along a path.

“I’ve no idea why they were there. They’ve turned into refugees fleeing. The thought they’re going somewhere. How vulnerable they are to birds and whatever.”

Award-winning Cumbrian poet Terry Jones suggested that Alan should send his work to magazines. They have been published in several, including The Poetry Society’s prestigious Poetry Review.

Growing in confidence, Alan has since had success in competitions. And now his first book. He knows that few people make a living from poetry, but there are other reasons to write.

“It’s an outlet,” he says. “A means of expression.”

• The Lost Box of Eyes is published by The Onslaught Press. It is available at Bookends, Castle Street, Carlisle, and from online retailers.