`The Albert Poets - and a bit of poetic justice '.

Byline: By Tony Pogson

Can you have an Albert Poets group if the Albert pub which gave them their name is no more?

Well, I can report that, whatever the name in future, this is certainly not going to be a dead poets' society.

Plans for the future are well advanced. Monday workshop sessions have already been transferred to the Plumbers Arms in Macaulay Street. The search is still on for a venue approximately within the inner ring road for the meetings on the second Thursday of the month. The Rat and Ratchet in Chapel Hill has been mentioned.

The old Albert won a CAMRA award for its beers. You suspect that the link is not just between poetry and beer as between quality poetry partly inspired by quality beer.

The Albert Poets started in December 1993 and soon published four books: First Draft, Draft pounds 2, Final Draft and Overdrapounds t. Catching the drift, it prompted Huddersfield's premier poet Simon Armitage to quip: "Draught genius"!

Soon their poetry spread and was being heard at the Narrow Boat Festival at Linthwaite, on the Penistone Line railway, at the Contemporary Music Festival and at other pubs in other towns.

As their fame spread nationally the Daily Telegraph was moved to pronounce the Albert "an unlikely venue - in an unlikely town - for the flowering of English verse".

Another of the poetic heavyweights from hereabouts, one Ian McMillan of Barnsley, seemed more serious than usual and probably angling for a blue plaque on the building when he said: "The Albert will, to future literary historians, be as important a site as those coffee houses that Dr Johnson messed about in..."

Mind you, he also added: "It houses one of the liveliest workshops and series of readings in the known universe."

Glaswegian John Duffy was one of the founding fathers and on the editorial team for those books. He found one of the differences on coming to Huddersfield was to meet people like John Lancaster taking a serious interest in other people's work and asking: "Do you publish?"

He said other experienced writers like Milner Place, Geoff Hattersley and David Morley were also willing to help.

John said the Albert seemed a natural place for their meetings - it was a well-placed, small and cramped pub with good beer and it was next to the library.

From the beginning, he said, they found it necessary during the meetings to have four beer breaks - essential for the pub, the poets and the audience alike.

Often as many as 40 people crammed into their room - and on one memorable occasion there was so many that they overflowed to another room.

Top poets like Simon Armitage and Ian McMillan attended and some others came from as far afield as Bristol and London.

Once, John said, when he went to the bar he was asked to judge another group's poetry competition - for a pint of Guinness!

He added that they were also very serious about their poetry. Old hands took the work of newcomers and, in his own words, "gave them a right kicking" - only to soften the blow later by telling them that they only bothered to do this with people who showed true promise.

Will the Albert Poets keep their name even if stationed in different licensed premises, that's a nice question. But John was clear that they would like to return to the Albert if that was still possible, even though the reins have now been handed to a new generation.

One point he was keen to make was that Ian McMillan had declared Huddersfield the poetry capital of the North even before the Albert Poets began.

And now it is up to you, the readers. Send us your Albert memories: we have a copy of all four of the Albert Poets' books to give away to the sender of the best memory or memories. It's what we like to call poetic justice.