Some places, some cities are so famous, so iconic, that they visit you long before you return the favour. New York is one example. Long before I first actually stood there, breathed the air, caught a taste of its loud and layered soundscape, passed through canyon-like streets in downtown Manhattan, I’d developed a strong sense of what I expected this city to be like.

Through books, songs, TV shows, comics and film I’d unconsciously been building my own version of New York. A brash, dirty, thrilling, wild vision of what I then imagined to be the Uber City. A kind of Mega City One, with fewer judges and more Artists and poets. Steaming manhole covers, water towers, brown rats and yellow cabs, hip hop and gigantic Art Deco buildings.

When I first visited in the 1990s, many of my preconceptions were fulfilled – like a megalopolis edition of Eye Spy I mentally box-ticked locations everywhere I turned – images supplied by films, album covers, quotes etc. What I didn’t expect, was for this to be a two-way thing. I found that I wasn’t able to simply encounter New York afresh, noting sites and scenes I’d seen, or heard about elsewhere, but I also used this pre-shaped notion of the place to shape my own version of it – generating a personal version of the city as I wandered around it.

On one occasion, I was lucky enough to stay with a friend of my Dad’s who was Pastor at a church in the Upper West Side. When I arrived – to his surprise via the subway from JFK – he handed me a set of keys and a copy of that week’s Time Out NYC and suggested I get straight out there; which I was delighted and excited to do.

Since that first visit, my view of New York and the USA has changed somewhat. I’ll never re-capture the wild-eyed innocent(ish) excitement of that first encounter.

Recently I tried to convey a sense of it in a poem, which I am excited to say has been published by Fevers of the Mind as part of a three poem showcase.

You can find ‘Out of Fashion’, along with Fall of the Mayan and Auld lang syne here.

Please give it a read and then you’ll get to decide what you think I mean by the opening line: Pants to the Americans…