My residency at North Lodge Park in Darlington ended today with the launch of our community anthology, 'Our North Lodge Park'. Originally we had intended to hold the event in the park, but the weather was so bad we switched it to Corporation Road School. (Many thanks to them for hosting this event)

This has been a very enjoyable year for me. I have made lots of friends and apart from the community anthology, a chap book of my own poems, 'Tongues in Trees' has also been published. All the proceeds from 'Tongues in Trees' will go to the Friends of North Lodge Park so that they can purchase replacement trees, (about 23 trees have been taken down during the period of my residency and I wanted to give something back to the community.)

A personal thank you to all those who've worked with me over the past year. I know the communities round the park love North Lodge Park and I hope I have helped to raise its profile over the past year.

I owe a great debt to the Friends of North Lodge Park who have been supportive throughout this project and who, yet again were there at the event today, doing the catering, listening, reading and generally being involved. I was glad to hand over a cheque for