Map 13 – Kirkgate Market

Personal Shopper

In Autumn 2016, Matthew was lucky enough to work with Katie Etheridge and Simon Persighetti on Personal Shopper – “a two-year project exploring and celebrating the rich network of relationships between shoppers, traders and goods in Leeds Kirkgate Market.” Personal Shopper: Cornucopia was the culmination of the project and took place as part of Compass Festival 2016. Katie and Simon set up shop in an empty market stall, from which a series of guided (and mis-guided) tours set off each day for the duration of the festival. The tours were all devised and led by different people – shoppers, traders, artists and market enthusiasts.

Matthew led a poetry tour through the market, based around a series of conversations with traders on his favourite stalls. Each trader was asked to identify the favourite item that they sold, and Matthew found and recited a different poem for each one – as well as telling some personal stories about his own experiences of shopping in the Market.

Photos by Lizzie Coombes

The poems he read were:

  • ‘Coffee in Heaven’ by John Agard at Teapot, Tea and Coffee Ltd.
  • ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ by W.B. Yeats at B & M Fabrics.
  • ‘I Ate a Chili Pepper’ by Barbara Vance at Spice Corner
  • ‘To Eat of Meat Joyously’ by Bertolt Brecht at Malcolm Michaels Quality Butchers
  • ‘Choosing Shoes’ by Frida Wolfe for Timpson’s Shoe Repairs
  • ‘Oyster’ by Robin Robertson for Tarbett’s fishmongers
  • ‘This is Just to Say’ by William Carlos Williams (a poem about plums) at Tony Banks & Sons, greengrocers
  • ‘To Whom It May Concern’ by Andrew Motion (a poem about Ice Cream) at Fultons

He also created his own poem to record the tour – each line evoking a sound, a texture, a scent, a taste or an image from each of the stalls he visited. You can read the poem below.

Taking part in the project was a great way to learn more about the market. It offered up a whole new set of perspectives on a familiar and well-known place and offered an opportunity to work with two brilliant artists who were engaged in thinking about the connections between place and community in ways that were both similar and different to 365LeedsStories.

  • Kirkgate, 2016

    by Matthew Bellwood

    The delicate milky white of oyster flesh
    The cold moonlight yellow of cheap ice-cream
    The rich dark brown of coffee-grounds
    The bright raw red of fresh-cut meat

    The vivid green of dangling chilies
    The dark blue bruise of shiny plum skin
    The rainbow racks of coloured fabric
    The tar-black polish in the silver tin

    These brightly coloured bargains are made vivid and appealing,
    By the people and the stories underneath the leaky ceiling

    There is nothing that is sold here that cannot be bought elsewhere
    But the items being sold here are being sold with care

    There is pride in independence, there is freedom and good grace
    In owning your own business, in connecting with a place

    In remembering a customer, in not costing the earth
    In knowing where things come from and how much things are worth

    In giving good directions or good guidance or advice
    Or a discount to a regular who can’t afford the price

    It may not have the glamour of John Lewis or The Trinity
    But a bustling market holds a kind of divinity
    For what it has instead is warmth and humanity
    And human shops for human people is a kind of sanity

  • Personal Shopper, Kirkgate Market

    Words and images by Matthew Bellwood. Pages from ‘Personal Shopper’ book.