"OLD Hovis is brown bread!" "What?" I asked. "Old Hovis ... Hovis Presley, he's dead!"

This is the way I heard the tragic news and I just could not believe it!

I still find it impossible to accept that this town of ours will never behold its laureate again.

He was only 44 which, in this day and age, is still young. A time when one's perceptions comprehend more intensely the subliminal murmurs of twilights.

I never got to meet Hovis. I only ever saw him on TV, or at a distance in the town centre. I wish I could have been his friend. Hovis confronted the world head on like a true poet of the realist school.

The poetry of Hovis Presley is mature, profound, brave, inspiring, muscular, no nonsense and in your face. It is a voice which appeals to the worldly dignity in man.

The exclamation, "Old Hovis is brown bread", would have made him laugh, I'm sure, as he himself made people laugh.

Gerard A Groves

Nevis Grove

Astley Bridge

Bolton