Two Sides of a Flyover

• Two
• Sides of a F
• Flyover
• GOODBYE FLYOVER, HELLO FUTURE
• Adam Dixon
• Gateshead Council
• Kim McGuinness
• North East Mayor bam
• ATES
• THR

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Two Sides of a Flyover

This selection of poetry was written as a response to the demolition of the Gateshead Flyover in 2026. I spent three years researching the history of transport systems on Tyneside during the twentieth century. These poems take inspiration from archival material, oral histories and my own personal experience of the flyover.

Photographs were taken around the flyover in 2026.

This poem refashions ideas from Le Corbusier's City of To-Morrow and Ove Arup's design report for the Gateshead Flyover uncovered in the National Archives, Kew.

A Crow once told me, To make a city work –

A road must be built.

Traffic must flow or the city dies.

His vision was grand;

Highways slicing through the city air, While people above and below - Wonder at the sight.

Our new flyover will be an exciting form, In scale with the new Gateshead -

Already being constructed -

Dwarfing the old.

Drivers will see our elevated road -

Sweeping away before them, Curving away between the tall Chandless flats.

An overwhelming experience.

People on the lower roads -

Will see our flyover between the buildings.

They will appreciate the soffits;

Our columns will impress.

Children must not play on this site

This poem was inspired by an oral history interview conducted as part of my research into the Flyover.

Before the flyover, We had a big playing field.

• Between our new home -
• And the flats across the way.
• Great for us kids;

We could frolic on all day and night.

Then came the flyover, Me mam was on telly.

She said, 'we can't even hang the washing out!'

Opening the backdoor, You could see the foundations."

It was literally a building site.

You wouldn't get away with that nowadays.

But to us kids, It was a big adventure really.

A great climbing frame.

I've got photos somewhere...

• Breaking Away
• Part 1
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• Acd six pies penu siquis T

This poem was inspired by press reports following the demolition of new 1960s maisonettes to make way for the flyover in the 1970s.

The Ministry made assurances, Nothing will go; the flats will stand.

Yet down they come, Who's footing the bill?

A case of the classic planning blunder, On Chandless the noise of the motorway rings. Residents are forced to live in perpetual car-cophony – While the Ministry sits idle.

• A £210,000 load of rubbish;
• A price worth paying for progress?
• Heaps of concrete and bricks;
• Mountains of modernist planning gone wrong.
• Broken windows and broken dreams -
• Shatter the illusion of utopia.

A highway to prosperity - Or a road to despair?

People on the lower roads – Might appreciate the soffits. But they will also remember, A promise not kept.

Pedestrians Hohibited

This poem is based on an oral history interview I conducted when studying the Flyover and press reports from the 1990s.

You didn't feel safe, The flyover severed the community.

The rumble of the traffic -

All day, all night.

Unsavoury things happened, The overbridges became dark. Underpasses were the demon's lair; Where evil schemes were hatched.

The road separated the church – From the people it once served. People stopped coming, The road to hell.

This poem takes inspiration from the closure of the flyover in 2024 and its demolition in 2026. It felt poignant seeing the demise of the flyover as I came to the end of my research.

And as we say 'goodbye', We say, 'hello'.

As the machines move in, I can't help thinking about the Chandless Estate.

I stand watching the carnivorous beasts -

Ripping apart the old traffic solution.

It feels like history is being made, But also replicated.

They're eating away at the flyover, Just like they did decades before. First Chandless, now this;

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, cement to cement.

Metabolised and interred;

Crushed under foot as I walk, New ruins 'hello future'.

Soon they will be swept away, Will the warm air of progress blow?

Or will the Satanic mills of corporate culture - Spring up like weeds on dormant ground.

For now, 'goodbye flyover'.

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