Manchester poet Tony Walsh: ‘I’ve shed more than a few tears this week’

He helped Manchester cope with its grief after the bombing with an electrifying performance. Now a national hero, he talks about surviving poverty, his punk roots and escaping the day job

Tony Walsh took to the stage in front of thousands of people gathered in Manchester’s Albert Square, the evening after the terror attack in the city that killed 22 people. He came on, adjusted the microphone to his height and, for just over five minutes, his performance of his poem This Is the Place took the crowd from intense silence to laughter to an eruption of cheering that almost drowned out his final words: “Choose love.”

It was what the city – and the rest of us – needed if you go by the hundreds of thousands of views the video has received. It wasn’t the solemn, commemorative verse we have become used to hearing at sombre public occasions. It was swaggering, raucous, warm, defiant: a love poem to Manchester. Liam Gallagher said it was “the best thing I’ve ever heard come out of any Mancunian’s mouth, ever”.