BRADFORD’S poet laureate Gerard Benson has posthumously published two books which are being celebrated in the city tonight.

Family, friends and dignitaries will gather at Waterstones in Hustlergate from 7.30pm to mark the occasion and remember the 83-year-old, who was still writing up until his death earlier this year.

Although a Londoner, Mr Benson, who was appointed Bradford’s first and only poet laureate in 2008, adopted Bradford as his home city after settling here in 1989 with his writer artist wife Cathy, living in Manningham.

Memoirs of A Jobbing Poet retell his experiences of working across the globe from the US to Egypt and from Norway to Ireland. It also includes accounts of his time in his beloved Bradford, where he had a great sense of belonging and a particular vocation in schools helping children write on the themes of peace.

A Quaker, a poet and a teacher, he had earlier served his country as an intelligence decoder in Britain and had worked as an actor treading the boards in many places including Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre. In London, he was a prime mover of the Poems on the Underground scheme that started 27 years ago.

As Bradford poet laureate, he wrote verses for major events such as Holocaust Memorial Day, the Bradford City fire disaster memorial services, civic services and the Lord Mayor’s Installation service as well as other poems about the city's people, its landmarks like the new City Park and the district's villages including Queensbury and Thornton, which are all in the second book being published called The Bradford Poems, compiled by his widow.

"He was a Londoner but he loved Bradford along with me. He always put his heart and soul into writing, he wrote poems to make people smile, to make people think and some which just presented his view of the community. He was thrilled to know they were going to be published," said Mrs Benson.

It was Mrs Benson who wrote the end piece to Memoirs of A Jobbing Poet when he became too ill, she read it all to him to make sure he approved before she added the last poignant sentence which she never read to him because it was too emotional.

"It was a bit of advice he gave to her when he realised he was dying, he told her - I know that you live for me and I live for you but you are going to have to live for yourself."

She said: "I wanted to include that, I thought it was a fitting end and wanted people to know that was the kind of man he was. It's absolutely wonderful that these books have come to life."