A POET has criticised plans not to pay someone to pen a work to help promote the route of the city's buried beck.

The Friends of Bradford's Becks (FOBB) group wants to plot the course of the waterway, which flows beneath the city centre, using 15 sponsored stone markers placed in the pavement. Each would carry one line of a poem specially written about the Beck.

An appeal has been set up for volunteers with a passion for Bradford to write a piece to be used in the project.

The hand-carved Welsh sandstone slabs will be placed in key locations from Thornton Road, by the Odeon building, through to Lower Kirkgate and past The Midland Hotel.

But Kate Fox, who is the writer-in-residence at Feversham College, Cliffe Road, Bradford, said whoever writes the best piece should be paid and has FOBB to suggest a £400 fee.

Mrs Fox, who now lives in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, has been poet-in-residence for the Glastonbury Festival.

She said: "I understand that Friends of Bradford's Becks are themselves volunteers and have got the project off the ground with the help of commercial sponsorship and Council support.

"But it's disappointing to see that although they are contributing to ecological understanding of the city, they are neglecting the cultural ecology that means artists and writers should be paid for their labour.

"I believe Bradford would be a much healthier place for writers and artists of all kinds if public art was seen to pay creatives their value

"The Beck commission is a wonderful idea and could be a great opportunity for a local writer - but at the moment the message it sends about how we value our writers is all wrong."

But FOBB chairman Barney Lerner said although the group would like to offer a payment, it is unable to.

"I totally agree in principle that we should be paying for such things. But we can't offer payment for the poem as we would have to do additional fundraising and we haven't got time to do that now," he said.

"The poems project is doing quite well. Everyone is being very positive about the idea.

"We have had a couple more tentative offers of sponsorship for the stones."

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, Bradford Council's executive member of employment, skills and culture, said supported the FOBB.

"While I am sure they would have liked to pay the winning poet something, they have created this opportunity out of nothing," she said.

"They have therefore had to be clear from the outset that they have no money to pay the winning poet."

The winning poem will be picked by a small panel of FOBB and officers from Bradford Council.

Visit www.bradford-beck.org for more information. The closing date for entries is March 1.