URBAN Poet Fred Varden discovered his way with words just a couple of months ago - and, since then, has written 30 poems.

His first poem was called Missed Opportunities. Based on a real life person who still doesn’t know it, it is about a married woman who underestimates her capabilities.

“With my first poems, I jotted down the title and then started writing,” said the retired business administrator, from Dean Close, Partington.

“I wrote the title of one poem, Ode to a Toad, because it rhymed. I read about toads in Wikipedia and came across the word Bufonidae which refers to true toads, not frogs."

He calls the toad aristocracy because he is a cut above frogs. He uses Bufonidae in his poem.

It is evident that 68-year-old Fred loves words. In another work about a beautiful woman who passes by he throws around words like theoretical and hypothetical

In Renaissance he looks back in time which is what he did on July 1 when he and his wife, Sheila, who suffers from Parkinsons Disease, celebrated their golden wedding.

He said: “You can make life more interesting for readers if you use unusual words. Unfortunately, every day speech doesn’t use interesting words but the English language is a beautiful thing."

He plans to take his work into schools and old people’s homes.

“Last night I was thinking about schools when the title Sugar Dumpling came to mind. It took two hours to write about a sugar dumpling who sat on a shelf wanting to be eaten. “Children will love it despite the sad ending,” he said.

He is entering an imaginative set piece about walls for a Poetry Society competition and would like to form a reading/writing poetry group called Stanza in Trafford.

* For more information telephone 07749 882 249.