VOICES reflecting the city's diverse community are needed to read out lines of a winning poem that will mark out the route of Bradford's buried beck.

Last year, a poem written by Jane Callaghan, of Wilsden, entitled Bradford Beck was chosen by Friends of Bradford's Becks (FOBB) to plot the course of the waterway, which flows beneath the city centre.

Each of the poem's 15 lines will be carried separately on one of the 15 hand-carved Welsh sandstone slabs which will be placed in the pavement at key locations from Thornton Road, by the Odeon building, right through to Lower Kirkgate, past The Midland Hotel following the beck's partly hidden route.

There were 29 poems in all entered into the competition although only 19 stuck to the competition rules on numbers of lines, line lengths, and whether the lines could be split to fit the plaques.

But all the poems are now in an anthology called Beck and members of The Friends are working on a project to record them all for people to download and enjoy from its website at bradford-beck.org.

As well as looking for volunteers to read lines from the winning poem, they also want to hear from people willing to read some of the the poems whose poets are unable to do it for themselves.

Because Friends of Bradford Beck is a charity it cannot offer any pay to people coming forward to read for them, said Friends' member Ed Butterworth.

He added: "Because Bradford is such a diverse place we thought it would be fitting to have diverse voices from the community read out the lines of our winning poem. The creator of the poem said it wasn't meant to be read out all in one go at the same time.

"We hope once all the recording work is done that there will be people going round with their earphones and smartphones following the markers listening to it being read."

The stone markers are being funded by commercial sponsorship, with sponsors including Westfield, Bradford Live, Anchor Housing and Yorkshire Water. Bradford Council is supporting the scheme and will be installing the carved stones and an information board in Tyrrel Street.

Anyone interested in reading part of the winning poem or some of the others, should email edmund@talktalk.net to arranged a recording time.

To find out more log on to bradford-beck.org.