Black Country

by Liz Berry

Overview

WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2014

*PBS Recommendation 2014*

‘When I became a bird, Lord, nothing could not stop me…’

In Black Country, Liz Berry takes flight: to Wrens Nest, Gosty Hill, Tipton-on-Cut; to the places of home. The poems move from the magic of childhood – bostin fittle at Nanny’s, summers before school – into deeper, darker territory: sensual love, enchanted weddings, and the promise of new life.

In Berry’s hands, the ordinary is transformed: her characters shift shapes, her eye is unusual, her ear attuned to the sounds of the Black Country, with ‘vowels ferrous as nails, consonants / you could lick the coal from.’ Ablaze with energy and full of the rich dialect of the West Midlands, this is an incandescent debut from a poet of dazzling talent and verve.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448182893
Publisher:	Random House
Publication date:	08/07/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
File size:	769 KB

About the Author

Liz Berry is an award-winning poet and author of the critically acclaimed collections Black Country (Chatto, 2014); The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto, 2018); The Dereliction (Hercules Editions, 2021) a collaboration with artist Tom Hicks; and most recently The Home Child (Chatto, 2023), a novel in verse. Liz’s work, described as “a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands” (Guardian), celebrates the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Liz has received the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and Forward Prizes. Her poem ‘Homing’, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus. Liz is a patron of Writing West Midlands and lives in Birmingham with her family.

Table of Contents

Bird 1

Birmingham Roller 3

Homing 4

Bostin Fittle 5

Black Country 6

Nailmaking 8

The Red Shoes 9

Tipton-On-Cut 11

The Patron Saint of School Girls 13

5th Dudley Girl Guides 15

When I Was a Boy 16

Trucker's Mate 17

The First Path 18

Taps 21

The Year We Married Birds 22

The Silver Birch 24

Sow 26

Carmella 28

Owl 30

The Black Delph Bride 31

The Bone Orchard Wench 33

Gosty Hill 34

The Last Lady Ratcatcher 36

Fishwife 37

Woodkeeper 39

Dog 40

In the Steam Room 41

Stone 43

Bilston Enamels 44

Darling Blue Eyes 45

Irene 47

The Sea of Talk 48

Miss Berry 49

My Mother's Wedding Shoes 50

Goodnight Irene 51

Wulfrun Hotel 52

Echo 53

Grasshopper Warbler 55

The Way Home 57

The Assumption 58

Christmas Eve 59

The Night You Were Born 61

Notes & Acknowledgements 63

Editorial Reviews

"Liz Berry is an extraordinary poet: passionate, precise, moving and deeply real. The voice and heat of the Black Country are here, the old tenderness and the complex strands of identity, the humour and the music."

EBOOK COMMENTARY