Black Country

by Liz Berry

‘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.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2014

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, The Writers' Prize and two 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.

Instagram: @misslizberry

Reviews

[Imi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary collection! Berry writes about what it means to be home, to grow up and leave, and then return and learn to love it once again. I love how she plays with nuances of her local dialect of the West Midlands. It brings the place life within these pages. I'd love to see Berry perform these poems live. Some of my favourite moments:

For years you kept your accent
in a box beneath the bed,
the lock rusted shut by hours of elocution

(p.4)

My interest in you became geological.
Pulling on your wellingtons to walk the dog in the rain,
you were granite, durable, funereal almost.
Under bath water, you were the agate
I found on Brighton beach as a child, sleek
and mottled as seal's skin.

At other times you seemed a rarer gem

(p.43)

That last summer before school robbed language
from my mouth and parcelled it up in endless

Ladybird Books, you made me a boat of words
and pushed us off from the jetty into the Sea of Talk

(p.48)

[I have] conducted science's great experiments
using darkened cupboards, plastic cups and cress

and unhooked a high window on a stuffy day
and heard the room's breath,

I have measured time by paper snowflakes,
blown eggs, bereft cocoons

and waved goodbye in summer so many times
that even in September my heart is June.

(p.49)

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

The maxim, write about what you know rings true in this instance. Berry has tapped deeply into the Black Country as a source of the material in this collection. There are poems on the legacy of the coal industry, memories of camping in the Guides and of eating brains for tea at Nanny’s.

There are poems about places, Gotsy Hilland Tipton-On-Cut, (which are both fantastic names by the way) and some about the heavy industry that came to define the region. Among the poems are some on the natural world, including Owl, The Silver Birth and Woodkeeper.

I will ripen you like a rare Chanterelle,
Let you creep into tender cracks of my bark
penetrate the dearest heartwood at my core

What I most liked about this collection was the language. Not only does Berry have a way with words but she is utilising her local dialect to its maximum advantage. The poems flow with words that I have never come across before, such as canting, jedden, donkey bite and the fabulous tranklement. I liked this a lot and am going to try to get hold of her other collections.

Three Favourite Poems
The Year We Married Birds
The Silver Birch
Echo

[M.J. Mallon · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars.
Trying to read some poetry to broaden my reading experience, particularly as I am now writing haikus on my blog. This is an excellent book of poems can see why it won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. It is a Brave New Reads choice: www.bravenewreads.org.uk. Highly recommended.

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bird takes flight on the opening page of these miraculous poems, and the spirit flutters in the human chest. Liz Berry offers us language steeped thick in the Black Country, summoning the coal, foundries and industrial skeleton of the West Midlands. She shows us how language is resident there, what it means for the tongue to try to flee it without success, to be ever entangled in its sweet, deep cadence. Utterly astonishing, this.

“Now belly to back in the cab, his vertebrae
like cat’s eyes guiding me down,
I think of the M6 toll, lined with two million
pulped Mills and Boons; how love is buried
in unlooked for places, kept secret as us.
In the darkness his breath hums like an engine.”

26/31
#TheSealeyChallenge

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetry book that I cannot put down but read in a single day from cover to cover. Yes there have been a few and not more. The topics covered in its 42 poems include many that are amusing, as with "when you bought me a milk pan for Christmas," or the fantasy of her day in red dancing shoes. I loved the idea that she might become patron saint of school girls, making possible an "unforeseen triumph in the hockey final." I enjoyed her imagery, as in Christmas Eve, when "the tower blocks are advent calendars,/ every curtain pulled to reveal a snow blurred face." Other poems are poignant, as with the perennial family dispute as to why the girl must always wear sensible black shoes. There is a magical strand to the poems: "That year, with men turning thirty / still refusing to fly the nest, / we married birds instead." And I suppose this has to be a female poet, since she writes of "minds unravelling / like unfinished knitting" and poems of love towards an unborn child. The frequent use of local dialect is never strained and makes its own valid point. Despite the clear Christian context to many poems, I have the notion in my mind of a tough, pagan poet, with traditional values rooted in the earth of her own particular locality. Rooted and also "grounded." This seems to me a very sane and balanced poet. What an impressive and pleasing first collection. Her next book will also be brilliant - I already know this.

[Steven R · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my New Year's resolutions was to read more poetry, and I'm so pleased I chose Liz Berry's 'Black Country' to get me started. This really is a superb collection of poems and Liz Berry is a highly-skilled poet. Her familiarity with and love for the Black Country is evident throughout this book, with Berry's ingenious use of Black Country dialect in many of these poems a real joy to experience.
As someone who was born and grew up on the fringes of the Black Country, it's really refreshing to see the dialect used in such a positive and authentic way, especially in poems such as 'Birmingham Roller' and 'Homing'. Reading these wonderful poems I was immediately transported to summer evenings spent alongside the cut, Saturday afternoons visiting elderly relations across the Black Country and cosy Winter nights beside a roaring fire at Ma Pardoes.
These poems are beautifully written and expertly executed. For readers unfamiliar with the Black Country, Liz Berry provides a warm and inviting introduction to the area; and for those of us who know the Black Country, she has given us the perfect way to return home whenever and wherever we like. Bostin!

[tonia peckover · Rating 4 out of 5]

This year I'm following the trail of women poets whose work reach out to me. I had to look hard to find Liz Berry's books for sale here in the States but I am so glad I did. She writes of her own place and experience of the Black Country in (I believe) the West Midlands area of England. The dialect in many of the poems is ferocious (there are helpful translations) and strange to my ears, but the working class world and the longings of a young woman growing up within it are easily recognizable and relatable. (Whenever she writes of love or children, there is so much longing and tenderness it almost takes your breath away.) Tucked in to the harshness of coal mines, bodies ruined by work, and the vice of social shame, there's a bend toward the mythical and the natural world, which I love.

Bird

"I shed my nightdress to the drowning arms of the dark,
my shoes to the sun's widening mouth.

Bared,
I found my bones hollowing to slender pipes,
my shoulder blades tufting down.
I spread my flight-greedy arms....."

[Hope Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great little book of poetry that harks back to my home. Makes you think you're walking along one of the canals with a cuppa tea in hand, only to end up at a classic little pub with pork scratchings. 100% nostalgia for home

[Anna Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply moving, lyrical, nostalgic, uncomfortable, with an unflinching eye for detail and not a word wasted. I can't recommend this collection enough ✨

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an absolutely superb collection of modern poetry. It will not be everyone's cup of tea as a lot of the poetry is written in the Black Country vernacular (the Black Country is an area of the Midlands that gets its name from the colour of the soil, which was rich in coal and the fact that it was the cradle of the industrial revolution) and unless you are from the Midlands I think you might miss some of the references although the poems do have short definitions at the bottom of the page for some of the words that are harder for a none Black Country expatriate to understand. I read it straight through and was very close to tears on occasion as it reminded me of my childhood and an accent I have long since lost for the most part, although it does amuse me to use some of the terms derived from the area to befuddle my friends who have never been further North than the Watford Gap. For me this poetry was nostalgic, it is beautiful, lyrical and I enjoyed it enormously.

[Tanya Petrova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Due to my age and/or background not many poems in the collection resonated with me, but I really enjoyed the usage of the Midlands dialect (correct me if there's a better term).

Call me old-fashioned, but I love rhyme and meter in my poetry. It's also a little sad that to describe her sexual experiences a woman has to conceal them as much as Liz did.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of poetry. I love listening to Liz Berry so I thought I would take a stab at reading her. I thought I would read one or two poems at a time, but I ended up reading the entire collections in one sitting. Her poems for her father and her mother were the most moving for me. She is able to conjure up such a clear image of where she was raised.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book of poetry - both poems with and without the Dudley accent and the colloquiums of the West Midlands. If you read it, you also have to look at the Youtube videos of Liz Berry reading them as they do come alive. My favourites were “Homing” as it reminds me of family accents lost, and “The Last Lady Ratcatcher”. Enjoy!

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe the style just isn't for me, but I felt like I was reading the same poem multiple times with different Black Country towns mentioned. It combined natural themes with a 19th century feel to railways, canals and factories featured throughout, along with dialect words. However none of them made much impression on me.

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore Liz Berry's 'Black Country' in all manner of ways. The poems here are both deeply personal and universal. The poems in the language of the Black Country offered me an insight into a landscape that I know very little of, and that felt like a gift. Funny, moving, uncomfortable, beautiful, filled with the smell of soot and the sound of birds' wings. Absolutely stunning!

[Hannah Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liz Berry's poetry is so close to my heart. I struggle to read anything by her that doesn't make me weep. She was the first Black Country accent I ever heard before moved to the West Midlands and 'Birmingham Roller' remains one of my favourite poems. Her poetry is so beautiful it's almost impossible to describe. This is a truly phenomenal collection.

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Forward Prize winner for a Best First Collection in 2014, ‘Black Country’ is an astoundingly confident debut: tactile, immediate, full of linguistic flair and shot through with the chewy nuances of her native West Midlands dialect.

[Elizabeth Kemball]

Beautiful and nostalgic

A wonderfully written and varied collection of poems, with themes of love, magic, romance and strong sense of place. A really refreshingly strong poetic voice.

[Richard Stone · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its best when referencing the modern; the rollover lottery, the call centre, the Mills & Boon under the M6 Toll, this lovely first collection leaves the reader keen to see how this unique voice matures with time.

[Cooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent poetry

This poetry defines the place it celebrates. There are excellent uses of words and images. All the poems fit together to make a cohesive whole. Yet its themes are universal rather than parochial.

[Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of poems chronicle a woman growing up from birth to childhood, coming of age, marriage and childbirth in England’s coal country (rust belt) amidst the closure of the mines and the decline of the working classes into poverty.

[Sergios · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful collection. Some lines really stopped me in my tracks. I am not English and yet the poet makes her emotions about the Black Country feel universal despite their evident specificity. Surprisingly, the poems written in dialect were very accessible.

[Roy Beckemeyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Liz Berry is an extraordinary poet. I found her work invigorating and in fact it inspired me to write poems for which I used lines from her work as epigraphs in my own. Highly recommended.

[Serge ♆ Neptune · Rating 4 out of 5]

My standout poems: The Silver Birch, Fishwife, Darling Blue Eyes.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite poetry collections ever. Funny, numinous, surreal.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genius!

[Danna]

https://bookmarks.reviews/five-books-...

[J.M. Langan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. Beautifully written in the language of the black country.

[Mark Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really accessible and easy enough to follow. There are a few good phrases but a lot of fairly ordinary language.