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Subsidence
The ground gives, the walls crack and our foundations are laid bare, revealing fragments of history, myth and memory we had forgotten once were ours. Subsidence is about the post-industrial Black Country landscape, where houses sink into old mines and the present collapses into the past beneath our feet. Written just before and after the 2016 Brexit referendum, these poems are love-songs to the dialect and culture of the Black Country, odes to working-class communities, and laments for the unwanted, the strange and off-kilter.
64 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2020
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May 21, 2023
As someone relatively new to the Midlands and the Black Country (five years or thereabouts) I was very pleased to be able to read some of these dialect-written poems, and not only hear how they would sound out-loud, but also understand totally what they were about. Others - no reflection on R. M. Francis at all - I read but couldn't pierce the dialect tongue. And I'm all for dialect-usage; it helps define a poet or author's work and adds so much power and gravitas. And it took me far too long to twig Wieland could be Wayland (the Smith) lol. A book of poems worth reading for the challenge and stretch.
Displaying 1 of 1 review