toniapeckover 's review for:

Black Country by Liz Berry

4.0

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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....."