The Year I Loved England

An anthology of powerful and thought provoking poems exploring the problems affecting the country through the people living in the rapidly changing urban landscape of Middle England. The book's pages loosely represent the house numbers of a street where people of different ages and cultural backgrounds co-exist side-by-side, with each poem telling the story of that household. Written with unflinching honesty, the authors use the language of the city to confront the big questions of immigration, conflict, loss and joblessness. Although set in Coventry, the themes the poems explore are universal. The collection will resonate with people in every village, town and city because these are poems that deal with contemporary issues that affect us all. Ranging from an industrial Britain in the shadow of the Second World through to the modern day, the poems reference Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill and Coventry's Nissan factory while including historical points such as the closing of the mines in the 1980s. Approximately one third of all the poems have already featured in highly respected literary magazines including The Echo Room, The Stinging Fly, Abridged, The Meadowland Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Brick, Ancient Heart, Turbulence and Kumquat.