The COAL Anthology

£10.99

‘Vivid prose, powerful verse and photographs of remarkable immediacy make this a compelling and still utterly relevant collection.’  – Stuart Maconie

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike, The Poetry Business has worked with the poet Sarah Wimbush, author of STRIKE (Stairwell Books, 2024), and the National Coal Mining Museum for England to produce an anthology of poetry and other creative responses that encompass the years leading up to the strike, the strike itself, and its aftermath. The anthology includes work from established poets, including Ian McMillan, Gillian Clarke and Paul Bentley, alongside new voices and younger poets writing about communities affected by the resulting pit closures. Work by the photographers John Harris, Keith Pattison and Ken Wilkinson, who captured some of the most powerful and moving images of the strike, is also included in the anthology.

Throughout 2024, The Poetry Business and the NCMME worked with a number of poets from the North of England and from Wales to run a series of workshops that encouraged participants nationwide to develop their own creative responses to the anniversary of the strike, and some of these are included in the anthology. The COAL anthology is accompanied by an expanded online anthology, which includes further poems and reflections on this period of British history and its continuing impact.

Published November 2024.

 

We are awaiting a reprint of this title – so please note there may be a delay in your order being dispatched.

What Writers and Critics Think

  • Vivid prose, powerful verse and photographs of remarkable immediacy make this a compelling and still utterly relevant collection. Like the black stuff itself, these pieces compress time and thought into dark, hard, brilliant nuggets that flare and burn, scorch and illuminate; exploring how coal and the job of working with it has shaped lives, landscapes and culture. And how – for all the vagaries of politics and its enemies – it continues to be a secret, muscular seam that runs through the lives of many of us.

    Stuart Maconie

Description

Published in partnership with National Coal Mining Museum for England.

Ann Sansom’s books include Romance and In Praise of Men & Other People (Bloodaxe). She has taught at Sheffield Hallam and has been visiting poet at Leeds, Oxford and Exeter universities, as well as guest poet at First Direct Bank and the Times Educational Supplement.

Peter Sansom’s books include a Selected Poems and Lanyard (Carcanet). He has taught poetry at Leeds and Manchester universities and has been Company Poet with M&S and The Prudential.

Ann and Peter are Co-Directors of the Poetry Business in Sheffield, and editors of The North magazine and Smith|Doorstop Books. In 2019 they were awarded Honorary Doctorates by the University of Sheffield.

Sarah Wimbush is a Leeds poet who hails from Doncaster. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Bloodlines, won the Mslexia/PBS Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2019 and was published in 2020 by Seren. In 2020 she was a winner in The Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition with The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster. Her first book-length collection, Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands, was published by Bloodaxe in 2022. STRIKE, her book of poems with documentary photographs marking the 40th anniversary of the 1984 Miners’ Strike, was published by Stairwell Books in 2024.

Additional information

Format

eBook (ePub), Paperback
ISBN

9781914914898, 9781914914904
Publication Year

November 2024

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