You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Scan barcode
penofpossibilities's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Hate crime, Racism, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury
thatothernigeriangirl's review
informative
sad
fast-paced
4.0
This was such an immersive experience. I learnt a lot about the New Cross fire and also got to know more about some of the victims of the fire at Grenfall tower. If you can, listen to the audiobook. Bernard performs the poems titled Songbooks like cute reggae songs.
celina25's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
chloeliana's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
My god this is a heartbreaking collection
aesopsdaddy's review against another edition
4.0
“I am haunted by this history but I also haunt it back”.
So writes Jay Bernard in the introduction to their sucker-punch debut collection of poetry which primarily examines the ramifications of the New Cross Fire that claimed the lives of 13 black people in the eighties - often regarded as a racist massacre - whilst glancing at its urgent and uncomfortable parallels with Grenfell’s more recent injustices and how these intermingle/inter-haunt with the poet’s own identity: racial, gender and sexual. Although formally some of the poems didn’t work for me as I found some of the rhyme and imagery didn’t always compute, this is probably subjective so I’m going to listen to Bernard’s delivery in the hopes of following their flow a bit better. In any case, this is an extremely important work which deserves re-visiting and remembering; after all, at its molten core is the problem of memorialisation, for the unsolved, unsung, unacknowledged and unwritten about, and the pursuit of protecting the victims from the secondary tragedy of archival violence.
So writes Jay Bernard in the introduction to their sucker-punch debut collection of poetry which primarily examines the ramifications of the New Cross Fire that claimed the lives of 13 black people in the eighties - often regarded as a racist massacre - whilst glancing at its urgent and uncomfortable parallels with Grenfell’s more recent injustices and how these intermingle/inter-haunt with the poet’s own identity: racial, gender and sexual. Although formally some of the poems didn’t work for me as I found some of the rhyme and imagery didn’t always compute, this is probably subjective so I’m going to listen to Bernard’s delivery in the hopes of following their flow a bit better. In any case, this is an extremely important work which deserves re-visiting and remembering; after all, at its molten core is the problem of memorialisation, for the unsolved, unsung, unacknowledged and unwritten about, and the pursuit of protecting the victims from the secondary tragedy of archival violence.
wrengaia's review against another edition
4.0
This is an absolutely phenomenal collection.
Jay Bernard takes two fires, the New Cross Fire and the Grenfell fire, as their point of departure for this collection, and the image of burning underscores the scathing criticism of the failures of British government throughout the twentieth century and to the present day that runs through this collection. Above all, there is an immense sense of loss, of sorrow and of mourning, that runs throughout this collection. Stylistically, it is marvellously varied, from prose poetry to far more conventional poetry, making use of dialect and carefully balanced form to forge something that feels itself to be vibrating with a tangible anger, frustration, sadness. This collection is both incredibly moving as a whole, and full of poems that would be immensely impactful in isolation.
Jay Bernard takes two fires, the New Cross Fire and the Grenfell fire, as their point of departure for this collection, and the image of burning underscores the scathing criticism of the failures of British government throughout the twentieth century and to the present day that runs through this collection. Above all, there is an immense sense of loss, of sorrow and of mourning, that runs throughout this collection. Stylistically, it is marvellously varied, from prose poetry to far more conventional poetry, making use of dialect and carefully balanced form to forge something that feels itself to be vibrating with a tangible anger, frustration, sadness. This collection is both incredibly moving as a whole, and full of poems that would be immensely impactful in isolation.