How do we memorialize those who have suffered injustice and have been forgotten? Bernard begins this collection with a brilliant, powerful introduction. Outlining the research into the 1981 New Cross Fire (also known as the New Cross Massacre) that claimed 13 young lives. Many believe it to have been a racist attack and the reverberations are still felt today, so Bernard parallels it with the Grenfell Tower fire, an eerily similar case.

Bernard's writing is poignant and thoughtful and respectfully embody the voices of those lost their lives, those who lost loved ones, onlookers and protesters, whilst some of the poems reflect Bernard's own experience with gender, sexual, national and racial identity, studying their own place in Britain as a queer black person, stating "I am haunted by this history, but I also haunt it back."

The book forms an insightful, thought provoking, heartwrenching journey and provide convergence for them to occupy a space in history that they should rightfully have, rather than being forgotten.

I picked this up in the library as I have been struggling through a reading slump and sat reading it in a window overlooking the skyline of South London. I live incredible close to New Cross so learning about the irreversible damage the fire caused to the community through such brilliant words was heartbreaking.