I take this January morning in my hands and wonder
if it should go under London, England, Britain, British, Black-British -

where to put the burning house, the child made ash, the brick in the back
of the neck, the shit in the letter box and piss up the side of it?

I file it under fire, corpus, body, house.
From the poem Ark (pg.2)

A harrowing and raw debut collection that explores the trauma of the New Cross Massacre and how it continues to reverberate through our society today through tragedies such as Grenfell. There were so many poems in here that blew me away, but my favourite were two poems that work as a pair, + and - (pages 13 and 14).

There were some poems in Surge that I felt didn’t fit in with the others, and, whilst they didn’t detract from Bernard’s powerful pieces, they made it a jagged reading experience at times. I may be completely wrong but, for me, some of the placements felt a bit off, so I would’ve personally reorganised them to make the collection flow better.

Favourite Poems
Ark
Songbook (highly recommend looking up Bernard’s reading of this poem on YouTube)
+
-
Kitchen
Proof
Hiss
Songbook II
Chemical
Flowers