England's Green

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I’ve already bought and read the poetry books. And of the ten others, I could choose many, but maybe Margo Jefferson – I’ve loved what I’ve read by Margo before and her title draws me in, too ( Constructing a Nervous System). At the ceremony it was also announced that the prize is looking for new sponsorship, as Rathbones has decided to step down following seven years as sponsor. Aliyah Begumis a nineteen-year-old poet and performer, who was Birmingham’s Young Poet Laureate between 2018-2020. She is a commended Foyle Young Poet and her work has been featured on Young Poets Network, in anthologies and on the radio. She has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, and is currently studying English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford.

Davina Baconis studying English and Environmental Science in Cornwall. In 2018, she won the BBC Young Writers’ Award and earlier this year, they had an article published in shado mag. They enjoy exploring ideas about identity, community, and the environment through short stories, poetry, and essays. Zaffar Kunial possesses that rare quality of negative capability which Keats first identified in Shakespeare (a guiding spirit in this, Kunial’s first collection); the poems hold us among mysteries and doubts, without pronouncing or attempting to resolve. Their beauty lies in their indecisiveness – their quiet refusal to settle matters or hold to a single view.' (Rebecca Watts, Times Literary Supplement) In 2022, the T. S. Eliot Prize (the most valuable prize for new poetry collections in the UK and Ireland) and Young Poets Network, The Poetry Society’s leading platform for poets aged up to 25, ran an exciting new collaboration to support the next generation of poetry reviewers: the Young Critics Scheme. Kunial’s gift is to examine language in a clinically precise manner to measure belonging, distance and love.' (John Glenday)he does love words. The pleasure he takes in the slipperiness and possibility of language is palpable Young Critics Davina Bacon and SZ Shao shares their experiences of the programme, and what they have been up to since, in the new videos below. You might also find the two features published on Young Poets Network as part of the 2022 Scheme helpful: How To Write A Poetry Review and 15 Top Tips From Leading Critics. Ruth Awololais a long time reader, writer, appreciator and believer in the power of poetry. She has been performing her own poetry since 2015 and writes for a range of audiences including poetry for children.

That’s the same middle where the West Indian Viv Richards can place his “feet exactly where [WG] Grace / played at fifty” (‘Innings’) That could come across as trite and pat, but the poem it ends (‘The Wind in the Willows’ – my emphasis) brings the book’s themes together with a craft that supports the virtuosity. At this time of year you can’t get much more English than a playground game of conkers. In ‘Invasive’ we learn that the horse chestnut is, in fact, My parents. In very different ways, my mother who read a lot of literature and then stopped before she had me, and my father who couldn’t read English at all when he arrived here and wrote in capital letters (e.g. on betting slips and the occasional card, FROM DAD, where he let the other words do the talking).

2022

To help them develop their critical skills and create their review, the ten selected participants attended three online Young Poets Network masterclasses, one of which was led by acclaimed reviewer, editor and poet, Jen Campbell. The first three poems of the collections are titled ‘Foxglove’, ‘Forget-Me-Not’, and ‘The Hedge’. This is England. We know where Kunial wants to be Literary enrichment follows the light-bearing “ gl” words conjured in line 12. The foxgloves are enchanted into “Oberon’s banks of eglantine” and, although the gul of Gulliver is “shrunken”, it too opens out, and becomes the word which “says ‘rose’ in my fatherland”. Both words “fatherland” and “motherland” are beautifully rediscovered here, newly flowering in the marriage-knot of countries the poet inherits from his parents, his mother’s England and his father’s Pakistan. The ten Young Critics are: Ruth Awolola, Davina Bacon, Aliyah Begum, Noah Jacob, Abondance Matanda, Lily McDermott, Holly Moberley, SZ Shao, Mukisa Verrall and Eric Yip.

Kunial’s style is a wise vernacular that Auden would have loved . . . Six is a pamphlet to read and re-read; its words are so plain and so well put together that you won’t realise until much later how permanently they’ve marked you, like a grass stain.' (Alex Hayden-Williams, Varsity) Although this poem describes events in 1616 and 1066, the closing line: “Shapes. Spreading from the future on the beach.” speaks as much of those who come to Britain today for safety and shelter as it does of conquest or invasive species.What’s more English than villagers gathering at the War Memorial on Armistice Day? In our village some of those present still carry the names of those called by Wilfred Owen’s bugles. What’s more English than leather on willow on a summer’s day? Round here, sons and fathers play for the village teams while spectators and the countryside doze gently beyond the boundary. What’s more English than England’s green and pleasant land? The landscape we idealise defines our notion of our country as clearly as the Lionesses. I was really excited by Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha – how so much was painted in so few words and with so much left out. Noah Jacobis an Arab-British poet and performer. She is an editor and columnist for Zindabad Zine and alum of The Writing Room and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, having placed second in the Roundhouse Poetry Slam 2021. She has been featured in SLAMbassadors, Kalopsia Lit, Shubbak Festival and Camden Festival. Staring at an isolated word, or repeating it aloud, over and over, is a brain-game that can disrupt the cosiest family of letters, and sometimes suggest curious re-alliances. In this week’s poem, from Zaffar Kunial’s second collection, England’s Green, the word chosen for such an adventure is “ foxgloves”. Kunial begins by gently imagining the pleasure of hiding in the middle of his word, where “the xgl is hard to say”. It certainly is: I practised it when no one was listening, and made a sound part kiss, part hiss and part gulp. It sounded like a protest against “the England of its harbouring word”.

Kunial clearly delights in language, with wordplay and differing pronunciations fuelling "Foregrounds" et al. I particularly liked "Foxgloves" ("Sometimes I like to hide in the word / foxgloves - in the middle of foxgloves. The xgl is hard to say") and "The Wind in the Willows," where he wonders if the book title appeals to him just for its sound. Words like ‘motherland’, ‘fatherland’ and ‘Eng(er)land’ are too often brandished, drawn as weapons against some feared, or hated, other. Kunial disarms these words, polishes them, and sets them with the skill of a jeweller El Socorro’ comes from the autobiographical collection Sonnets for Albert , Anthony Joseph’s fifth poetry collection. It follows Desafinado , Teragaton , Bird Head Son , and Rubber Orchestras . Beyond poetry Joseph has also written three novels, including the multi-award shortlisted Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon . Young Poets Network is a hugely important and innovative online meeting point for any young person with an interest in poetry – to share, to experiment and to expand their knowledge. It attracts large numbers of lively minded readers and writers with its features, challenges, competitions and resources, and we look forward to seeing and hearing how they respond to the T. S. Eliot Prize 2022 shortlist. We are very glad to be extending reviewing culture and opportunities through the Young Critics Scheme.” Constructing a Nervous System won the nonfiction category, while the fiction award was won by Michelle de Kretser for Scary Monsters. The poetry prize was taken by Victoria Adukwei Bulley for her debut collection Quiet.

Zaffar Kunial

The collection falls into four parts. I think of them as music albums and the first one is loosely about insects, but it’s also about many other things that kind of bring in human elements. It’s also about the urgency of their very brief lives, but seen through quite a human lens… We all see through our human perspectives, so when I’m talking about the insects for example, the perspective is very much of a middle aged mum, so a lot of the insects that I’m most able to strongly empathise with, it’s in their maternal instincts that I find the most common ground.’ Zaffar Kunial's 'Us' (Faber & Faber, 2018) was shortlisted for a number of awards including the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. These intersections are threefold. Firstly, Kunial’s brown skinned Englishness; secondly the two languages of his parents; and thirdly the facility with words of someone who has had to overcome a speech impediment. Let’s take a look at each. Tender and true, complex and profound, Quiet is a beautiful balancing act of a book – a debut that brings Adukwei Bulley fully formed, starting something,” they added. Scary Monsters was joined on the fiction shortlist by NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory, Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour, Daisy Hildyard’s Emergency and Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea.