Overview

This Wilderness & Other Concerns by Martin Kennedy Yates A searing new collection from poet and mixed-media artist Martin Kennedy Yates, This Wilderness & Other Concerns is both homage and confrontation - a poetic journey through post-pandemic Birmingham, the politics of survival, and the fractured beauty of language itself. At its heart is This Wilderness, a five-part response to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, shifting the scene from 1920s London to 2020s Birmingham. In these pages, derelict canals, graffiti-tagged arches, and ghostly underpasses stand as monuments to grief, resilience, and the struggle for meaning in a culture hooked on distraction. This is a cityscape where ""the fakery and sleight of news"" collides with ancient myth, where rats, prophets, and poets walk the same cracked pavements. The book then opens into Other Concerns - poems of place and presence, where pylons, sheds, canals, and scraps of graffiti take on liturgical weight. These pieces are as sculptural as they are lyrical, blending page-craft with performance energy. Finally, in Scousenlish, Yates unleashes a mytho-biographical alter-ego, drawing on the alliterative pulse of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. Written in a rich, inventive dialect, these poems are meant to be spoken aloud - raw, musical, and haunting. Praised by poets and critics alike for its fearless voice and inventive form, This Wilderness & Other Concerns is: ""Extraordinary poetry. A rich, dark exploration of tribalism and the underbelly of modern Britain."" - Emma Purshouse, National Poetry Competition prize-winner ""Inventive and searching... weaving time, place and text into its own unsettling tapestry."" - Gregory Leadbetter, Professor of Poetry, Birmingham City University ""A genuinely thoughtful approach to how the page and white space can release meaning."" - Jonathan Davidson, poet and festival founder For readers of T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and contemporary British poetry that refuses to play safe, this collection is an immersive experience: by turns brutal, tender, and visionary. This Wilderness & Other Concerns is not just a book of poems - it is a reckoning, a city's ghost-story, and a fierce hymn for survival.

Full Product Details

9798298434539

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available