England's Green

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he does love words. The pleasure he takes in the slipperiness and possibility of language is palpable Kunial’s gift is to examine language in a clinically precise manner to measure belonging, distance and love.' (John Glenday) Zaffar Kunial lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, and was born in Birmingham. His debut collection, Us , was shortlisted for a number of prizes. He was a 2022 recipient of the Yale University Windham-Campbell Prize. England’s Green is his second book; it was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.

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. 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. Lily McDermottis a twenty-four-year-old poet from Yorkshire. In 2019, she graduated from the University of Oxford with an English Literature degree. She now runs her own tutoring company, alongside writing poetry and screenplays. She was a semi-finalist for The Poet’s Billow Atlantis Award 2021. Her favourite poet is Hollie McNish. 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.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.

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. 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. 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 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.

England’s Green impresses us by making us look again at everything – at England, paying close attention to the landscape of what makes us who we are. He makes the old new and the new old, taking apart our selves and putting us back together again.

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 . Rich in form and reverent references, Us transports the reader from the hills of Pakistan to the schoolgrounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, from George Herbert to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' (Maria Crawford, Financial Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR) 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,

The judges described Scary Monsters as a “work of beautifully composed genius”. “This is a book that troubles and disquiets, dazzles and delights, and with lively wit and intelligence, will also make you laugh darkly,” the judges added. Anthony Cummins in the Guardian described the book as “slyly intelligent”. 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).The Poetry Society is delighted to partner with the T. S. Eliot Prize on this innovative new scheme for keen young readers of poetry. We hope this initiative will encourage even more young people to engage critically with the titles on the prize shortlist, and provide opportunities for them to gain in skills and confidence. The Poetry Society is committed to finding new ways to support the development of our next generation of poetry readers, writers and critics. We are excited to hear these new young critics’ responses, which we’re sure will open up new windows to the books on this year’s Eliot Prize shortlist, and introduce an inspiring selection of poets to even more readers.” 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. 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.’ What’s more English than a place name like ‘Bascote Heath, Little Itchington’ where we meet Kunial “armed with my mother’s maiden name” picturing the humanity behind the names. There’s an echo of Larkin’s “long uneven lines” as Kunial imagines the glorious dead “moving in one long continuous / column, four abreast …” which would stretch from Whitehall to Durham. Immediately he imagines the column in the pre-partition India, where his father was born into a Muslim family. Later in the book we see a wartime photo of his English grandfather next to “one of two brown” fellow airmen. This is the same grandfather 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”.