Black Country - Liz Berry (Paperback) 07-08-2014 Winner of Forward Prizes for Poetry: Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2014 (UK) and Somerset Maugham Award 2015 (UK) and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 2015 (UK).

WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2014 *PBS Recommendation 2014* 'When I became a bird, Lord, nothing could not stop me...' In Black Country, Liz Berry takes flight: to Wrens Nest, Gosty Hill, Tipton-on-Cut; to the places of home. The poems move from the magic of childhood - bostin fittle at Nanny's, summers before school - into deeper, darker territory: sensual love, enchanted weddings, and the promise of new life. In Berry's hands, the ordinary is transformed: her characters shift shapes, her eye is unusual, her ear attuned to the sounds of the Black Country, with 'vowels ferrous as nails, consonants / you could lick the coal from.' Ablaze with energy and full of the rich dialect of the West Midlands, this is an incandescent debut from a poet of dazzling talent and verve.