A Part of the Main

It’s hard to know how poetry can play a part in times of anger and loud discord, when anything less than shouting seems too quiet to be heard. In readings from our collaboration, A Part of the Main. Lesley Saunders and I have tried to offer deep perspective for questions about individual and national identity, themes of migration, loss of love or home or language, and a kind of listening that goes beyond the either/or. Our thanks to our publisher, Mulfran Press, and to kind hosts and thoughtful audiences in Cardiff, London, Oxford, Reading, Shrewsbury, Tunbridge Wells, Bath, Bradford on Avon and others to come. A Part of the Main is a single poem by two poets who conducted a dialogue in verse by email over the course of a few months. Born of the difficult feelings and public discord arising from the events of 2016, it moves deeper into the cultural hoard of the British Isles in search of a humane understanding of migration and identity.