Coal in the Blood: Book Launch and Performance

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Inspire Poetry Festival 2021

Coal in the Blood: Book Launch and Performance 

Join our host Editors David Amos and Natalie Braber host a celebratory launch event for Coal in the Blood – An East Midlands Coal Mining Anthology (Five Leaves). Join us to enjoy readings from this first collection of poems, short stories and anecdotes about the coal mining industry in the East Midlands.

At the peak of the industry just after the First World War, over a million people worked in the industry, with thousands more dependent on supplying the pits and those working there. Coal mining shaped our landscape and townscape and the lives of all of those who lived in the mining areas and the families of those who worked ‘down pit’.

The collection includes sections on the East Midlands coalfield, working environment, mining disasters, minorities and migrants in the industry, strikes, rationalisation and closures and, finally, the legacy of the industry. It brings together writing from around the region, some by established writers such as Deborah Tyler-Bennett, John Harvey and, of course, D.H. Lawrence and other less well-known writers, including pitmen poets. Most of the material in the book has not been published before.

Mansfield Central Library
Saturday 18 September, 2pm - 3.30pm
FREE