The Winter's Nail - by Jack Warren (Paperback)

About the Book

A fantastic debut collection exploring themes of class, ecology and English identity.

Book Synopsis

In his remarkable debut collection, Jack Warren explores the quiet intimacy between labourers and their landscapes. From stonemasons to gardeners, bar staff to construction workers, The Winter's Nail is filled with 'men for whom work was the word'.
Warren's England is not an idealized arcadia - often sodden, littered and noisy - yet is still a place to find sufficient wonder ('a lattice-work of frost on the barbed-wire fence') to engender an 'impulsive tenderness, that lifts me / skyward'. Warren sanctifies physical labour and examines themes of ecology, class, and collective human memory in tender and deft verse. With unsentimental clarity, Warren finds solace and renewal in the small beauties of the natural world in this meditation on modern England.
Political, darkly humorous, and threaded with hope, The Winter's Nail is filled with poems for and of our times and announces Jack Warren as an impressive new lyrical voice.

About the Author

After leaving school at sixteen, Jack Warren worked as a labourer, bartender, and gardener. He went on to complete an Access to Higher Education course before gaining an MA in Poetics from the University of York and an MSc in Applied Ecology from the University of Gloucestershire. His poetry has appeared in the TLS and The Spectator and his pamphlet Rude Mechanical is available from Broken Sleep Books. He lives in Somerset with his wife.