Review of 'Black Country' by Liz Berry

A Celebration of Identity, Healing and Finding Our Place in the World.

While relatively new on the poetry scene, Liz Berry has already created a name for herself, particularly in her homeland of the Midlands. Her anthology, Black Country, released in 2014, received positive feedback from critics, who claimed she had written ‘poems of real worth’[1] as well as ‘earning her place in the landscape of early 21st century British poetry’[2].

Berry’s message of regional pride and self-love lends a unique style to the anthology. She intertwines her Black Country dialect with a motif of Birmingham’s industrial scene that runs throughout the anthology, with references to ‘coal’, ‘smoke’, ‘factory’ and ‘the pit’. Her vivid imagery of the city creates a gritty, dark undertone to her poems which at first seem light and romantic.

In an interview, Berry said she wanted to ‘reclaim [the accent] as something beautiful to be treasured and celebrated rather than the ribbing that it often gets’[3]. Many accents in the UK receive mockery, most of all the Birmingham accent, having been recently branded ‘worse than staying silent’[4] in a study by the University of South Wales.

Berry’s poem Homing focuses on the shame tied to the Birmingham accent through an extended metaphor of a relative who ‘kept [their] accent / in a box beneath the bed,’. Her true passion for the accent reveals itself in the following: ‘vowels ferrous as nails, consonants / you could lick the coal from. / I wanted to swallow them all: the pits, / railways, factories thunking and clanging / the night shift, the red brick / back-to-back you were born in.’.

Her metaphor of licking the coal from the words offers the accent a physical depth, and the vivid imagery of Birmingham’s working-class scene brings in that continuous industrial motif. This imagery, paired with her arrangement of fricative and plosive lettering, offers the poem a gritty, visceral feel; perfectly encapsulating her accent.

Her effective use of sound continues to flow through the whole anthology. In ‘Tipton-On-Cut’ she changes the spelling of certain words to mimic the accent, such as: ‘oiright’, instead of ‘alright’. Her use of local slang with ‘towpath’ and ‘cut’ as she refers to the canal, as well as warming phrases such as ‘Come wi’ me, bab’ perfectly convey the unique pronunciations of the accent.

As said by Velimir Khlebnikov: ‘The magic in a word remains magic even if it is not understood, and loses none of its power.’[5] This is true for Berry’s poetry. While some people may not be familiar with the accent and its dialect, they can still understand the richness of its sound from the way she presents it on the page.

Berry promotes her work by travelling the UK, reading her poetry aloud at bookshops, awards shows, and poetry and literature festivals. This year, she branched out further into Europe, with a one-off performance in Berlin. After reading this dialect on the page, her words truly come to life when spoken aloud in her prominent accent.

Mina Loy wrote: ‘More than to read poetry we must listen to poetry’[6]. Berry’s work must be heard to be appreciated. As well as sounding out certain letters, such as ‘g’ and ‘w’ which are commonly emphasised in the Midlands, she also integrates pauses between certain lines or phrases to emphasize the long vowels and slow rhythm of the accent.

This can especially be seen in Fishwife:

‘the bed was an ocean I slipped

from my bare skin

alive oh alive all tail all fin’.

Her use of spacing slows down the pace of the poem, as well as emphasising certain words, whether read on the page or aloud.

The anthology is mostly written in free verse, interweaved with ballads and quatrains. Her experimentation with form offers a diverse reading, while keeping to Berry’s unique style. Her free-verse poems often lend a narrative similar to that of short stories and fairy tales, tying in well with her reflections on her childhood memories.

Touching on themes of nostalgia and rebirth, the poems Dog and Irene show her unique style in more depth. In ‘Dog’, Berry uses free verse to tell the story of a loved one returning to her as a dog: ‘I cried / to feel your sides warm with content, your paw / in mine in the old way’.

Her themes of resurrection, told in this poem through extended metaphor and anthropomorphism, are hopeful and uplifting; offering comfort to readers and listeners who have known loss. The arguably simplistic language also creates vivid, relatable images to readers, something that is present throughout the anthology.

In ‘Irene’, she reflects on her Grandmother’s passing in a slightly different way: ‘It mizzled the night you died / but you’d already gone / back to your owd mon’s garden / with your yellow frock on.’.

Her nostalgic narrative throughout this ballad is almost prose in style, as she sets the scene, and goes on to create a hopeful, moving image of rebirth, as if speaking directly to her grandmother. Berry rarely uses rhyme, but her ABCB rhyme scheme in this poem creates a steady rhythm, as well as linking her grandmother’s death to her rebirth, through the pairing of ‘gone’ and ‘on’. Berry’s use of the Black Country dialect once again encapsulates her Grandmother’s voice, almost bringing her to life on the page, as she returns to her ‘owd mon’s’ (father’s) garden; a poignant image.

Berry’s storytelling moves into her loss of innocence during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. This loss is presented in two different ways in the anthology due to Berry’s use of imagery and tone.

In ‘Bird’, the transition is sweet and empowering: ‘How light I was / as they lifted me up from Wren’s Nest’. Through uplifting images, she tells a romantic tale of growing up, adding a positive yet bittersweet edge to this stage of life. Her use of the lyrical ‘I’ is effective in her poetry, as she immerses herself in the narrative of her poems; revealing her personal voice as the author. This biographical narrative links in with her mention of ‘Wren’s Nest’; her childhood home in the Black Country. This play on words reflects on her memories of her adolescence as well as further emphasising the sensation of flying the nest, something all readers, young or old, can empathise with

.

In ‘The Red Shoes’, however, Berry’s tone and imagery grows considerably darker, as she sheds light on the desperation of young girls to become women. Her narrative follows a young girl who buys a pair of red shoes; symbolic of desire and womanhood, and dances her way out of school and through rural Birmingham. It becomes apparent that the ‘dance’ is largely symbolic of loss of virginity and women’s struggle to find their place in the world, especially through: ‘I heard the screams of girls who had danced / before me’

.

She follows this with description of ‘flushed thighs with fever’, and statements such as, ‘I was tired of childhood’, ‘I tore my school skirt’ and the boys ‘catcalling [her] name’. Her reference to ‘catcalling’ subtly references the objectification that women face even at a young age, without being too political. This clever interjection by Berry highlights the issue without exploring it in depth, which is something she does well. She often sparks questions in her readers through suggestive imagery rather than centring her poems around one particular political subject.

Poets such as Adrienne Rich may admire Berry’s references to female puberty. As she said in her essay Blood, Bread and Poetry: The Location of the Poet, she believes in ‘tak[ing] women’s existence seriously as a theme and source for art’[7], and Berry subtly touches on these aspects throughout the anthology.

Rich’s work became more explicit as she grew older, and she was described as having ‘sacrificed the sweetly flowing measures of [her] earlier books’[8]. Berry’s work could be described as ‘sweetly flowing’[9] despite its subtle references to more explicit themes, a style that Rich may criticize, despite starting out this way.

In the last few years, there has been an increase in women’s fight for gender equality, especially with the ‘Me Too’ campaigns on social media, and this cause has found its way into poetry and the arts.

Nafeesa Hamid, a spoken word poet also living in Birmingham, performs political poetry around the Midlands, often touching on female liberation. Her poem B8 Branded highlights many issues with society, through phrases such as ‘this is for your migrant grandfather who worked the Birmingham factories in the seventies’[10] and ‘for the men out late and girls in by eight’[11]. Her references to Birmingham are explicitly political; a different angle to Berry’s poignant reflective pieces. However, while different, they both tell their own stories of Birmingham’s landscape, each holding their own unique value that can be appreciated by all.

Berry’s passion for her birthplace and ancestral dialect is incredibly inspiring. Her use of vivid imagery and sound create an intense emotive response in readers and listeners alike, as they travel through her memories and the industrial landscape of Birmingham. She maintains a gentle, hopeful tone, whether weaving a narrative of her childhood and teen years or reflecting on her personal loss. Her voice is delicate, at times poignant, and touches on subjects that many readers are familiar with.

Berry holds a passion for promoting regional accents as a positive and unique aspect of someone’s personality, as well as defeating the stigma that certain accents promote a lack of intelligence. This refreshing take on identity, and her mission to rid people of their shame through her poetry helped me to become proud of my own voice once again.

References:

[1] Martyn Crucefix, Liz Berry’s ‘Black Country’ reviewed, (2014) <https://martyncrucefix.com/2014/08/23/liz-berrys-black-country-reviewed/> P. 1. [2] Crucefix, Liz Berry’s ‘Black Country’ reviewed, P. 1. [3] Alison Jones, When the Black Country dialect is pure poetry…, (2014) <www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/liz-berry-hails-black-country-6902231.amp>. [4] Hannah Furness, Brummie accents ‘worse than staying silent, study shows, (2015) <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11745186/Brummie-accents-worse-than-staying-silent-study-shows.html>. [5] Velimir Khlebnikov, ‘On Poetry’, Poetry in Theory (2004), P. 95. [6] Mina Loy, ‘Modern Poetry’, Poetry in Theory, (2004), P. 132. [7] Adrienne Rich, ‘Blood, Bread and Poetry: The Location of the Poet’, Poetry in Theory, (2004) P. 511. [8] Adrienne Rich, ‘Blood, Bread and Poetry: The Location of the Poet’, P. 510. [9] Adrienne Rich, ‘Blood, Bread and Poetry: The Location of the Poet’, P. 510. [10] B8 Branded Nafeesa Hamid TEDxBrum, dir. by TEDx (YouTube, 2016) [https://www.yout.ube/yEzXpF7YbHk] [11] B8 Branded Nafeesa Hamid TEDxBrum, dir. by TEDx.