Zaffar Kunial's 'Us' (Faber & Faber, 2018) was shortlisted for a number of awards including the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. At this time of year you can’t get much more English than a playground game of conkers. In ‘Invasive’ we learn that the horse chestnut is, in fact,

Adukwei Bulley is an alumna of the Barbican Young Poets and recipient of an Eric Gregory award. The judges said Quiet was “a quiet revolution of a book – subtle, supple and serious”. Aliyah Begumis a nineteen-year-old poet and performer, who was Birmingham’s Young Poet Laureate between 2018-2020. She is a commended Foyle Young Poet and her work has been featured on Young Poets Network, in anthologies and on the radio. She has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC, and is currently studying English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Noah Jacobis an Arab-British poet and performer. She is an editor and columnist for Zindabad Zine and alum of The Writing Room and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, having placed second in the Roundhouse Poetry Slam 2021. She has been featured in SLAMbassadors, Kalopsia Lit, Shubbak Festival and Camden Festival.

Zaffar Kunial

The collection falls into four parts. I think of them as music albums and the first one is loosely about insects, but it’s also about many other things that kind of bring in human elements. It’s also about the urgency of their very brief lives, but seen through quite a human lens… We all see through our human perspectives, so when I’m talking about the insects for example, the perspective is very much of a middle aged mum, so a lot of the insects that I’m most able to strongly empathise with, it’s in their maternal instincts that I find the most common ground.’ I was really excited by Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha – how so much was painted in so few words and with so much left out. he does love words. The pleasure he takes in the slipperiness and possibility of language is palpable What’s more English than a place name like ‘Bascote Heath, Little Itchington’ where we meet Kunial “armed with my mother’s maiden name” picturing the humanity behind the names. There’s an echo of Larkin’s “long uneven lines” as Kunial imagines the glorious dead “moving in one long continuous / column, four abreast …” which would stretch from Whitehall to Durham. Immediately he imagines the column in the pre-partition India, where his father was born into a Muslim family. Later in the book we see a wartime photo of his English grandfather next to “one of two brown” fellow airmen. This is the same grandfather Rich in form and reverent references, Us transports the reader from the hills of Pakistan to the schoolgrounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, from George Herbert to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' (Maria Crawford, Financial Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR)

Scary Monsters was joined on the fiction shortlist by NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory, Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour, Daisy Hildyard’s Emergency and Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea. What’s more English than villagers gathering at the War Memorial on Armistice Day? In our village some of those present still carry the names of those called by Wilfred Owen’s bugles. What’s more English than leather on willow on a summer’s day? Round here, sons and fathers play for the village teams while spectators and the countryside doze gently beyond the boundary. What’s more English than England’s green and pleasant land? The landscape we idealise defines our notion of our country as clearly as the Lionesses. The ten Young Critics are: Ruth Awolola, Davina Bacon, Aliyah Begum, Noah Jacob, Abondance Matanda, Lily McDermott, Holly Moberley, SZ Shao, Mukisa Verrall and Eric Yip. Kunial’s style is a wise vernacular that Auden would have loved . . . Six is a pamphlet to read and re-read; its words are so plain and so well put together that you won’t realise until much later how permanently they’ve marked you, like a grass stain.' (Alex Hayden-Williams, Varsity)The presence of two languages in Kunial’s childhood is the source of touching tales. In Us we encountered his childhood shame on hearing his father’s muddled syntax (in ‘The Word’) , and learnt that “[t]here is no dictionary for my father’s language” (from ‘Hill Speak’). Here we see him “wanting to correct or prune my father’s version / of Himalaya” (from ‘Foregrounds’) To help them develop their critical skills and create their review, the ten selected participants attended three online Young Poets Network masterclasses, one of which was led by acclaimed reviewer, editor and poet, Jen Campbell. These intersections are threefold. Firstly, Kunial’s brown skinned Englishness; secondly the two languages of his parents; and thirdly the facility with words of someone who has had to overcome a speech impediment. Let’s take a look at each. I’ve already bought and read the poetry books. And of the ten others, I could choose many, but maybe Margo Jefferson – I’ve loved what I’ve read by Margo before and her title draws me in, too ( Constructing a Nervous System).

That could come across as trite and pat, but the poem it ends (‘The Wind in the Willows’ – my emphasis) brings the book’s themes together with a craft that supports the virtuosity. Kunial clearly delights in language, with wordplay and differing pronunciations fuelling "Foregrounds" et al. I particularly liked "Foxgloves" ("Sometimes I like to hide in the word / foxgloves - in the middle of foxgloves. The xgl is hard to say") and "The Wind in the Willows," where he wonders if the book title appeals to him just for its sound. The Poetry Society is delighted to partner with the T. S. Eliot Prize on this innovative new scheme for keen young readers of poetry. We hope this initiative will encourage even more young people to engage critically with the titles on the prize shortlist, and provide opportunities for them to gain in skills and confidence. The Poetry Society is committed to finding new ways to support the development of our next generation of poetry readers, writers and critics. We are excited to hear these new young critics’ responses, which we’re sure will open up new windows to the books on this year’s Eliot Prize shortlist, and introduce an inspiring selection of poets to even more readers.”

See you soon

They said Constructing a Nervous System was “wholly a deeply moving delight” and a “book unlike any other; a thrilling, generous, spirited and surprising read that remakes culture, redresses history, renews and repurposes everything it touches, and passes on these gifts of reinvention and renewal to everyone who’ll read it.” Not sure really, and I wasn’t a bookish child, but the first proper novel I read, when I was nineteen, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, made me feel it might be possible to have the thrill of self-recognition in books and gave me an image of a writer I could see a bit of myself in. Davina Baconis studying English and Environmental Science in Cornwall. In 2018, she won the BBC Young Writers’ Award and earlier this year, they had an article published in shado mag. They enjoy exploring ideas about identity, community, and the environment through short stories, poetry, and essays. At the ceremony it was also announced that the prize is looking for new sponsorship, as Rathbones has decided to step down following seven years as sponsor. Zaffar Kunial lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, and was born in Birmingham. His debut collection, Us , was shortlisted for a number of prizes. He was a 2022 recipient of the Yale University Windham-Campbell Prize. England’s Green is his second book; it was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.