DIVISION STREET

This is shortlisted for the T.S Eliot prize 2013. "A stone is lobbed in '84, hangs like a star over Orgreave. Welcome to Sheffield. Border-land, our town of miracles." ('Scab'). From the clash between striking miners and police to the delicate conflicts in personal relationships, Helen Mort's stunning debut is marked by distance and division. Named for a street in Sheffield, this is a collection that cherishes specificity: the particularity of names; the reflections the world throws back at us; the precise moment of a realisation. Distinctive and assured, these poems show us how, at the site of conflict, a moment of reconciliation can be born.