Table of Contents

I
11 House
12 White Cottage
13 Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands
14 Mother Tongue
16 Dukkering
17 Carroty Kate
18 Gran Violet Applies a Poultice
19 Gal
20 The Hedgehog’s Tale
21 John Thomas
22 Pitched early mornin’ at encampment o’ Gypsy king Esau Smith
23 Scrapping at Marshall’s Engineering, Gainsborough
24 I can see Sandbeck Hall
25 Them Dunstan Kids
26 Our Jud
27 Threshin’
28 Straw Ticks
29 Bedsheet
30 Meat Puddin’
31 Laneham Ferry
32 The Bittern
33 The Calling Basket
34 A Sund’y in Worksop
35 Late Afternoon by a Hedge
36 Census 1911
37 Earring
38 The Ring
39 Walking Girl
40 The Astronaut Who Came to Tea
42 In the Library
43 Gifts
44 Bloodlines

II
46 Pilgrim Queens
47 Things My Mother Taught Me
48 Inside Lingerie
49 2:15 at Doncaster
50 The Pencil Sharpener
51 Giant Leaping
52 I learned to drive in a metallic blue Ford Capri
53 Visiting My Aunt on Her Birthday, 1st September 1979
54 Uncle Reg
55 Between Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and My Class Enjoys Cooking
56 Rebel
57 A Spring Morning
58 Vixen
59 Pompocali
60 Trip to the National Portrait Gallery, with the wife
61 The Powder-monkey’s Apprentice
62 Peasholm Park
63 Blood Sugar
64 William Shaw is lowered down the shaft
65 Hillards
66 STOP!
67 Rosso Youthy 1984
68 Near Extinction
70 Markham Main
71 The York, Edlington
72 The Lost
74 Our Language

77 Acknowledgements

About the Author

Sarah Wimbush is a Leeds poet who hails from Doncaster. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Bloodlines, won the Mslexia/PBS Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2019. It was published in 2020 by Seren and shortlisted in the Michael Marks Awards. In 2020 she was a winner in The Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition with The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster, published by Smith|Doorstop in 2021.She is a member of York Stanza and Doncaster Read 2 Write, and received a Northern Writers' Award in 2019.

Reviews

There is a Romany saying, We are all one: all who are with us are ourselves: Sarah Wimbush’s collection draws us into the world of Travellers with linguistic panache and delight.
*on Bloodlines*

A vivid love poem to the changing landscape of South Yorkshire and its residents. The poet suggests the teeming life of the place which langugage which rolls along on its own lively music and images that sing.
*on The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster*

The writing felt local and universal like much good writing does, saying new things about old subjects like The Miner’s Strike and growing up, and there was a powerful anger in the poems that didn’t overwhelm them but fuelled the ordinary.
*on The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster*

A thrilling debut that kept me outdoors in the grassy world of communal lives. I love the formal dazzle and linguistic dare that spoke of defiance, survival and utter joy.
*on Bloodlines*