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1. Frost Gods by Harold Massingham, published by MacMillan in 1972. Massingham, born in Mexborough, is one of the great lost Yorkshire writers; a proto-Martian poet before Craig Raine thought of the term, and a man who wrestled valiantly with how to represent South Yorkshire speech on the page. 2. Cliff Ashby: another lost writer, from Dewsbury. His sequence The Tied Cottager is a fantastic long examination of rural poverty. Carcanet publish his Selected Poems. 3. Bones by Bob Pegg; a song sequence about a dead Viking, originally commissioned by the Ilkley Literature Festival. Bob Pegg is the definitive Yorkshire songwriter (apart from Bert Lee, who wrote Knees Up Mother Brown and who came from Ravensthorpe) and Bones has just been reissued on CD. 4. Ted Hughes: I have to put him in because he is the huge shadow that hangs over all Yorkshire writers. My favourite book of his is Crow. 5. Malachi Whitaker: often referred to as The Bradford Chekhov, her pre-modernist stories are amazing and need to be rediscovered. Carcanet publish her. 6. Geoff Hattersley: like Harold Massingham, a poet who has struggled to reperesent the language of South Yorkshire on the page. I think he’s managed it. 7. Geraldine Monk: maybe my favourite poet. Fearless with language, fearless with presentation, fearless with a belief in the transforming power of words. 8. Colin Simms: the best nature poet around at the moment, publishing work that really gets under the skin of the natural world. Shearsman publish him. 9. Ilkley Moor Bah’t At: one of the great songs of loss and regeneration. Sorry, I’m crying… 10. Doves and Silk Handerchiefs by GH Morris; a Yorkshire magical realist book, published in 1987, now lost and forgotten. But not by me. Ian McMillan, visit Ian online |
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