This Wilderness & Other Concerns

By Martin Kennedy Yates

This Wilderness & Other Concerns
by Martin Kennedy Yates

A searing new collection from poet and mixed-media artist Martin Kennedy Yates, This Wilderness & Other Concerns is both homage and confrontation - a poetic journey through post-pandemic Birmingham, the politics of survival, and the fractured beauty of language itself.

At its heart is This Wilderness, a five-part response to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, shifting the scene from 1920s London to 2020s Birmingham. In these pages, derelict canals, graffiti-tagged arches, and ghostly underpasses stand as monuments to grief, resilience, and the struggle for meaning in a culture hooked on distraction. This is a cityscape where "the fakery and sleight of news" collides with ancient myth, where rats, prophets, and poets walk the same cracked pavements.

The book then opens into Other Concerns - poems of place and presence, where pylons, sheds, canals, and scraps of graffiti take on liturgical weight. These pieces are as sculptural as they are lyrical, blending page-craft with performance energy.

Finally, in Scousenlish, Yates unleashes a mytho-biographical alter-ego, drawing on the alliterative pulse of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. Written in a rich, inventive dialect, these poems are meant to be spoken aloud - raw, musical, and haunting.

Praised by poets and critics alike for its fearless voice and inventive form, This Wilderness & Other Concerns is:

"Extraordinary poetry. A rich, dark exploration of tribalism and the underbelly of modern Britain." - Emma Purshouse, National Poetry Competition prize-winner

"Inventive and searching... weaving time, place and text into its own unsettling tapestry." - Gregory Leadbetter, Professor of Poetry, Birmingham City University

"A genuinely thoughtful approach to how the page and white space can release meaning." - Jonathan Davidson, poet and festival founder

For readers of T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and contemporary British poetry that refuses to play safe, this collection is an immersive experience: by turns brutal, tender, and visionary.

This Wilderness & Other Concerns is not just a book of poems - it is a reckoning, a city's ghost-story, and a fierce hymn for survival.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FNM1V65H
• ISBN13: 9798298434539
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 56 Pages
• Weight: 0.19 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"