Emma Purshouse’s third full collection of poetry is a tribute to the distinctive places and voices of the Black Country of the West Midlands. It opens with a series of personal, sideways perspectives on specific landmarks and events, such as Little Nell’s fictional grave at nearby Tong or a 1922 tragedy in an explosives factory that killed nineteen girls and young women. These poems are wry, often deadly serious.
The cover of Unsung is from a painting by Keith Turley called Street Poet. It shows the poet in characteristic pose, writing in situ in Queen Square, Wolverhampton. The statue looming behind her, ‘the man on the ‘oss’, as it is known locally, is of Prince Albert whose widow Queen Victoria travelled to unveil it. That visit is the subject of the poem Victoria Returns to Public Engagements – Wolverhampton, November 30th 1866. It is full of barely-concealed rage at the indifference the newly-widowed Queen noted in her diary compared with the efforts of the townspeople:
We furnished you with bands, bouquets, scrubbed-up children,
prayers both long & trying, then drove you to our station
past many very Irish looking people, folk in tatters
who gave not one unkind look or dissatisfied expression,
We hear, poor widowed queen, you got home safely
were gratified. Reached Windsor, via Banbury, by 7.
The poet includes herself as one of the people of Wolverhampton. She often takes on a character’s voice and distinctive dialect. That embodied understanding and love of the place and its people, its ‘patches of scarred scrubland’ makes this collection deeply affecting. The poems show us how to look at and notice the ordinary. They give a voice to the unsung with such assurance that one is absorbed and convinced.
There is an empathy, a deep love of character and place in the portraits of the lads, the wenches, the tattooed women, the man with sculpted hair, the Polish-speaking family, the African couple and ‘the woman with a figgy pudding face.’ One can see it in Lost Girls:
Let’s not think about… the one who never had the baby
with the lad who promised her the earth.
Said he’d die for her. Then did.’
There are seemingly straightforward observations:
The shutters are down
on the Caribbean place
they’ve prepped and long gone
though upstairs a TV is on
But they are sharpened by experience hard-won by being out in the field, and as a seasoned poet and performer. There is little of the often-heard nostalgia for the departed industrial Black Country. This is praise for what the Black Country is now.
This personal motif is developed as the poet reflects on her own development in the exquisite ‘crown of sonnets’ – a sequence of seven linked sonnets chronicling her discovery and later love of Shakespeare after a decidedly unpromising start. Thank Folio for Shakespeare begins:
When I was still a whining snail-paced wench
creeping unwillingly to the school gate.
This sequence illustrates how the language of that famed Midlands playwright still echoes in words used in the Black Country today. The sonnets play to the vulgarity of that influence beautifully. Given a copy of Macbeth to study over the weekend,
I’m half-arsed and don’t give a flying Puck
It’s Sunday night before I even look.
The poet is accomplished not only in sonnets, but makes elegant use of free verse and modified pantoum forms, as in the moving Catherine Eddowes’ tin box as a key witness, which was placed third in the National Poetry Competition, 2021.
Emma Purshouse was the first Poet Laureate for the City of Wolverhampton. She is also a novelist and performer whose unforgettable live performances deserve a much wider audience. As a fellow Offa’s Press contributor and long-time resident of the Midlands I have watched her ascendency with something approaching awe. Unsung is the work of a poet at the top of her game.
Jeff Phelps is a prize-winning poet and novelist. His novels, Painter Man and Box of Tricks are published by the award-winning Tindal Street Press. His short stories have been broadcast and published including in London Magazine and Critical Quarterly. Jeff’s poems have been widely published and anthologised including in The Rialto, Acumen, Envoi, Orbis and The Cannon’s Mouth. His poetry collections Wolverhampton Madonna and Falling and Flying and a CD River Passage, are published by Offa’s Press.
Unsung by Emma Purshouse is published by Offa’s Press (2025): https://offaspress.co.uk/shop/