There will be no miracles here - Stephen Sawyer

Stephen Sawyer's remarkable first collection is a book about politics - public dreams, private desires and common fears. From a Merseyside housing estate in the 1960s via Pinochet and Thatcher to the floods in Sheffield in 2007, these poems trace the sutures of power and resistance on the body and under the skin through the mediations of love, death, class, art and oppression. They raise questions about identity and belonging in a time of rapid structural and technological change, and celebrate the creativity and courage of individual and collective responses. There Will Be No Miracles Here is a book of passion and humour about people who live at the sharp edge.