The Fig Tree - Coal Mining Issue 2
An anthology of Coal Mining Poems in two parts
Welcome to this special issue of The Fig Tree, the second part of an anthology of poems about coal mining.
Part one can be found here - I won’t repeat the full introduction but I will repeat the key points. I come from several generations of miners and mining families on both my mother’s and father’s sides and grew up in a mining community. This history was a key part in my choice (or maybe compulsion) to start writing and publishing poetry in later life.
The format is a little different to usual, with no Featured Poet and a few extra poems too. Our new publishing venture, Crooked Spire Press, will be publishing all 40 poems from the two online issues in a paperback anthology that will be put together and launched in the autumn.
Once again I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as I did collating it. You are joining around 500 others who are reading the webzine on a regular basis.
Thank you all
Tim Fellows, Editor
Contributors: Glenn Barker, Paul Brookes, Sandra Burnett, Janet Dean, Peter Devonald, Anne Marie Duquette, Lisa Falshaw, Jack Faricy, Donna Faulkner, Tim Fellows, David Harmer, Petra Hilgers, L.B. Jørgensen, Catrin Mari, Ian Parks, Ali Rowland, Finola Scott, Andrew Spacey, Joe Williams, Sarah Wimbush, Phil Wood, Gareth Writer-Davies and Paul Brough.
Henry Moore Notebook
Coal Miner Carrying Lamp
I’ll be telling this to someone else
years after the event -
how sheer the black that fell on us,
the black and then the heat
running between our shoulder blades
and streaming down our backs.
No falling roof, no accident,
no scrambling for the lamps
but something pressing heavy on our lids,
the props about to split
and heaving his own body from the face
a man of coal and candlewax.
Ian Parks
Our House on Hady Hill A lion knocker waits on the front door, its brass face poised to rat-a-tat-tat. The world outside is a Legion. Uniform houses. Hawthorn hedges. Slate roofs. Across the forbidden road the hospital. A children’s home. Knee high socks race up the stairs slide down the banister. Everything's made a game. My rag doll clasped tight, and I swing like Tarzan from the toilet chain. I peek at the world and wait. Sigh at the window. Watch for the blue car, listen for a rat-a-tat-tat. Scribble on window breath, and look again. Childhood is short waiting for things to happen. Through the peeled paint of the back door. Past the grasses overgrown, a chrysalis clings to the coal bunker.
Donna Faulkner
Pit Ponies
Seeing them cut-side among tough tussocks
freshly released, their light-induced madness
a contagion of disbelief as they ran and bit
and frolicked, their annual holiday hedged
between thick bullrush and fenced hawthorn.
We would see them from the road, a family
heading for five lane ends roundabout,
Brackenbury’s farm, brick barn and hay bales
stacked, the sweet stinky secret parcel
of an embedded hedgehog one summer,
story of sun and rye gone wrong,
leaving Ebenezer’s sabbath interiors,
watching them wild-eyed with freedom,
discovered colour, rampant hoof and the smell
of kicked turf under an open sky.
Andrew Spacey
Grandpa’s Canaries
He kept ten caged in the attic. Treated them as pets
when he was too poorly to work the seams.
On the day he passed
Gran summoned the Rag & Bone Man.
I heard the deal – take care of cages and birds.
I watched her sneak a florin into her pinny pocket.
She told me - they’ll sing sweeter in a wild wooded place.
Birds in houses bring bad luck.
Such an opera filled the air that smoggy morning
Bailey’s horse and trap carted them away
and I conjured an image; a golden flock rising
from our terrace of sooty chimneys.
I told my friend – one day we’ll fly from here.
He shrugged, led me to the scrapyard water-butt.
Together we pulled up weighted hessian. A shroud
for ten tiny rags of yellow.
We gave them a proper burial and promised Our Father
we’d forgive those that trespass against us.
Sandra Burnett
Silverwood Colliery II: Surface Dressing
One million tonnes
of earth-body slag
shrouds the pit voids
and human scars below.
A skin-graft make-up
of surface soil dresses
this swollen and wounded
landscape of seam offal.
A graceless scattering
of scrub sapling and spinny
grips the unsteady contours
of grey belch spoil.
And ten thousand suns
nurture a renaissance
in a new earth motion
of windsong and wilding.
Glenn Barker
The Mine During the Strike
Suddenly quiet I stand, mouth open as a vase,
listen to the creak of empty pulleys,
see grass grow, green through black dust.
Hunger creeps through still shafts and galleries,
no light glints of my faceted surfaces,
gas seeps in like a cramp, no canaries sing
deep in me where coal dreams
of heat, the speed of engines racing in the sun,
a bonfire in every colour of driftwood bone.
Water sleeks hewn stone, tears and loneliness,
and every open seam is a toothache like flint
working through soil towards the light.
The tunnels are a void, something was taken,
replaced with voices and men wearing my colour
as a badge of honour, penance,
now their voices get lost in open air, have no echo.
Only their footsteps remain dark,
shadows creep towards me.
Wind sighs over my pursed lips,
a standing tone in the echo chamber of my throat
rattles empty fire grates though town.
L.B. Jørgensen
Advice for peacemakers
‘Think of the middle of the strike...’
from an early draft of ‘Orgreave’ by Ian Parks
Always think middle Your middle is ground gained not compromise gravity not weakness weighted and sharp as the steel point of a drawing compass Now draw it out from here your radius precise contour lines that ripple slow as the peregrine circles on thermals All you need now ears sharper than bat’s for every flutter fear fury every forsakenness Closer to the middle there’s a bruise of spit sweat spark solidity further out shapes are sparser unexact unstill unsteady unheard mere memories Draw lines to match each to its rightful open mouthed scrunched face tears behind slits fist shaking owner in the centre ley lines crisscrossing contours so everyone can see there’s no middle
Petra Hilgers
Women against Pit Closures
She blooms,
badged and blue-jeaned
in the sunshine.
In the shadows -
her husband
her father
her sons,
the gate
the hearth
the alarm clock, ringing.
This hybrid rose -
her eyes, anthracite on fire,
her lips, the curve of a pickaxe.
New Aphrodite.
One of the first
to clamber up, up, up
and over
the pit-yard wall.
Sarah Wimbush
Manvers Main; 1988
The pit gates open, the last shift leaves,
washed clean in a final shower
he slowly walks towards Moor Bank,
shoulders striped with coal tattoos.
His breath is heavy, years of bad air
stacked in his lungs and always the ache
from Orgreave-cracked ribs, the coppers
fell on them like Peterloo dragoons.
Up the road, the scabs
sat behind wired up windows
in a gob-spattered bus, taking the plunge
on a full belly, names never forgotten.
Face set forwards, he joins the track
where they’d marched back to work
their banners flared like sails,
galleons adrift on treacherous waters.
Nearly at the end of the street, he takes
one look behind, sees the pit slam shut.
No going back, he’s on his own.
David Harmer
Above and Below the Surface
I had heard the miners’ wives laughing
at us, soft city-types, behind our backs,
saying we knew ‘nowt’ of pit village life.
It was true, we’d none of us ever had
to scratch for food, or bandaged battered heads
when mounted police had charged into
unarmed crowds. Their talk was tough as leather,
all surface, but we were solid behind them
all, we knew right from wrong.
At sixteen I was afraid of the women;
the miners’ wives, and the activists
who I helped with printing leaflets amidst
the smell of ink and hand-rolled cigarettes.
I felt frail around them, I was too thin-skinned,
I’d been told. I put my pocket money
in the rattling buckets mosaiced with yellow
‘Cole not Dole’ stickers, proud to be part of
‘the enemy within.’ It all seemed clear.
A list of mining tragedies from the 1890s
is full of fallen props and trucks rolling
backwards, all ‘accidental deaths’ involving
compacted bones, or flesh, or vital organs.
Then, there’s George, whose dad told the inquest
his eighteen year old son had ‘sober habits’
but had said, ‘Father, I have got the worst job
in the pit,’ and next day was found drowned,
face down in the colliery pond.
Now, nobody here is lowered down to work
like an animal burrowing underground,
or trundled by what looked like funfair trains
to stoop or lie all day in shallow caves.
Those women were surely just as caged by
the rhythms of cooking, cleaning and child bearing,
traditions most must have dreamed of quitting.
After the strike, it was a lack of hope
that set in, slowly crushing those villages,
undermining the truths we had believed in.
Ali Rowland
Industrial Disease
in a remote cemetery
I eat my packed lunch by the derelict chapel
and read a recent gravestone
"the price of coal"
on the scratchy-arse mountain
fresh six foot excavations
workers who lived out their usefulness
take the cage one final time
to vast interlocking levels
the endless dark vein
strong men
who dug their own graves in hot dust
broken glass lungs
breathing in tightfisted capitalism
never enough money to make good
right all the wrongs
rest in the afterlife the only sure thing
my way forward
is over slagheaps
footings of the old stables and winding house
all that remains above ground
and a furious acrid fire that never burns out
Gareth Writer-Davies
In 1984
Orwell had his own idea
of what events might come to pass,
but never lived to see the year
of 1984.
I was eight, then nine years old,
a schoolkid in a north east town,
recall much less than I’ve been told
from 1984.
There’s some things I remember well,
like Davis beating Jimmy White,
the famine, and the Grand Hotel
in 1984.
But that all happened on TV,
a hundred thousand miles away.
The strike was right in front of me
in 1984.
I saw the eyes of desperate men,
and even then, I think I knew,
our town would never rise again
from 1984.
A war was waged, a war was won,
a war against community.
We’ll never undo what was done
in 1984.
Joe Williams
I Am The Eighties
I am ‘Allo ‘Allo! raised from the dead,
I am crackly pictures and wonky sound,
I am analogue watches and landline phones,
I am cassette tapes that unwound
and have to be spun back in with pencils.
I am video players and Betamax, black and white TV’s,
grainy and fuzzy, coat hangers for bad receptions,
I am blackouts and candles, strikes and power for the people,
I am ZX spectrum and time for tea,
one more game will make me happy.
I am clunky photo cameras and sending off for prints,
I am the Falklands War, privatisation and denigration,
I am the battleground of free market economics,
eighties politics and the war for the heart of the nation,
with all the despair, hurt and heart-break that entails.
We never understood the cost back then,
‘progress’ is a double-edged sword,
always move forward so fast, leaves us left in the past,
a celebration of so many impossible freedoms,
we understand too late the consequences of desire.
Peter Devonald
Concerning the bing and some truths around it
Here skies glow angry with flare-ups,
children are warned away from the bing
that smoulders like a spurned lover.
Forests compressed by time, spring-green
trees become fossil fuel. Heaped overground,
the detritus shadows homes, souls, lungs.
Some murmur geology, talk of jack-in-
the-box continents shifting, of upheaval,
of underground seams rich with black gold.
Others murmer the hill is the rounded haunch
of a fire beast that dreams and spits terror.
The locals know the bings, know the truth.
They paid for this heap with their breath.
Orange flickers self-sparking night and
day, health risked to scavenge for dross.
The mound is man made, a casual cast-off.
All the profits and miners are long gone,
though the spoils and spite of greed still flame.
Finola Scott
Head Count: The 1939 Register
He is pictured as an upright man, white shirt sleeves
turned over elbows, cupped by his hands. A belt
pulls the slack of trousers from an undefined waist,
the space under ribs and just above thighs.
That word is in the back of her mind when she refers to him.
She takes the egg off his plate, leaves a splat of mash,
adding protein and fat to her own, piling it high.
He studies the flesh on her arms, the rolls of boned-out pork.
I uncover his demob papers from twenty years before,
and see he was a buried man, a man under fire.
The flaming rind of bacon spits, it stinks of death,
his appetite is gone, it’s more than he can stand.
Gran, whose Domestic Duties go Unpaid, lives off the wages of her sons:
a Haulage Hand, a Ripper, both Heavy Workers Below Ground,
a younger brother just fifteen, a Motty Lad. Grandad, once Haulage Hand, is now Incapacitated.
Janet Dean
Memorial
We asked that they be kept together.
As we searched the rows of names and dates
we sometimes had to stop; to contemplate
another life, etched on a shining disc.
The clouds were low and they had left
umbrellas just in case it rained. Groups gathered,
linked by the inky dark below. The choir sang
and the rain began to fall, insisting
on being part of this. It made us new
as one by one she slowly read the names.
I felt the wet drips fall from the edge
of a shared umbrella as she reached
the brothers, Jim, George, and Bill.
All gone now; Sixty years apart.
My tears are merging with the pouring rain.
Tim Fellows
116
Nine-year-old girl still chases a ball
spinning across the schoolyard bedlam;
a ribbon of terraces, snug with slate roofs,
gutters tip tap; a ruckus of boys
fool about in the drizzle. Their play's
wetted coal-black; their eyes flicker
rain-happy fun; they banter chase
the girl pursuing her flutter world
of summer frocks. I hear the chapel.
Granddad humming his wisdom hymns
and out of tune. The shift is over --
slag heaps shimmer a grave of ponds.
The blurry boys are spitting out
coal dust from watery lungs: they have
no breath; the flighty girl is weighted
in mourning black. I've sat too close
to my Grandmother's clock. A kettle
whistles the summons back from cousins.
Gran makes a pot of tea and unwraps
the valley gossip. There's a new school.
Phil Wood
116 children were killed in the Aberfan disaster of 1966
Coël not Doël
Merry Christmas, children. Everything is fine. You see the shine of twinkling tinsel, not the glint of unmined coal or hunger that haunts tired eyes.
Look, here's a present. Everything is wonderful: unwrap it. This kind lady spent hours stitching patches into dolls’ clothes shimmering like new. You don't know they're all second-hand.
Help yourself to food, there's plenty, as if one wealthy person has popped to the shops just for you. You can't tell how many people scraped their pennies together.
In this hall, it's warm as pudding,
shimmering with disco songs, no one's chopping up furniture for firewood. No-one is shivering, all thanks to this strong paperchain of women.
Nadolig Llawen i chi gyd, i deulu mawr y byd.*
We want to wrap you gift-like in our shield.
Catrin Mari
* ‘Merry Christmas to you all, to the world’s big family’ ( from a Welsh children's song).
Hartshead-cum-Clifton
In Clifton Woods a treecreeper snips
at the motorway’s nylon swish. Light
gleams on glass and lacquer, flickering
through the trees. Rush hour smothers
the ringing labour of the open coal pit,
the clink clink clink of heavy picks,
the rasp of spades, the clank and rumble
of loaded tubs, the crashes of rockfall,
and the chatter of the pit brow lasses.
Somewhere, buried in a mine shaft, lie
the trumpets, flugels, tubas, drums,
the horns, trombones and euphoniums
of the colliery band, whose strains
children, laiking up the Common,
still claim to hear between their games.
Jack Faricy
Coal Haiku
Diamonds shine so bright
Past refuge wanting sunlight
Former lumps of coal
Coal sitting so dark
Lumps of black waiting to shine
We’re all lumps of coal
Dark coal and bright gems
A time and place for each one
We’re both coal and gems
One or the other
Taking turns in earth’s crust
Of darkness and light.
Anne Marie Duquette
Harsh Light
Gentle light should enter these open eyes,
slow. Sat on slagheap blue sky midday see
flit white clouds pass shadows over pit, ply
and flow girded redbrick coal washery
over bright puddles, empty slurry tanks
cross concrete bunkers of unused sand, lime,
gravel. Recall days ago nightshift rank
veins freeze blood heat, ice encrusted hands rimed,
ground concrete hurt all when I fell one snowed
winter day heavy weight hauls postal bag
down, I slip on an iced drift to unload
post bottom of door number eight. I rag,
open sprung letterbox, sharp fringed brush put
letter pull out quick metal lid slams shut.
Paul Brookes
5th March 1985
Early morning, quiet grey of the pit yard
split by crimson of a banner, fringed with gold.
“Unity is strength” held aloft by men who wore
coal dust streaked in folds and creases, who knew
marches, pickets, hardship, brutality
of walls of police and noise
as batons beat shields.
They emerged from back-to-backs,
snap wrapped roughly in paper,
stuffed into pockets of donkey jackets
by wives who had fought just as hard,
keeping families together and stomachs full.
Even as Thatcher took a pick to communities,
shovelled away their jobs for life,
cast their livelihoods onto slag heaps,
smashed through seams of generations and identity,
they marched, secure in their commitment and pride
under the banner which defined them all,
and the winding wheel began to turn.
Lisa Falshaw
Contributors
Glenn Barker writes on the human condition, the intangible and ephemeral, natural and supernatural, and the fractured moral vacuum of contemporary life. Published in Broken Spine, Black Bough and other anthologies, he enjoys supporting the life of the writing community as a reviewer, and performing at local open mic events.
Paul Brookes is a shop assistant, writer and reviewer. His chapbooks include Wolf Eye Territory (ImpSpired, 2024), Ever Striding Edge (Dark Winter Press, 2024), and The Dude Work (Sherwood Handcrafted Press, 2025). He edits The Wombwell Rainbow (interviews and challenges) and The Starbeck Orion.
Sandra Burnett’s poems have been published in magazines including Magma and Strix and in many anthologies, most recently in two Chapel FM/Yaffle Press collections, Missing and Recovery. Half Moon Books published her pamphlet New Lease and collection Between Sea and Sky. Her late Grandad and uncles were miners at Middleton Colliery, Leeds.
Paul Brough is a Yorkshire based illustrator. You can see more of his artwork here
Janet Dean was brought up in a mining village in Barnsley, South Yorkshire and is now living in York, having worked for forty years in the public and charity sectors. Her poetry is widely published in magazines and anthologies in print and online, and she has won prizes and commendations in several national and international poetry competitions.
Peter Devonald is a multi-award-winning writer based in Stockport. Winner Broken Spine's Reader’s Award 2025, Loft Books Best Poem 2024, Waltham Forest, FofHCS, two HoH’s, runner-up Shelley Memorial and N2tS 2024, Finalist Tickled Pink 2024, highly commended Hippocrates, Passionfruit Review, Saveas and Allingham. Nominations for Forward Prize and two BoN, widely-published/anthologised. Children’s Bafta nominated. Facebook: @pdevonald BSky: @pdevonald.bsky.social
Anne Marie Duquette is a published author of 25 fiction books, and was raised with love for her land. Both of her grandfathers were coal miners; one in Pennsylvania, and the other in Colorado. Both suffered from “black lung,” and risked their lives in primitive conditions. This poem is for them.
Lisa Falshaw lives and works in West Yorkshire. She writes poetry about loss and transitional states. She has had several micro poems published by Black Bough and poems published by Fevers of the Mind, Atrium, Dreamcatcher and forthcoming in Dawn Treader.
Jack Faricy is a teacher and poet from Slaithwaite. His poems feature in various anthologies and magazines. His debut, Traces, is available from Calder Valley Poetry. His PhD project - a poetic exploration of landscapes connected by the M62 - is ongoing.
Donna Faulkner spent her childhood between countries. One foot bare and carefree in New Zealand the other tiptoeing the coal dust and camaraderie of working class England. She lives in Rangiora, New Zealand and has been published in The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Havik, Fieldstone Review, New Myths, Bacopa Literary Review and others. Her debut poetry collection In Silver Majesty was published by erbacce press in 2024. See more here or on Instagram @lady_lilith_poet or Twitter @nee_miller
Tim Fellows is a writer and editor from Chesterfield, Derbyshire. His pamphlet, Heritage (2019) was inspired by his background in a mining community. His poems have been published in Black Bough, Black Nore Review, The Lake and The Morning Star, among others.
David Harmer was born in 1952. He lives in Doncaster. Publishing as a children’s writer with MacMillans Children’s Books and Small Donkey Press, he also has work for the Grown Ups in many magazines. He performs with Ray Globe as The Glummer Twins, often at the Edinburgh Fringe. For many years he taught in primary schools serving NCB communities.
Petra Hilgers is originally from Germany, has lived in South Africa, Northern Uganda, London/UK and now lives in West Yorkshire/UK. Her writing has been published in magazines and commended in national and international competitions. Petra’s debut collection The heart neither red nor sweet won the 2021 erbacce poetry prize.
L.B. Jørgensen is a Danish poet writing in English. She does translation and subtitling and has had poems published in several magazines. Her debut pamphlet A Woman Travelling was published by Paekakariki Press in 2024.
Catrin Mari is a Welsh-speaking poet and social researcher based in Cardiff. Her poetry deals with themes of under-represented historic figures including activists, sense of place; and shifting identities. Her work has been published widely in anthologies, journals and online, and she is working on a first pamphlet.
Ian Parks is the editor of Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry. His versions of the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy were a Poetry Book Society Choice. His Selected Poems 1983-2023 is published by Calder Valley Poetry. His work appears in the Folio Book of Love Poems.
Ali Rowland is a writer from Northumberland. She has been nominated for Best of the Net 2025, won the Hexham Poetry Competition in 2023, and has two published collections: Rooted (Maplestreet Press, 2024) and Dragged Up: A Northern Childhood (Sixty Odd Poets, 2024). You can follow her work at Musings of a Mad Woman on Substack.
Finola Scott writes to make sense of the world. Her poetry is widely published including in New Writing Scotland, The Irish Pages Press, and Lighthouse. She has won & been placed in competitions, writing in Scots and in English. She invites you to visit FB Finola Scott Poems and on https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/finola-scott.
Andrew Spacey worked for four years at Steetley Colliery near Worksop, his birthtown. He has lived in Spain, Australia and the Netherlands and has published various articles and poems over the years. Currently he lives in Sheffield.
Joe Williams was born in Ashington, the hub of the mining industry in Northumberland, and now lives in Leeds. His latest book is The Taking Part, published by Maytree Press. He is currently working on a new collection of poems about Ashington. joewilliams.co.uk
Sarah Wimbush is a Yorkshire writer and the recipient of a Northern Writers Award. Her collections are Bloodlines (2020), The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster (2021), Shelling Peas with my Grandmother in the Gorgiolands (2022) and STRIKE (2024). STRIKE was nominated for The 2024 Forward Prize Best Collection.
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He lives in the Sirhowy Valley where many mines have now been greened with ponds and country walks. His wife's father and uncle were miners.. His writing can be found in various places, most recently in : Byways (Arachne Press Anthology), The Lake, Shot Glass Journal, and the Borderless Journal.
Gareth Writer-Davies has won and been shortlisted in multiple poetry competitions and is the author of collections Bodies (2015), Cry Baby (2017), The Lover's Pinch (2018), The End (2019) and Wysg (2022). His mining connection is from his mother's family who were involved in mining as coal miners in the Rhondda, South Wales, specifically Treherbert, the last village before you go over the head of the valley.
Acknowledgements
Sarah Wimbush’s Women Against Pit Closures appeared in STRIKE (Stairwell Books, 2024)
Donna Faulkner’s Our House on Hady Hill was published in Starbeck Orion,1984 Miners Strike Special, May 2024
Phil Wood’s 116 was first published in London Grip.
All contributors retain copyright of their work.
Well done Tim Fellows, a great selection here.
Thank you for including my work Tim, and congratulations you’ve done a fabulous job of curating this collection.