Yiewsley exposes Daljit Nagra’s experiences growing up as the son of immigrants in the white, working-class suburban town of Yiewsley close to Heathrow airport in outer London, from the 1960s to 80s, as Britain transitions from a post-war manufacturing economy to the Thatcher period and the computer age, we see a young boy navigating childhood friendships and mishaps. The poems being to life a bustling house filled with relatives from India who arrived, legally or otherwise, in the UK: “Devout realists-already, and always, knuckled into work”. They also offer powerful insight into the makings of the writer: the “messy English” at home fusing with Bollywood ballads, Top of the Pops and hymns at school, to develop a voice entirely his own. The long poem “versed” describes his key poetic discovery that by jumbling the syntax on an oscillating tone, you could really hear it- the vocals of your Punjabi compounded in English”. 

Nagra writes “the greengrocer has harvest rows of marrows, turnips and squash gaudy as the Golden Temple and sprouts all year round. a Wimpy with burgers pushed down by a spatula on the hot sticky griddle, knickerbocker glory the gloriest words you’d ever supped, the pet shop with the tortoise who shuffles on sawdust to crouched -kiddle cooing while an iguana looks on from a shelf, your town of Teddy boys and Tammy feels a rainbow away from the birth of the cappuccino, the national curriculum, Pac-man and Amstrad.” Nagra’s  curiosity and radically inventive use of English language, brings the period alive in poetry.

Yiewsley By Daljit Nagra, Faber & Faber £14.99, 96 pages