Surge

Winner of the 2020 Sunday Times /University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award. Jay Bernard’s extraordinary debut is a fearless exploration of the New Cross Fire of 1981, a house fire at a birthday party in which thirteen young black people were killed. Dubbed the ‘New Cross Massacre’, the fire was initially believed to be a racist attack, and the indifference with which the tragedy was met by the state triggered a new era of race relations in Britain. Tracing a line from New Cross to the ‘towers of blood’ of the Grenfell fire, this urgent collection speaks with, in and of the voices of the past, brought back by the incantation of dancehall rhythms and the music of Jamaican patois, to form a living presence in the absence of justice.

A groundbreaking work of excavation, memory and activism – both political and personal, witness and documentary – Surge shines a muchneeded light on an unacknowledged chapter in British history, one that powerfully resonates in our present moment. The verse has anger and political purpose, but a rare lyrical precision, too. The combination is powerful’ Sebastian Faulks, Spectator, Books of the Year 2020. Winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Eliot Prize; Forward Prize for Best First Collection; Dylan Thomas Prize; RSL Ondaatje Prize; John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize.