Cov Kids

Here, we are reminded that poetry is more than the ivory towers of academia. Writing a parable of the working-class, Antony Owen has written a text perfectly placed in the anti-colonial fight in education … dismantling race and class in the ruins of empire. Truly a master stroke of poetry that every person on GCSE, A-Level and university English courses needs to study.

• Tre Ventour

Antony Owen takes us back to his adolescence in Coventry; to Park Lane nightclub ‘where posh girls licked salt from our piss stained hands.’ These poems are odes to youth and pop music, lyrical and lippy, full of fag-butts in urinals and gum-grey bras. They filled my heart and left me ‘drowning in the landfill of first light.’

• Luke Wright

A thoroughly enjoyable read from an expert wordsmith whose adventurous and colourful poems are full of eloquent insights and surreal surprises.

• Dave Lordan

Owen’s work is extraordinary in its readiness to draw our attention to what is all too often passed off as ugly, too brutal, too honest for humanity to bear. Yet this poetry reminds us that humanity is bloody, it is gritty and that, of course is its beauty.

• Katy Wareham-Morris