About two hours after I finished Mort's Division Street I purchased Pint for the Ghost. That is a pretty odd thing. Since I started reviewing books, I purchased maybe three this year. I usually have a pile books waiting to be read so I don't have a need to buy. I was so completely floored by Division Street had had to get this book.

Pint for the Ghost is a collection for blue collar ghosts who hang out in South Yorkshire's bars. Her poetry has a gritty middle class feel to it, but something more. It's like a Bruce Springsteen song sung by Stevie Nicks. There is grittiness in the words, but beauty in the voice. It is little wonder she is up for the T.S Eliot Prize.
___________________________________________

UPDATE

I read this collection again this week waiting outside for the shop to open. I just can't say enough Mort. I absolutely love her writing. She is an amazing poet. She captures middle-class British life and transforms it into art. The British pub is transformed to a society, museum, and holy place for the poet.

"A Dram for All the Men I've Never Drunk with" is a poem the Mort tells about her times in the pub reading Freud, Larkin, Byron, and Marx and imagines them as her drinking buddy for the day. ( )