Yiewsley by Daljit Nagra
Faber & Faber
Published 21 May 2026
Daljit Nagra’s new collection presents a spirited and stirring return to his boyhood and the town that made him.
This autobiographical collection candidly explores Daljit Nagra’s experiences growing up from the sixties to the eighties in the predominantly white working-class town of Yiewsley, close to Heathrow airport in Outer London. With his boundless curiosity and radically inventive use of the English language, Nagra brings the period alive in poetry that is both eye-opening and heartwarming.
As Britain transitions from a post-war manufacturing economy to the Thatcher years and the computer age, we see a young boy navigating childhood friendships and mishaps, and the intricacies of a multicultural upbringing. Nagra resurrects a bustling house filled with relatives from India, who had arrived, legally or otherwise, in the UK: ‘devout realists already, and always, knuckled into work’.
These poems 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.
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