36 Cornelian Avenue

For his tenth collection, 36 Cornelian Avenue, Christopher Wiseman returns to his wartime childhood in England and revisits the streets, shore, and woods that belonged to the resort town of Scarborough where, his father away fighting, he and his mother lived. In clear, quick-moving colloquial poetry, Wiseman explores how the Second World War affected his neighbours, turning some into curmudgeons, others into compassionate heroes, and how the experience toughened the frightened women and children into survivors, waiting for their men to come home. Part novel, part memoir, part passionate recollection, 36 Cornelian Avenue presents these townspeople, often in their own words, as they were then, caught in the heartbreaking hardship of those years. Mines on the beach, air attacks, hostile neighbours, and cruel school teachers are among the many vivid, brilliantly textured memories recreated in this book, the most astonishing Wiseman has ever written.