Didicoy

Didicoy offers a window into the colourful, precarious world of a multiracial Romany family, and focuses on characters at the often-untold margins of society. Blending lyricism with formal experimentation, these poems explore what it is to belong. Clear-eyed and outspoken, Didicoy has something of the impact of a contemporary Cathy Come Home.

The collection is wonderfully peopled, with an unforgettable portrait of a mother and a powerful and important depiction of life in a children’s home. Writing like this, which combines real expressive skill with material which must be expressed, really reminds us what poetry is for. – Jonathan Edwards, winner of the Costa Poetry Award

Karen Downs-Barton is an Anglo-Romani writer who, after a peripatetic childhood including times in state care, now lives in Wiltshire. Winner of the Cosmo Davenport-Hines prize (2021) and Creative Future silver medallist (2022) she is a PhD candidate at King’s College London, exploring identity through minority languages and multilingualism in entertainment industries.

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