Poetics and Identity in Ex-Mining Communities as Depicted in Contemporary and Post-Industrial Literature

This research is the culmination of nearly thirty years of lived experience as a working-class queer woman from an ex-mining community raised in the aftermath of deindustrialisation. It builds on my Master’s dissertation, in which I explored the ongoing trauma caused by deindustrialisation in the UK and its reflection in contemporary literature. This research digs deeper into a century of literature depicting the coal mining experience, with a focus on female and queer perspectives, to examine the relationship between gender/sexual identities and industrial heritage. The interdisciplinary thesis combines historical research, literary analysis and community engagement/arts methods to paint a picture of coal mining identities from the early 20th century to the present day. In doing so, the thesis aims to make sense of fractured identities, to preserve and reclaim coal mining heritage, and to pave a way forward whilst remembering the past. The impact of the community arts projects that ran adjacent to this research is explored in the final chapter, with extracts from various reports provided in the appendices.