We Play Here: Granta Poetry

Four female friends navigate the political turbulence of North Belfast in the late 80s in this extraordinary, evocative verse novel

We Play Here is a collection of four poem-stories, taking place in an underdeveloped area of Protestant North Belfast in the summer of 1988, against a background of political turbulence during the Troubles. Written from the perspectives of four female friends in the months between finishing primary school and starting high school, the girls inhabit an eerie, elemental landscape of normalised violence, poverty and neglect.

This is a lyrical and graceful evocation of working-class childhood, and a radical approach to girlhood and girl-friendships,in the years before the trappings of gender make themselves strongly known.