The ‘James Mason poems’ are about a family legend that Komarnyckyj’s mother, when very young, sang carols to the family of the young James Mason (1909-1984) who would go on to become a world-famous film star and one of the most celebrated British actors of all time. Komarnyckyj’s mother’s family were very poor and lived in a back-to-back terraced house near to where the Mason family lived in the now demolished Croft House in Marsh, Huddersfield.
‘I was effortlessly gripped by this collection, led by the figure of James Mason as he weaves his way through a family’s history. Behind him, he leaves teasing questions about who a person is before they become the person they are known as, with a sense of wider history manoeuvring into place around the characters we are, or are coming to be.’ Philip Gross
