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Ian McMillan's poems, particularly in the Selected Poems and in 'Dad, the Donkey's on Fire', seem interesting examples of how place and language can merge. His work is so fiercely rooted in South Yorkshire, but foregrounds language and its misfunctions almost as much as it does the political misfunction of the Miners Strike and aftermath - often simultaneously, as in poems such as in ‘A Cliché Defines the Moment in a Poem about Language and Oppression’, where language is both a prop of communality and a tool used against mining communities. McMillan strikes me as a good example of what Deleuze & Guattari might have been imagining (but probably weren't) in their ideas on Minor Literature and how 'oppressed' languages or dialects turn their poverty into a creative resource. You might also compare McMillan's poems 'Against Realism' and ‘Realism (Nothing is Ever Finished)’ with Roy Fisher's 'For 'realism'' for contrasting views of the limits of common language. (Though McM acknowledges Fisher as a big influence, and is certainly committed to poetry as a common resource.) best, Mark %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%