Title: Lucky to get Nowt
Author: Jon Tait
Genre: Poetry

Publication Date: February 2011
Format: size (mms) h: 200 w: 140 stapled card cover 32 pages

Lucky to get Nowt is Jon Tait’s debut collection on Blackheath Books and is a homesick nostalgic over-the-shoulder look at the north east of England.

You’ll find miners, welfare clubs, pigeon duckets, union banners, gypsies, poachers, hedgehogs, leek shows, local league football, curry houses and building sites in Tait’s homage to Northumberland.

The pits and the pigeon lofts may be gone, but the people remain the same and Lucky to get Nowt reflects the warmth and good humour of the region, tinged with sadness and a morose that inflicts the area

The pit wheels that feature on the cover of Lucky to get Nowt represent both the hardships that the region has faced as well as defining the unity and hopes of ordinary working class folk that inhabit the pages.

It is available in a limited edition of 100 signed & numbered from Blackheath Books.

About the author

Jon Tait is the press officer of the Northern Alliance Football League and he was the media bloke at Gretna FC in the SFL. The pressure got so great in the run up to a UEFA Cup tie that his wife claims he sat up straight in bed, still fast asleep, cried “To infinity…and beyond” and slumped back down.

He has unblocked drains, lifted roof timbers, humped mail bags, shovelled concrete and skived around the back of buildings smoking cigarettes in a chequered career. He’ll buy you a beer and he’ll watch your back in a fight. He’s one of the lads.
Tait was born in Ashington, Northumberland in 1972 and raised in the Coquet Valley.

His writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including the chapbooks Birds At Dawn (MidNAG 1996), Bez Dancin’ in the Fire Mountains (MidNAG 2000) and Midnight at the Snake Motel (Propaganda Press, USA 2010).

He currently lives in Cumbria with his wife, son and two black cats.