Written daily throughout the UK’s COVID-19 regulatory restrictions, Can of Worms picks up directly from Paul Cookson's first volume, Fighting Talk. These poems document the period of July to mid-October 2020 – from the pubs re-opening through to the introduction of the ‘Three-Tier System’.

Compassionate, humorous, political and principled, here is another extraordinary collection for extraordinary times and a continuing discourse on the mood of a nation.

“Paul Cookson is on the ball with poetry and life in the here and now. These trying times need poets to help us find a compass. This book is a must.” – Michael Rosen, poet & author

“Paul's poetry gives voice to all the things that scare us and all the things that lift us, and everything in between. When we look back at 2020/21 and think what was all that about? his work will help us to remember and to see how far we've come.” – The Reverend Kate Bottley, priest & broadcaster

“A sublime collection of instinctive and honest poems that will undoubtedly serve as a poignant and definitive record of a challenging, turbulent year.” – Badly Drawn Boy, singer-songwriter

Illustrated by Martin Chatterton.

Paul Cookson was born in 1961, brought up near Preston, and now lives in Retford, Notts. He has worked as a poet since 1989, performing in schools and libraries, and at literature festivals and events across the world. As well as being Poet-in-Residence for The National Football Museum and Everton in the Community, he is Writer-in-Residence for Sing Together, which involves 125 Lancastrian schools and over 5000 children and 400 teachers. He is also Poet Laureate for Slade, has written a book of poems about the band and performed with Noddy Holder, Jim Lea and Don Powell. He is now part of Don Powell’s Occasional Flames and currently working on their second album. Paul has more than sixty titles to his name and over a million book sales, and with a quarter of a million copies sold, the anthology The Works has become a teacher’s ‘poetry Bible’.