Land of Three Rivers is a celebration of North-East England in poetry, featuring its places and people, culture, history, language and stories in poems and songs with both rural and urban settings. Taking its bearings from the Tyne, Wear and Tees of the title (from Vin Garbutt''s song ''John North''), the book maps the region in poems relating to past and present, depicting life from Roman times through medieval Northumbria and the industrial era of mining and shipbuilding up to the present-day.
The anthology has modern perspectives on historical subjects, such as W.H. Auden''s ''Roman Wall Blues'' and Alistair Elliot on the aftermath of the Battle of Heavenfield in the 7th century, as well as poets from past ages, starting with Caedmon, the first English poet, writing in the 8th century. There are classic North-East songs from the oral tradition of balladeers and pitmen poets alongside the work of literary chroniclers like Mark Akenside fr
