This post contains a transcript and a re-recording of the presentation I gave at the Black Country History Day at the Black Country Museum on November 9th 2024. The title for the day was “Buildings, Heritage and the Built Environment in the Black Country” and was organised by the Black Country Society. It focused on how local buildings and sites are being protected, preserved and presented and how the built environment has been described and visualised by artists, writers and photographers.  The programme for the day was as follows.

• Tube Town Tales – what the world owes to Wednesbury, Keith Robinson
• Rev John Louis Petit’s 19th-century Black Country art: the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the built environment, Philip Modiano
• The challenges of rescuing industrial heritage buildings, Mark Davies
• Rubery Owen: Exploring the archives of one of Britain’s largest historic privately owned companies – documents, photographs and film
• Forging Ahead: Bringing the Halesowen & Hasbury Co-op to Life, Clare Weston
• The Black County environment of the mid-20th century through the poetry of Jim William Jones, Chris Baker.

More details of Jim Jones’ life can be found in both the presentation and the transcript below as well in an earlier blog post. The presentation contains both the audio of the poems being read, as well as background slides with illustrative material. The transcript itself contains only one picture, which is of particular relevance to one of the poems.

For those interested in reding more of Jim Jones’ poetry, pdfs of two publications from the 1970s, and a compilation of his Blackcountryman poems can be purchased from the Black Country Society online shop.