Roy McFarlane's second poetry collection, The Healing Next Time, is a timely and unparalleled book of interwoven sequences on institutional racism, deaths in custody and of a life story set against the ever-changing backdrop of Birmingham at the turn of the millennium. Here forms a potent and resolute narrative in lyrical and multidimensional poems which refuse to look the other way or accept the whitewashed version of events.
Courageous, rageful and mournful, these are poems of Black history and Black presence, poems of witness and poems of activism. McFarlane's intricate lines make record of injustice and mark the names of those who have lost their lives and dignity to prejudice and hatred. The Healing Next Time also asks vital questions of the future, and of the reader – and reminds us where the power to change things lies. It is also a poetry of personal discovery, of revelation and resilience – where the influence of Jazz and of James Baldwin infuse and shape this unique, remarkable book.

Roy McFarlane is a Poet, Writer and former Youth & Community Worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage, spending most of his years in Wolverhampton and the Black Country and now living in Brighton. Roy is the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and National Canal Laureate and is the co-editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack). He has three collections published by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath and The Healing Next Time (shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize). Roy is also currently touring with Take Flight a performance collaboration of words, jazz, gospel and blues which is heavily influenced by his third collection, Living by Troubled Waters (Nine Arches Press 2022). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a Doctor of Letters by the University of Wolverhampton. Roy continues to perform nationally, sharing his passion for social justice, equality, identity, love and the healing power of poetry as a witness to our times.