Barnsley Main Seam is Pearse Hutchinson's first collection of poems in English since 1985. Among its various themes are places the author has lived and travelled in; love and friendship; love and sex; colour-prejudice; and the sufferings and resilience of Catalans, Jews, Africans, and Irish.

The long title poem celebrates the splendours of York Minster and is a homage to the manual workers of all times and countries and, specifically, England.

The book contains extended meditations and succinct observations, and there are — in pastoral and civic poems -- echoes and cross-references from one piece to another. Barnsley Main Seam serves to bind, and enhance, a unique body of work, recorded with passion and lyric grace over more than half a century.