JOURNALIST Nigel Jarrett’s coalminer grandfathers would have been surprised to discover a book dedicated to them, especially a collection of poetry.

But Mr Jarrett, for many years an Argus staff man and still its music critic, remembered them when he put together his first poetry collection and called it Miners At The Quarry Pool.

The book is being launched by independent Welsh publisher Parthian at the end of this month.

In 2011 Parthian published Mr Jarrett’s first story collection, Funderland, which received enthusiastic reviews, including in the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, the Times and several others, and was long-listed for the prestigious Edge Hill Prize.

He said: “My grandfathers – Edward Lang and Elias Jarrett – were from Pontnewydd and were therefore coalminers living on the edge of the South Wales coalfield.

“They reached the working face not by dropping in a shaft but by walking into the local mountain from the side. I remember them taking me as a child to see the remnants of this so-called ‘adit mine’ and telling me they had to travel nearly three miles to the coal face.

“Now that coalmining has virtually disappeared from Wales, I thought it might be a kind of tribute to commemorate them and their colleagues in a book – but not one they might have expected to see.”

Mr Jarrett, a winner of the Rhys Davies Prize for short fiction, lives in Chepstow and now writes as a freelance writer. His stories, poems and essays appear widely. He’s interested in depictions of miners and the coalmining life and the cover of the new book is based on one of his own drawings of a miner finishing his shift.

Although the collection’s title is also the title of one of its poems, Miners At The Quarry Pool is not directly about mining or quarrying.

“My grandfathers and their pals were typical of working-class men who knew the value of education and sought ways of accessing it,” he said. “They were also chapel-goers or from a chapel-going background and in many cases imparted a strong moral sensibility, often a political one.

“I’m interested in the way we’ve been influenced by that or not. A lot of the poems have a moral slant. I also think there was more to miners than their image as icons of political militancy - as there is more to all of us, of course, than what others know or think they know.

Jarrett has judged writing competitions, spoken to reader groups and conducted a couple of workshops.

“I’d encourage everyone to write,” he said. “You don’t know you have anything to write about until you do it. It makes a change from living in the virtual world of social media. After that, writing’s like a breath of air.”

Miners At The Quarry Pool is being launched at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, next Thursday, November 28 at a free event, starting at 6pm. If you want to read your own poetry, go along. Entry free.

The book will be available in shops priced at £7.99.