Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan

It's difficult to ever feel entirely comfortable in one's own skin. Following on from the excellent debut “Flèche”, Chan's new collection of poetry continues to describe the tension between self expression and belonging. Some poems deal with the struggle to find acceptance within the family and the bravery required to present oneself authentically. Sage advice is offered in the line “refuse to be a bomb shelter for your mother's fears.” But the book also suggests the surprising love and approval that can be found when there is honesty. Other poems reference the recent pandemic and startling moments of bigotry that are experienced. Not only do belittling words and actions create fresh lacerations but they're a reminder of all the different levels of abuse one has experienced throughout life and “How the body endures the toll of another's glance.” Over the course of three sections, this collection presents a life in constant flux and how we search for moments of solace and potential connection within our shared language.

One of the standout poems for me is titled 'Hindsight' which follows a path of logic considering one's position of privilege in relation to the suffering of past generations. Then the lines of the poem are reversed to give a whole new meaning and perspective on this issue. There's a natural guilt which accompanies living with a knowledge about the struggles our ancestors contended with and knowing that we wouldn't exist if they hadn't persisted through them. But that doesn't mean we should minimise the perils we face in our present times alongside the opportunities that have been provided. This poem poignantly expressed this through its structure and helped clarify my understanding after grappling with this issue for a long time.

Just as the author meaningfully articulates the challenges of navigating the world, there's also a deep consideration for the difficulty of finding which form this writing should take. This is addressed playfully at one point where it's noted “The poet opened a clean Word document, titled it POETRY, then saved it in a folder titled NONFICTION, then saved it in a folder titled FICTION.” Chan admits a preference for the poetic mode because “I want my reader to understand my protagonist and their feelings without my having to describe them in detail”. Poetry also comes across as the best refuge when confronted with the judgement of others: “I left home for the poem: inscrutable house, constructed space, blue room, how the poets have named a heaven in which lonely meanings sit companionably beside lonely children.” Many beautiful moments of connection can be found through the poems in this excellent book.

England's Green by Zaffar Kunial

The poetry in “England's Green” describes not only the natural world in this country but the personal and national history embedded in its flora and language. Kunial is so attentive to the construction of words as well as their sounds. In several poems he takes certain words apart to give the reader a unique three dimensional view of them demonstrating how “Words have pockets. Small, deep pockets that go on for ages. We put words on a page and they preserve infinitely more than we mean or guess”. Through this attention to linguistics the author delves into his family's past and converses with writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare to the Brontës. As many authors do, several poems begin with an epigraph however Kunial adds a touching personal resonance when quoting from Iris Murdoch's “Flight from the Enchanter” as he notes the underlinings were made by his mother in her copy of the book. This imaginative and playful collection is awash with emotional resonance which shines through in each carefully constructed and beautiful line.

I also enjoy how alongside the actual past Kunial considers potential alternative paths in life and spaces in time when things could have gone differently. He states “We all have lives that go on without us. Unwritten... a realm between weathers, where losses and times fold, at the crease – clueless as to what it was. Or for whom.” This so wonderfully encapsulates the influence of chance upon our lives as well as the ambiguity of different possible outcomes. Through our ability to recall and reimagine amidst our individual linear narratives he posits how “Life is wider than its page. And days are a cut field, clipped and made to run on.” The resonance of these larger themes coupled with the metaphorical force in these poems makes them utterly arresting to read. I especially enjoyed the way he incorporates nature and at one point describes “the snow drops – tiny tongueless bells – the quietness is still ringing”. With great intelligence Kunial allows us to re-view words and the world around us. This book also has one of the best endings I've ever read in any poetry collection: “The very last thing poetry is is a poem.”

My Darling from the Lions by Rachel Long

I enjoy how some poetry collections can give an impressionistic feel for an individual's life. Rachel Long's poems in her debut collection “My Darling from the Lions” link hands to form a portrait of its narrator experience. The poems alternate between quiet moments of introspection and distinct observations about a series of spirited personalities. But there is also a self-consciousness where the narrator is aware of being perceived and interpreted. A series of short poems all labelled 'Open' describe the narrator's experience in a state of sleep or repose where different people around her make the same or similar observations. This conveys something so striking about experience as we feel it as opposed to how others see us inhabiting the world from the outside. 

Some poems such as 'Helena', 'Red Hoover', 'Bloodlines' and 'Danielle's Dad' are more narrative based as they are clearly rooted in a particular time and place and convey a specific experience. Others are somewhat more abstract in how they express a mood or a subtle moment of realization or transformation. The striking poem '8' describes the ritualized labour of being cleansed as a woman “for men to crawl out and in” so there's a haunting sense of how religion and maternal forces claim and prepare young female bodies for the patriarchy. Another perspective on emerging female sexuality is given in the poem 'Red Roof' which feels almost taboo with its frank portrayal of young girls exploring their own and each others' genitals. Existing somewhere out of time is the object of 'The Musical Box' and this poem beautifully expresses the experience and emotions of people in our lives when they were younger and before we were born. The poem 'And then there was the time I got into a fight' is charged with indignation as children at a school don't believe the man picking the narrator up is her father. Many of the poems are also imbued with a sly sense of humour and this is most strongly expressed in the satirical poem 'The Sharks and Victoria Beckham'.

Some of the poems I liked the most describes unexpected moments of tenderness such as 'Car Sweetness' where parents are caught in a rare moment of romantic connection touching each others' hands. I also enjoyed how the narrator obtains a glimpse into her mother's interior life when a private diary is uncovered in the poem 'Inside'. This is quite a different look at the woman who “combs her auburn 'fro up high” as glimpsed in another poem 'Orb'. Together these poems express a curiosity and wonder about people close to us as we collect bits and pieces of their complex existence. The poems in this book lay these observations out like a precious collection to admire and contemplate.

Flèche by Mary Jean Chan

“Flèche”, the title of Mary Jean Chan’s poetry collection, means an aggressive offensive fencing technique and the author refers to her experience participating in the sport throughout several pieces. This central metaphor describes her process of literally arming herself in combat, but also poignantly suggests how she must battle against her identity being suppressed especially in white and non-queer spaces. The preface of this book points out that “We are defined against something, by what we are not and will never be.” The way in which the author must assert herself in opposition to this persistent and pernicious act of being characterized as what she is not is dynamically explored throughout these poems. 

The collection seems to roughly follow a chronological progression from her childhood where she recounts tales and fables relayed about her ancestry to moving to the West and the awakening of same-sex desire to revisiting her family to introduce them to her partner. All the while, there’s an ongoing dialogue (both internal and verbal) with her mother where the past is ceaselessly pulled into the present. Some poems take on point of view of the mother, others recount scenes with her and one ‘Conversation with Fantasy Mother’ imagines a perfect coming out scenario where “You sieved my tears, added an egg, then baked a beautiful cake.” I found the progression of this complex relationship and the challenge of arriving at an amicable connection to be incredibly emotional. It’s beautiful how Chan pulls at different threads to convey the many ways she is indelibly tied to her mother.

The final point of the preface asserts that “This is a book of love poems.” The overwhelming feeling I was left with from reading this book is just that, a love for family and romantic partners which has been forged out of long-term strife and where all the need for defending oneself has finally been released.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

I’ve been meaning to begin reading Anne Carson’s poetry for some time. Multiple people recommended I start with “Autobiography of Red” and I’m so glad I read this incredibly inventive book! Carson translated the existing fragments of a poem about a red winged monster with a human face named Geryon which was written by the Greek lyric poet Stesichorus’ who lived from 630-555 BC. In the opening sections Carson imaginatively discusses Stesichorus’ life and the legend of his being rendered blind for insulting Helen of Troy. Carson has said she found it difficult to satisfactorily translate his writing successfully so she’s taken the liberty of imaginatively filling out the story of Geryon’s life in this epic narrative poem which reads more like a novella. It takes elements from Geryon’s story but inserts them into a blend of the modern and mythic following his relationship with his mother, sexual abuse by his brother and his romantic entanglements with a man named Herakles (in the myth Heracles kills Geryon by shooting him with an arrow.) It’s stunning how she captures the sensations of Geryon’s life and his unique perspective: his feelings of alienation, artistic aspirations and sexual yearnings. And it’s so beautifully written with many complex lines and metaphors that made me pause and think.

Carson sympathetically portrays Geryon’s gradual awareness of his otherness as he gets older. There the obvious differences in how he appears as his body is red and he possesses wings which he learns to conceal. But he also perceives the world in a different way and at some points Carson describes his synaesthesia so that he can hear “noise that colors make. Roses came roaring across the garden at him.” So Geryon becomes aware that he’s an outsider who can never fully integrate with the people around him or have a traditional relationship with Herakles. He’s a part of society but outside of it and learns he can’t live without it: “There is no person without a world.” Yet there’s a tremendous wellspring of emotion within him which is symbolised by a pilgrimage he and Herakles take to a volcano. He also takes up photography as if becoming an observer and recorder can emotionally remove him from reality.

This is book filled with so many profound and beautifully-made observations I’m sure I’ll return to it again and again.

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Since I’m so accustomed to reading novels I sometimes find it a challenge to get in the right mindset to read a book of poetry because my instinct is to look for a narrative. In a way, I didn’t have to adjust this instinct to read Ilya Kaminsky “Deaf Republic” because there’s a definite overarching story and the book even begins with a list of “dramatis personae”. It takes place in an unspecified village during an unspecified time period. The village has been occupied by military forces who publicly execute citizens. The focus is not so much on the ethos or machinations of this oppressive regime but the fate of a family of puppeteers, the lives of the local population and their frequent passivity to resist the war on their doorstep. When a boy is shot and killed the sound of the gun causes the villagers to go deaf. Like Jose Saramago’s novel “Blindness” the collective absence of this sensory experience powerfully symbolizes the limitations of people’s empathy and a dangerously wilful ignorance. These poems consider issues to do with individual political responsibility through resonate imagery and flashes of dramatic action/inaction. Though the narrative has the feel of a fable, the first and final poems are unmistakeably contemporary in their American setting with references to greed in “our great country of money” and our silent witnessing of gun violence.

The book’s form is somewhere between a parable and play, but it’s definitely structured as a series of individual poems. Though I followed the arc of the story by reading it through from beginning to end these poems still function as stand-alone pieces. As the theme would suggest, many poems consider sound or the absence of sound. It’s especially poignant how a gunshot is not described as such but as a haunting image: “a sound we do not hear lifts the birds off the water.” Over the course of the book the lack of what’s audible creates a deep sense of interiority “silence which is a soul’s noise” as well as a terrifying reverberation of guilt for people who don’t speak up: “We let them take him, all of us cowards. What we don’t say we carry in our suitcases, coat pockets, our nostrils.” It’s moving how this describes the way remaining silent out of fear can make these unuttered words stick to us. Kaminsky also describes the way inaction can sometimes speak louder than being the one brave enough to raise an objection: “no one stands up. Our silence stands up for us.”

Another innovative aspect to this book is the way it incorporates pictorial representations of (an invented) sign language. These hand gestures are initially defined so that by the end of the book when a group of signs are shown together we understand what this private silent language is saying. This is such an inventive way of conveying poetic meaning without words. It shows how we are forced to invent other forms of language to communicate when we can’t speak about what’s socially or politically unacceptable. In this way over the course of the book language begins to feel squashed into different localized and personal arenas: “I teach his children’s hands to make of anguish a language – see how deafness nails us into our bodies”.

“Deaf Republic” contains a powerful message about the real danger of not speaking up when faced with unconscionable policies or oppressive actions. It readjusts the meaning of the ensuing devastation so that it is owned by the viewer rather than something which he passively sees: “There will be evidence, there will be evidence. While helicopters bomb the streets, whatever they will open, will open. What is silence? Something of the sky in us.” When faced with such destructive life-threatening dangers the choice between self-preservation and political action disappears. This collection is saying it’s time to speak up.

Bookshop Day & the Poetry Shortlist for the BAMB Readers Awards

I always look forward to Bookshop Day in the UK as it makes a good excuse to visit local bookshops and pick up some titles I’ve been meaning to buy. This year it’s on October 5th and I’m already making a list to take with me to the shops. Bookshop Day is a campaign put together by Books Are My Bag which is a wonderful organization that encourages people to shop at their local bookshops.

They also work with National Book Tokens to host the BAMB Readers Awards which is now in its 4th year. I love that this book prize is curated by bookshops and chosen by book lovers. The shortlists for the Awards’ several categories have been announced today. You can see them all here and cast your vote on which book should win the Readers’ Choice Award: https://www.nationalbooktokens.com/vote

I’m taking a special look at the Poetry category for the BAMB Readers Awards because I always mean to read more poetry but tend to stick to novels. Today is also National Poetry Day in the UK! So I’m glad the award gives me a great prompt to discover new titles and this shortlist includes a fascinating range of poetry. “The Black Flamingo” by Dean Atta is about a mixed race teen who is going to university and his process of becoming a drag queen. “The Girl Aquarium” by famous booktuber Jen Campbell weaves dark fairy tales and issues to do with the possession of body and the definition of beauty into poetry. “A Year of Nature Poems” by Joseph Coelho & illustrated by Kelly Louise Judd considers changes to do with animals and emotional states over the course of a year. “The Flame” by famous singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen features his last collection of poems which he compiled in his final years. “Poems to Fall in Love With” by Chris Riddell pairs new illustrations against new and old poems by a range of writers from Sappho to Hollie McNish. “The Poetry Pharmacy Returns” by William Sieghart is a sequel which details how different poems can be applied to “treat” the human condition.

Let me know if you’ve read any of these poetry titles, what you think of the shortlists in each category and if you’re planning on visiting a particular shop on Bookshop Day!

Surge by Jay Bernard

The question of how we should memorialize victims of injustice, those who've been forgotten or those whose stories can't ever be known is a difficult one. Jay Bernard writes a powerful introduction to their book of poetry “Surge” explaining how they conducted research into the 1981 New Cross Fire which was also called the New Cross Massacre and claimed the lives of 13 young people. Many believed this was a racist attack and the reverberations of this unresolved case are still felt today - especially when there are eerily familiar new cases such as the Grenfell Tower fire. Bernard’s poems poignantly embody the spirit and voice of people involved in these incidents including family members in mourning, bystanders, protesters and even the victims themselves.

Some poems reflect more on Bernard’s own personal experience to discuss issues to do with gender, sexuality, national and racial identity because, as the author states, “Many questions emerged not only about memory and history, but about my place in Britain as a queer black person. This opened out into a final sense of coherence: I am from here, I am specific to this place, I am haunted by this history but I also haunt it back.” What forms over this book’s journey is a communion and convergence of voices who rightfully insist upon a presence in the nation’s collective memory. These poems are artfully infused with a political urgency, sensitively consider the weight of history and punch through the past into the present day.  

A series of poems take on a strong lyrical quality with repetition and rhythms reminiscent of the songs sung in Jamaican patois that emerged amidst the protests after the New Cross Fire. Other poems are more reflective using imagery which considers the border between past and present, memory and forgetting, life and death. The poem ‘Pace’ meaningfully explores a sense of connection to those who’ve come before us in the physical space we inhabit. Still other poems speak with startling directness in the voice of restless victims: “No-one will tell me    what happened to my body”. Interspersed between the poems there are sometimes photographic images of individuals or banners involved in the protests following the New Cross Fire. There are also occasional quotes taken from a variety of media such as text messages, news reports and relevant books of nonfiction. These add to the texture of the reading experience suffusing the poems with a living energy.

Several poems are achingly intimate and form kinds of narratives based in memory. One describes the bravery summoned to join a Pride parade and the confused sensation of melding into a community: “am I the steaming black street, am I the banner and the band, the crush, lilting ale, tipsy hug, charged flesh and open eye”. The poem ‘Ha-my-ca’ recounts a trip to Jamaica and the experience of skinny dipping where a new relationship with the body is formed: “I learned of self and other when my waist left the water”. While the poems with a more personal feel stand slightly to the side of the poems which converse with the research concerning the New Cross Fire, they add a sense of intimacy to how the author isn’t disconnected from this mission of bearing witness but is also a presence made solid.

Johnny Osbourne - 13 Dead

Sometimes I’ll read poetry collections where only a few individual poems make much of an impact, but nearly all the poems in “Surge” made me stop and meditate on them. It’s a richly complex and accomplished book that demands answers for those who’ve been marginalized and rendered voiceless throughout history: “It’s the only question we ask. Will anyone lessen the losing? Will anyone lessen the loss?... Losing and losing and loss. Never recouping the cost.”

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

There are some books which sit on your shelves for ages and you know you'll love them, but don't get around to reading them for some reason. “Night Sky with Exit Wounds” by Ocean Vuong is one of these. First published in 2016, it feels like one of those break-out books of poetry that's been universally lauded. His poems have that arresting quality as they clearly come from the heart and contain an urgent desire to communicate. The book is comprised of three sections: the first mostly deals with family heritage/the Vietnam War; the second mostly concerns childhood/family life and the third explores adulthood and looking to the future. Together they form a portrait of a distinct personality and the creation of an independent voice while meditating on themes including the body, violence, sex and nationality. He draws upon references from Greek mythology and American iconography taking them into an entirely new context. It's a thrilling new perspective charged with so much energy and passion. 

Vuong has such an interesting way of discussing our bodies. Several poems give jolting new views on how we inhabit our skin and exist in relation to each other. In the poem 'Immigrant Haibun' he muses that “Maybe the body is the only question an answer can't extinguish.” And in the poem 'Headfirst' he considers how “the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting”. Still later, in the achingly self-reflective poem 'Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong' he states “The most beautiful part of your body is wherever your mother's shadow falls.” Together his poems form a creative new view in how to feel ourselves as a physical presence and conscious being – even when those around us don't acknowledge our perspective or value our bodies. The striking seven page poem ‘Ode to Masturbation’ is actually a heartfelt take on how we relate to our own sense of being: “a hand to this blood-warm body like a word being nailed to its meaning & lives”

Some poems are tinged with a sharply political edge. 'Aubade with Burning City' considers the human impact and violence of America's abrupt withdrawal from Saigon by pairing the sense of local panic/death with lyrics from Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas'. Others have a much more personal feel considering how non-white Americans are asked about their origins: “When they ask you where you're from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman.” These poems highlight how America is not a harmonious melting pot and can't progress as a society without acknowledging and addressing the past.

One poem surprisingly inhabits the perspective of Jacqueline Kennedy. This is a decidedly queer point of view and other poems directly address violence against queer bodies such as 'Seventh Circle of Earth' which memorialises a gay couple burned in their own home where their voices only exist as a sequence of footnotes. Still another poem looks at gay on gay violence considering the case of Jeffrey Dahmer and obsessive/possessive love: “I want to leave no one behind. To keep & be kept. The way a field turns its secrets into peonies. The way light keeps its shadow by swallowing it.” Also, 'Trojan' looks at the battle gear of ancient warriors meditating on the expression of brute strength as a form of pageant beauty. It often feels like Vuong himself is like the piano player in his poem 'Queen Under The Hill' in which it's stated “I sit turning bones into sonatas.”

At times it can feel like the author is speaking in a voice so direct it's almost painful. This can be the case even when he's writing in the second person as in 'Because It's Summer' where he writes “a swarm of want you wear like a bridal veil but you don't deserve it: the boy & his loneliness the boy who finds you beautiful only because you're not a mirror because you don't have enough faces to abandon you've come this far to be no one”. Later on the poem ‘Notebook Fragments’ takes a very different style from the others recording observations like loose diary entries reflecting the author's changing state of mind. An earlier poem expresses a desire to lose oneself “You can get lost in every book but you'll never forget yourself the way god forgets his hands” but then the poem 'Thanksgiving 2006' feels like a declaration of independence “I am ready to be every animal you leave behind.”

Vuong's poems combine to form a view that's at once movingly personal and energized with a message that needs to be heard.

Lantern by Seán Hewitt

When we enter the woods we can't help imbuing the natural world with so many of our own emotions. The beauty of trees, flowers and wildlife transform into metaphors for what we're feeling. In Seán Hewitt's pamphlet of poetry “Lantern” he explores the experience of entering nature, observing it and finding our selves there. We might enter it seeking solace or to hide or engage in an illicit encounter or as a respite from the business of civilization. It's where our language has no meaning: “the places where words extinguish themselves and leave all the things that cannot be fixed or forgotten.” In this way, he delicately illuminates the sense of being we get from entering a place where we cast our emotions out in an act of transformation, but find that we are the ones who are transformed. 

There is a constancy to nature and a sense that it's timeless or, at least, that the woods experience time very differently from us. In one poem the narrator recounts planting trees as a school child and comparing his growth over the years to that of the woods which have grown more slowly. If we ever return to a tree we planted in childhood or a sapling we observed as a child we experience a moment of reflection and how we've changed in so many unexpected ways since the innocence of our youth. By comparison, the tree's growth seems incremental but no less monumental. In the poem 'Clock' it's observed “though I love you I know there is no such thing as held time, this tree seems suddenly like a stillness, a circle of quiet air, a place to stand now that I have had to leave” There is a reassurance to a tree's steady progress over the years and a solemn acceptance that we ourselves will experience radical transformations unlike this simple growth. 

I enjoyed how many of these poems give a sense of dramatic emotional events having occurred without disclosing the details of them. Instead they focus on this interchange between the narrator and the way nature has changed under his gaze. It can seem like a holy experience yet it is irreligious like a silver birch “for he does not observe liturgical time”. The poems also convey a sense of guilt from casting our experiences and emotions onto nature as if we've spoiled its purity: “I wonder if I have ruined these places for myself, if I have brought each secret to them and weighed the trees with things I can no longer bear.” Because entering the natural world is a form of reckoning where we hope to be altered, brought back to ourselves or made anew like in a poem where it's wondered “Are we all just wanting to see ourselves changed, made unearthly?” 

Many of these poems simply have a quiet beauty to them and I admire the way they contain so much feeling, but let it simmer beneath the surface. They make striking reflections on how we situate ourselves in relation to nature and how entering it allows us to return to our lives having cast ourselves into it as in the final haunting lines of the collection “I turn home, and all across the floor the spiked white flowers light the way. The world is dark but the wood is full of stars.”

Soho by Richard Scott

I hugely admire a book that can be so brazenly sexual and plunder the depths of personal experience to tease out meanings that are profound and revelatory. Richard Scott’s book of poetry “Soho” demonstrates a full frontal engagement with queer experience while vigorously searching for a gay lineage and history to connect to. In its opening poem 'Public Library, 1998' the poet performs an Orton-Halliwell stunt of defacing library books to insert the “COCK” and gayness into literature as well as highlighting queer subtext. The final long poem ‘Oh My Soho!’ documents a search for that history in the present-day manifestation of a queer community that feels in some was disconnected from its past. There’s a potent anger in how “We’re a people robbed of ancestors – they were stolen, hooded, from us” through stigmatisation and death by criminalization and disease, but also how reformed queer identity has become: “We, too, are not immune to this shameful progress; us homos are no longer revolting!” The double meaning of this line is blistering in its recognition of progress, but at the expense of behaviour which has been sanitised by heteronormative practices and a lack of political engagement. Scott seamlessly treads between the personal and political to create poetry that burns hot pink. This poetry gripped me, turned me on, made me teary-eyed and left me grinning.

In one of my favourite poems 'Sandcastles' a scene plays out where a family at a playground is encroached upon by a “tall gent”. The narrator self-consciously migrates between the identities of the people there to engage in furtive public toilet sex or become a nurturing influence to a girl building sandcastles or become the girl playing in the sand. So there is a mind-blowing simultaneous embodiment of these contrasting feelings of perversion and innocence. One of the most gut-wrenchingly emotional poems 'crocodile' describes what it is to have survived sexual trauma “I have died already and somehow survived” but tragically being made to feel like your tears are not valid. Several poems describe the negotiation between the childhood self and the fully-cognizant sexually-active adult. Some focus on how childhood abuse can be transformed into adulthood fetishes like in the poem ‘under neon lights my arms glow scar-‘ while others explore dark feelings of self-loathing “I hated still hate this body”.

Other poems have a much more light-hearted nature and poke fun at the cult of poetry such as 'Permissions' which invokes the community of chap books and poetry slams where poets freely fuse together imagery to titillate, disturb, connect or grieve “collecting rapey verse like a tramp pocketing bin-butts”. Another poem sees the poet critiquing himself for co-opting theorists and writers after having just presented a series of poems re-imagining the love poetry of Verlaine and splicing in quotes from writers such as Walt Whitman, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Mark Doty, Michael Foucault and Jean Genet. Scott lambasts himself ‘shame on you faggot for bending whitman to your will” in a way that endearingly shows he’s not taking himself too seriously while writing about serious things.

Throughout the book there is a rigorous engagement with sex, the body and desire. These include feverish poems which celebrate the act such as ‘slavic boys will tell you’ whose format on the page takes on the evocative shape of a mushroom. But frequently there is a sense of sex being mixed with violence or death. One of the most striking is the poem ‘you slug me and’ whose startling invitation “ask the terrible questions of my flesh” describes how violence in sex can be a means towards self-discovery. Another poem ‘you spit in my mouth and I’ takes on a Jean Genet-like mentality to discover levels of beauty in sexual degradation. An entire section of the book includes poems focusing on shame as a complex attendant to sex, especially for gay people. Scott describes “those pre-grindr days when loneliness stung like a hunger” and how “my head's a cloud and my heart's a puddle”. The triumphant final poem ‘Oh My Soho!’ describes the desultory sensation “I’m chock-full of shame, riven with dark man-jostling alleyways, a treasure map of buried trauma.” An ever-recurring need for sexual gratification makes it seem as if we are condemned to a state where “this desperate place... is your home now”. But the poem 'the presence of x' epitomises Scott’s rejection of religion and “heteronormative bullshit” out of a commitment to “believe in sex the blue hours you've spent fucking me the bruises you left on my arms”. This results in an individual who gazes askance at society to resolutely declare “I am the homosexual you cannot be proud of”.

It’s so heartening to see a fresh generation of poets like Richard Scott, Andrew McMillan and Danez Smith whose writing engages with the dimensions and politics of queer identity in refreshing new ways. I loved reading this playful, moving and riotous poetry collection. 

Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith

One of my goals this year is to read more poetry and I feel lucky to have started with a new book which totally gripped me with the intensity of its voice. The poems in “Don't Call Us Dead” by Danez Smith have the urgent force of a rallying cry. They pay tribute to individuals and groups who will not be silenced no matter how much they are oppressed, incarcerated or killed. Specifically Smith speaks powerfully about the experience of being a gay African American: how skin colour can lead someone to be targeted by the police or alternately excluded/fetishised in the gay community. These are poems drawn from somewhere very personal. They sometimes play off from lyrics from musicians like Billie Holiday or Diana Ross and use a unique variety of forms to convey meaning as much in their structure as they do in the choice of words. Like all great poetry it can be interpreted a number of different ways, but there is a clarity of self here which definitely has something to say.

Something that connected me to these poems so strongly is the way that Smith frequently makes broad statements while also drawing the reader into the emotional core of their reality. Smith states “i am a house swollen with the dead, but still a home.” How brilliantly this expresses the architecture of being! That we can encompass all who've come before us and/or those who haven't survived, but our very structure is designed to accommodate this Genealogy and invite others in to experience it. I was continuously jolted by how startlingly personal these poems felt but I also frequently stopped to contemplate how their meaning is so beautifully expansive. Smith speaks about individual experience as well as others when they write a line with such dazzling beauty like “let's waste the moon's marble glow shouting our names to the stars until we are the stars.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has revolutionized our dialogue for speaking about both institutionalized and rogue violence inflicted upon black communities. The very spirit of not letting the deaths of young black men like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown pass without testifying to their injustice and how they are endemic of systematic racism seems wrapped up in the line “don't fret, we don't die. they can't kill the boy on your shirt again.” But Smith is also conscientious of the fact that many people who die or experience stultifying oppression aren't memorialised in such a way: “i'm not the kind of black man who dies on the news.” This is because there is also a death of spirit which isn't visible and which is more broadly felt by groups of people continuously ground down. Smith expresses this so powerfully in the line “some of us are killed in pieces, some of us all at once”. There are also moments when Smith doesn't hesitate to give their poetry a startling directness “reader, what does it feel like to be safe? white? how does it feel to dance when you're not dancing away the ghost?”

Danez Smith reads 'Principles'

This collection is also a poignant testimony to the way romance and sex are experienced by a black gay man. Some poems speak directly about how race and skin colour are listed as turn on or turn offs on dating/hookup profiles. Yet there are gorgeously romantic instances in poems which yearn for a transcendence of these imposed boundaries: “if love is a hole wide enough to be God's mouth, let me plunge into that holy dark & forget the color of light.” The poem 'seroconversion' has the most innovative and creative way of eviscerating identity to describe a conflagration of coupling that results in radical transformations and self-divisions. Smith doesn't shy from the raw power and sensuality of gay sex “praise the endless tub of grease” or the numbing anonymity of it “i'm offered eight mouths, three asses & four dicks before i'm given a name”. Still others pay tribute to instances of aching personal hurt: “I was his fag sucked into ash his lungs my final resting place.”

Smith's poems are also very cognizant of the effect AIDS and STDs have upon the gay community. There's a bracingly sympathetic moment when someone is waiting for test results and pleas “ask him to wait before he gives me the test results, give me a moment of not knowing, sweet piece of ignorance, i want to go back to the question”. Then there are a number of structurally innovative poems such as 'it's not a death sentence anymore' where the words of this sentence are whittled down the page until you're simply left with “a sentence” with spaces in between. This speaks so powerfully about a shift in common thinking that because being HIV+ doesn't instantly equal death anymore, it shouldn't be such a concern. 'blood hangover' fiercely forms what Smith calls “an erasure” of Ross' popular song to acknowledge the serious after-effects of sex. Elsewhere the words “my blood” and “his blood” are repeated until they collide and rapturously mingle on the page in the poem 'litany with blood all over'. It's so heartening seeing these complex issues explored in Smith's poems while also capturing the joy, romance and steaminess of gay sex. I admire how new young poets like Smith and Andrew McMillan are so thoughtfully exploring layers of queer life in their writing. 

I was totally captivated by the urgency and power of “Don't Call Us Dead”. These are poems that are, of course, political and personal at once. They have an invigorating clarity while also being complex enough to yield multiple meanings from rereading. Most refreshingly, this is poetry which feels of the moment.

Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi

I bought a copy of this poetry collection when it first came out a few months ago, but its recent listing for the Costa Book Awards poetry category finally inspired me to pick it up. Kumukanda means initiation but since Kayo Chingonyi came of age in England rather than Zambia where he was born, he mostly records in these poems the rites of passage he goes through as a young black man in Britain. From cricket games to spending time in a Londis grocery store, these poems express his particular take on common experiences of modern English youth and the tributaries that fed into the creation of his particular identity.

Many of the poems describe Chingonyi’s affinity with music and especially his attachment and affection for cassette tapes. In one poem he writes “You say you love music. Have you suffered the loss of a cassette so gnarled by a tape deck’s teeth it refuses to play the beat you’ve come to recognise by sound and not name?” This invokes a real nostalgia not just for the music these tapes contained, but also the process of listening to this antiquated format. He observes how the static these tapes contained was part of the experience. One poem describes the background sounds which are accidentally recorded within tracks and how this can mentally transport the listener to the actual recording studio. These poems build to a sense of how music is a living commentary upon people’s lives and exists within the movement of time so that R&B artists work with “their lyrics written out on the backs of hands.”

There are references to musical influences from James Brown to Prince, but in some poems he also points to more complicated forms of broader song and dance imagery like Bojangles. This made me recall Zadie Smith’s most recent novel “Swing Time” for the way it describes a black individual in modern Britain contemplating racist imagery from the past and how that affects self-perception. Chingonyi describes in the title poem how he wonders what a version of himself that had been raised in Zambia would have thought of his British self. I admired how he describes in later poems that beyond any internal conflict of national or racial identity he recognizes a more fluid sense of being. In ‘Baltic Mill’ he describes a meeting point where it’s acknowledged “The exact course that brought us here is unimportant. It is that we met like this river, drawn from two sources, offered up our flaws, our sedimental selves.” I felt this worked in two different ways where it could describe two people meeting or someone reconciling different aspects of oneself as adding up to a unique individual.

This collection is a passionate and engaging take on one man’s coming of age.

All We Saw by Anne Michaels

I’m often drawn to writing that acknowledges the awe one feels as an individual gazing at the universe but from an entirely secular perspective. The world and the fact of existence seems spectacular enough without attributing it to any grand design. (Nevertheless, I fully respect people who draw wisdom, comfort and community from different kinds of faith.) In her latest collection of poetry “All We Saw” it feels like Anne Michaels is beckoning the reader to join her on a spiritual journey that is entirely unconnected with religion. Her pared down poems describe the path of life as if travelling in a boat. She frequently makes pithy observations about the difficult process of cherishing our experiences without being too attached to them, especially with how this is done in writing and visual art. Her poems shift back and forth from the personal to the broadly objective to explore the tension of savouring what we love, but also learning to let it go. 

The book begins and ends with longer poems, but smaller ones are sandwiched in between. The final poem in the fifth section ‘Ask Aloud’ struck me most as simulating something like a prayer. In the bold statement “To love another more than oneself. To know this is to know everything” Michaels seems to be forming a mantra through which to live. She asks a series of questions and rather than assuming there are answers she declares “Not surmise. Sunrise” as if certain kinds of truth can only be understood fully by looking at nature. Imagery of the natural world repeats and crops up in various poems where knowledge can be better gleaned from the physical world rather than through a process of deduction or received wisdom. The poem ‘You Meet the Gaze of a Flower’ also acts as a kind of entreaty or prayer about confronting life head on. Nature can also encompass a sense of emotion which can’t be expressed in words: “how much that hope hurt and yet purple dusk, yellow winter sky”. I love the way in which you’re suddenly thrust from a place of deep personal feeling into the expanse of a colourful skyline.

Point of view can shift in fascinating and moving ways throughout a single poem in Michaels’ writing. This probably occurs most dramatically in the poem ‘Bison’ where the description moves from the creation of a picture to inhabiting that picture to the dying artist who created the picture. The focus switches so fluidly it’s breathtaking to be drawn through it and creates a thoroughly unique resonance. This is very different from the blunt emotion to be found in ‘I Dreamed Again’ which describes how we can get lost in dream states where loved ones who are now deceased can physically exist in our lives again – something like what Joan Didion describes in her memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Such longing for a connection with another is consistent with the existential panic that can result from absolute solitude. In her poem ‘Not’ she seems to assert that we possess innumerable uncertainties in life but we can be certain we are not alone when another person is with us. I also like speculating whether this poem is a play off from Samuel Beckett’s famous piece for the theatre ‘Not I’ and offers a different kind of answer from the loveless life of the narrator in that dramatic monologue.

The title poem which concludes the book touches back on water imagery found in the beginning. It also harkens back to a kind of communal spiritual practice where she states “we had only to bend our heads as if reading the same book open between us”. To surmise that the same truth about all the manifold experiences and emotions of life can be understood by looking at the natural world is a beautifully optimistic one. Yet, I also like how she seems to intimate that horizons can create a false belief. A skyline gives the illusion that there is an endpoint when in actuality it will continue on no matter how much you run towards it – just like our images of future happiness will inevitably dissolve because we will always desire more. The book “All We Saw” is a beautifully spare and artful creation.

Plum by Hollie McNish

“A new book?” my boyfriend asks when he sees me reading, as usual. “What’s this one about?”
I tell him it’s a book of poetry.
“Poetry?!” he frowns (half joking).
I try to explain how it’s a particularly engaging and fun collection.

The general public, even regular readers often view poetry as inaccessible or perplexingly elitist. But Hollie McNish is a great example of a modern poet with writing that’s so easy to relate to. It’s also smart, humorous, bawdy, political and socially-engaged. “Plum” is a book that also draws you into the author’s life. Many of the poems in this collection are headed by the age at which McNish produced them and the context within which they were written. This not only helps the reader understand the motivation behind them, but builds an ongoing narrative of a girl growing into a woman, a worker, a friend, a wife, a mother, a citizen and a poet. We see her change from a teenager working at a chemist’s who sniggers at customers buying condoms to being a woman feeling embarrassed about buying condoms herself. The collection as a whole beautifully captures a sense of McNish’s evolution as a person and a writer as her style changes over time.

There are poems about discovering sex, getting groped in bookshops, arguing with the television, learning other languages and the chaos of taking her daughter to a children’s party. They all draw the reader into McNish’s life and articulate so meaningfully the contradictions, inequalities and shame she sees in society. Her poetry is particularly strong at highlighting the often maligned working class who are diminished and patronized by politicians, the media and middle class. Rather than really trying to engage with their point of view, they are often talked down to "as the poor wait and rot labelled yobs by headline cops". The poems also enumerate McNish’s own experience working a number of different jobs which gives a special credence to the way she describes a waitress’ shift so strongly: “in the heat of her boredom and beckoning orders the hands of the clocks just keep slowing down”. It’s a tradition that the queen sends a birthday message to every person in the UK that turns 100, but McNish states plainly and powerfully how “the poorer you are the sooner the queen should write”.

I couldn't find any poems from this collection online but this poem 'Embarrassed' is from McNish's book "Nobody Told Me"

Many of the poems describe the body in a way which is frank and refreshing. It reminded me of Andrew McMillan’s collection “Physical” for the way she captures the oftentimes awkward way we inhabit all this flesh. McNish gets the humour and ridiculousness of our physical development as well as its poignancy when our roles in life change. She also doesn’t shy from highlighting how it feels like language fails to describe the full complexity of this. "Morphing into an adult's body feels so odd. I tried to capture it here, but I can't." She describes the way children are spoken to in a condescending way and (especially in the striking poem ‘Voldemort’) the way girls are commonly taught to be ashamed of their genitals in a way that boys are not. She frankly deals with sex with all its pleasures and pitfalls. It’s particularly fun when she inhabits the voice of Constance Reid from “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” to show her daily life and fulsome sexuality. And also, the powerful poem ‘Shrinking’ powerfully describes a modern day waitress dressed as “Alice in Wonderland.” As the book progresses, the poems grapple with how McNish is coming to terms with her own mortality noticing graying hairs or the slacking of her stomach after giving birth. The final section is dedicated to poems specifically about particular parts of the body in a way the creatively rounds out this very personal collection.

Unsurprisingly, McNish is a popular performer. I was lucky enough to see her read some poems at a Picador author showcase event and she captivated the audience. Not only does her animated language have the power to grip listeners, but she also has a direct and frank way of delivering her poems that seizes your attention. As well as encouraging you read this vibrant collection, I’d recommend that you go see her perform if she’s giving a reading near you. Of course, not many people will be able to do this but she has a YouTube channel where you can watch her reading several of her poems: https://www.youtube.com/user/holliemcnish/videos