THIS ISN'T MECHANICAL & DOESN'T REALLY KILL ANYTHING PROPERLY [annotated personal version]

This is a book I wrote in 2017-8, so see prior post for a link to a free copy of it on my Google Drive - though this particular version of it is one that I made extensive annotations in during the course of a psychotic episode in the summer of 2020; about thirty pages have been ripped out & the margins on about two-thirds of the pages remaining have detailed (and mental, frankly) scribblings in them. Re-reading the fruits of my madness was somewhat illuminating as to what was going through my head at the time.

the Republic of Song

This book is a poetry collection by Kelvin Corcoran, kindly lent to me by my friend Nick (who is also a great poet). I really enjoyed this collection - Corcoran's style is very plain and readable, and yet also bristling with unexpected longish imagery; and the poems herein are sometimes dripping with the cynicism of politics, other times overflowing with the miasmic overwhelm of history, still others bursting with a raw unfettered love for nature or revelling in the florid glories of everyday life. A powerful book, worth a read if you're into modern free verse - I'm hoping having read it will trigger some inspiration in me, as it's been a while since I've written any good poetry.

No Friend but the Mountains

This book by Behrouz Boochani is the true story of his attempted journey to Australia as a refugee. An Iranian-Kurdish* scholar, journalist & poet, Boochani fled political persecution in his homeland - and we follow him on a harrowing small overcrowded boat voyage from Indonesia, to his being intercepted by Australian immigration police, to his several years' detainment at Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (a prison camp in all but name) from which he wrote this book, one text message at a time, on a smuggled phone.

   The brutal dehumanising forces he and his co-refugees were to experience make this a truly difficult read at times, complimented with a cast of colourful characters** & real philosophical depth in his analysis of the kyriarchy that constituted the system & logic of the prison community, and juxtaposed with the haunting beauty of the many moments throughout the text in which he slips into verse to muse on his circumstances & the hope of their ending. Overall this book is a damning indictment of Australia's asylum policies at the time of writing; I was heartened to learn that Manus Island's camps were declared illegal by the Papua New Guinean government & shut down in late 2017, and nowadays, as far as I can make out from Wikipedia at least, Boochani is living in New Zealand safely & fruitfully. The book is appended by a couple of short reflections by translator Omid Tofighian on the style & impact of the book as well as the choices made in its translation process.

   This is not light reading; this is a raw, poetically told landscape of suffering & injustice. But I would strongly recommend it for anyone as it is truly eye-opening as to the inhuman ways border policy can serve truly evil means & ends.

* You may be familiar with the writings of Turkish-Kurdish political dissident Apo, many of whose books I have covered on this blog; I'd like to promise someday I'll read something by a Kurd that wasn't written in prison.

** With the exceptions of Reza & Hamid, both of whom died on Manus and are thus named in honour of memory, all the characters portrayed in the book are anonymous amalgams of types of personality & behaviour Boochani witnessed in the prison camp, to preserve the safety of those who may otherwise have been identified.

Lines on the Surface

This book is a collection of poems written by my good friend* Nicolas Spicer between 1999 and 2009. I've actually owned this book for about five years, and had been putting off reading it because when I read published poetry by people I know personally I do often get quite envious, not simply of their being published, but of their sheer brilliance of style that I would find it impossible to imitate (oh hello Kinsman & Otis) and obviously that isn't emotionally healthy & poets are generally neurotic enough as it is. But we all have our own voice, which is to be celebrated; although additional to mere style, Nick is known to me as something of an oracular genius when it comes to the history & diversity & techniques of poetry, having studied it at length & depth for much of his life in a way I never have, so I am reluctant to say anything critical of this book on here at all for thought that I would be scramblingly failing to articulate the very clever things he is doing with language that I am able to thoroughly enjoy aesthetically without being remotely capable of describing with any expertisemént.** What I will say is that I read this is one two-hour sitting & didn't have a lull of gripped interest throughout: the themes & feelings of these poems are wonderfully varied but the stylistic voice is so strong & consistent throughout that I almost heard his delivery ring in my ears as I read. An expert in the craft - highly recommended collection for poetry lovers.

* He's one of our most reliable (in terms of both consistency of attendance & quality of performance) regulars at Guerrilla, the spoken word night I host. So if you want to experience Nick's excellent poetry live, for free, in a very nice pub, you know where to start seeking the opportunity to do so.

** Not a word, I know. Shut up.

"Safe Metamorphosis!!"

This book is Otis Mensah's debut collection, which I've just re-read (that link goes back to my original post from first reading) to see if it still slaps, and it does. One notable change in the intervening years is that my copy is of his self-published first edition, which is no longer available anywhere, but the book has since been properly formally published (available here) in a new expanded version, which presumably means if you buy a copy of the newer edition it'll potentially have new stuff in it & so will almost certainly slap even harder.

&

This book is Jonathan Kinsman's debut poetry pamphlet - this was a re-read (check out the link at the start of this for my original post about it*) to see if it still rocks, and it roundedly soundedly does.

* The only thing I would necessarily add to that original post is that Kinsman is no longer the host of the Guerrilla spoken word night, I am, having been handed the baton at the start of 2019, but regular readers of this blog (who am I kidding) will already know that.

Jesus the Son of Man

This book by Kahlil Gibran was an absolute treat. Having re-read his most famous work last night, I became curious about his other stuff and found this for 73p on Kindle, so immediately bumped it to the top of my to-read list - and I have not been disappointed.

   It's difficult to decide whether to classify this as poetry or short stories given the style & nature of the content. Basically what the book is constituted of is several dozen vignettes of various people's reactions to, recollections of, and reflections on Jesus of Nazareth; these range from his disciples (eg. James & John, Matthew, Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene gets three separate chapters alone) to his erstwhile foes (most notably the high priests Annas & Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate) to random strangers (eg. a Persian philosopher, a Babylonian astronomer, a Greek poet, and my personal favourite "Ahaz the portly").* The attitudes presented range from worshipful awe to confusion to hostility - there is even one interestingly neutral perspective. Gibran seeks to tread the known and possible ground of the biblically-orthodox Jesus faithfully, making no theological points but as a work of socio-historical imagination driving home the pressing question - "how would you have related to him?"**

   A very readable, vibrant & faithful book. Highly recommended for those curious about what we can say or imagine about Jesus without resorting to outright fancy, be they Christian like Kahlil Gibran was or not.

* A couple of lacunae I would have liked to have seen filled would be Pharisees and the beneficiaries of his miracles, lepers & cripples & demoniacs etc, but I suppose you can't have everything, and admittedly Gibran is already doing a great deal here.

** Indeed, the final chapter, "a man from Lebanon [nineteen centuries later]" is Gibran's own reflections on meeting Jesus himself through the life of faith.

the Prophet

This book is the most famous work by Kahlil Gibran - I've read it for this blog before, hence the shortness of this post: that link goes back to my original post about it as I don't really have anything to add to what I said there* so go read that if you want to know about this brilliantly-wise & beautifully-written poetic work.

* Except one thing - the edition I read last time was a stolen Everyman hardback which since, in somewhat neat circularity, has been stolen from me (well, I lent it to someone, I forget who, but they kept it) so this time was reading my replacement, a fairly unattractively-formatted paperback with Gibran's own artwork interspersed with the sections, though I'll admit this didn't add much to the reading experience. I'd be interested to see his artwork in person, mind, as I'm sure it's a lot more impressive when it's not an A5 black&white copy.

Let Them Eat Chaos

This book by Kae Tempest is a masterful work of commentary poetry, and I would highly recommend reading it aloud to yourself if you can as it was written to be performed as live spoken word. The above link goes back to my post about this from the first time I read it as I don't really have anything to add.

Howl, Kaddish & other poems

This book by Allen Ginsberg is one I've read before on this blog, hence the link going back to the first post about it as I really don't have anything to add. I read it with a bottle of wine & treated myself to doing the especially good bits aloud, a diversion I can highly recommend.

Isaac and I

This book is the autobiography of Chris Searle, who more or less dedicated his life to the promotion* of poetry - the eponymous Isaac being his greatest artistic influence, Isaac Rosenberg, an East London Jewish poet & painter who was killed at 27 in World War One, and according to Searle deserves to be much more widely known & read. Searle grew up with a hunger for the poetic, and carried this passion with him throughout quite a travelled life - he taught in Canada & the Caribbean for a stint before returning to the familiar East End, where he almost immediately got fired from his role as a secondary school English teacher because he published a collection of his students' work. It all worked out sooner or later thanks to a combination of union pressure & his outraged students going on strike, making headlines as they did so. Political consciousness & activist struggle are wrapped closely up with his understanding of the functional social power of spoken word, as we see throughout - as he brilliantly puts it, "the further dimension of true poetry is also the power to become others in the constant provocation and 'penetration' of revolutionary human empathy". Poetry is intrinsically democratic, egalitarian, progressive, and Searle's own ethics on socialism & anti-racism demonstrate that he fully comprehends this & follows the path of speakable truth; I was mildly alarmed on a few occasions at the sheer backwardness of the surrounding culture he found himself in, especially regarding race, but I suppose that goes to show how far we've come since the mid/late 20th century. Overall this is a very readable book & a solid testament to the liberatory power of creative expression, be that through individual influence & inspiration as with Chris & Isaac** or with grander collective acts of embodied imagination shown in the activist tendencies running throughout. A final thing I will say is that for an autobiography Chris is remarkably uninterested in talking about himself - it's always "this kid or colleague or acquaintance inspired me in such & such a way" and the text is littered with quotes or the entireties of poems by people who he's had in his life, which adds an erratic but edifying diversity to the reading experience. I doubt you've heard of Chris Searle*** so this is not a book to read out of celebrity curiosity - but if you're looking for a grounded, relatable, inspiring story about the active power of art, community, and hope, this is a good book.

* He is clearly very passionate about poetry, but from how he talks about it in the course of this book it seems he cares less for the aesthetic form of how it is written or performed & more with ways in which it can empower people to express & celebrate themselves together. Quite inspiring stuff to me given my ongoing role as host of a monthly spoken word evening (which yes is still going really well thanks for asking)

** Yes, I did buy this book because it has my name in the title. My copy's signed by Chris even - albeit to Paul... whoever you are Paul, I hope Chris doesn't find out you dumped his signed autobiography off to Oxfam.

*** Or case in point Isaac Rosenberg, sadly.

the Hypnotiser

This book is a collection of very amusing poetry by the inimitable Michael Rosen (and illustrated by Andrew Tiffen, whose style is charmingly reminiscent of Quentin Blake).

   It belongs to my dad so I've taken the opportunity to binge-reread it while I'm staying with my family over the holidays - it's the first time I've reread it in well over a decade but I must have read this book twenty times growing up.* The poems are all free verse and incredibly readable, making this a great book for children who are just starting to explore poetry. Their content varies from short absurd skits to reflections on a theme or object (the two-parter about tomatoes I really identify with), to longer more anecdotal pieces (alongside the one about Richard at school who could hypnotise people, hence the title of the book, probably my favourite of these ones is the story about his brother taking him to London Airport on his birthday when he needed a wee) that draw on Rosen's experiences of both childhood and parenthood. His brother Brian and his step-daughter Laura both emerge from this collection as distinct, consistent and entertaining characters in their own right.

   Although I think it's out of print these days this is still a brilliant collection of comedic children's poetry and if you find a copy in a charity shop or on eBay ever you should absolutely snaffle it up - read it yourself first and then give it to a kid who will almost certainly get a kick out of it. They'll thank you.

* It's probably a strong contender for the book owned by my family that has been reread the most times. Certainly the state of the physical object will suggest such, as its spine has almost entirely fallen apart and more than half the pages have resultingly come loose. You have to be careful reading it that they don't all slip out all over the place.

Tao Te Ching

This book is the ancient text attributed to the probably-legendary Lao Tzu, and forms the foundation of Taoist philosophy. Check out the link at the start of this post for my main thoughts on it from the last time I read it - something that I now plan on re-doing every year, as there is much to be mined from this beautiful, elusive, deeply mysterious little book.

Imprint

This book is Kathryn Millington's debut poetry pamphlet. Kathryn is a recent newcomer to the spoken word night I host, and my mum happened to be in attendance at the first event Kathryn performed at, and really liked her work - so I've bought Kathryn's pamphlet as an early Christmas present for my mum. I've just read the whole thing through to get a better feel of it but I'm sure my mum will enjoy the collection considerably. All the poems contained herein deal with the oft-neglected grief and trauma of involuntary childlessness; loss and longing positively drip off every stanza. This Is Disenfranchised Grief is probably the central poem of the pamphlet, walking heartrendingly through the detachment and homelessness of feeling for these women. Short but powerful, this is a very strong poetry collection - highly recommended for those who either share or want to better empathise with the condition with which these poems deal.

Lays of Lost Thoughts

This book (available from that link as an online .pdf for free) by my late friend David Brookes is a phenomenal collection of poetry consisting of material written between 2016 and 2025. Before I talk about the book itself I want to talk briefly about David. He was a semi-regular attender of the spoken word night I host; I didn't know him as well as I would have liked but I liked him a lot. Softly spoken & articulate, considerate & generous, wise beyond his years & extremely easy to talk to however small or deep you wanted to go - he was a great guy and a much-valued part of our little community. So it was with great shock and sadness that I heard last month that he had taken his own life. I am publishing this post exactly a month after his memorial service. Heartbreakingly, mere days before he left us, he uploaded all of his work to his website as free .pdfs; alongside this poetry collection is a collection of short stories (which I aim to read very soon) and a monumentally ambitious five-part epic imagineering a lost mythology of the British Isles, complete with gods, monsters, heroes, and the like (which I will read at some point and which I thoroughly regret never having had the chance to talk to him about when he was alive, as it looks utterly fascinating); I urge you to check all of this out as David was a profoundly gifted writer.

   Which brings me to the book. All of the poems herein are free verse, and this collection is a dazzling testament to the power and profundity of that medium; contained within is also a breathtakingly marvellous breadth of expression. The poems range in theme from love & loss to the natural & cosmic to history & memory and more - I really struggled to select ones to mention specifically in this post as I could very easily highlight every poem in the book, but I've tried to limit myself to about 30-40% to leave a bit more wiggle-room for surprise when you go and read it yourself, which you absolutely should. In the opening few poems we get the bleary wanderlust of Where Were We followed by the tentative longing of Spools of Wool and the sheer wistful beauty of Listening to Your Recorded Presentation on Mortuary Practices in Medieval Byzantine Anatolia (which I read at our spoken word night in tribute to him after we'd heard the news). Then we get the simmering heartwrenching jealousy of There is a Burning Cold I Feel and passionate physicality of Yours Are Not the Cold Touches, the tender parasociality of The What That Happened to Brendan Fraser and even tenderer (if possible) silence of We Are Good at Looking at Each Other. After these, the blunt cynic realism of Paterson, and a delicious contrast between the indignant quietness of Look at You and the chaotic lovingness of The Riot of You. Then the demure nostalgia of Mosborough Moor and the detached pain of To the Marble in My Mouth, the familiar care of I Can't Help Her, the grimy determination of Scour, hopeful gratitude of Rievaulx, and remembered adventure of Wild Swimming. Catching up to current events, Invasion is a sensitive expression of solidarity with Ukraine, following which is the ponderous brilliance of Jabberwocky Prayer (one of my favourites). Flea Bomb almost leaves you personally itchy - you definitely feel the residual guilt, while Gold White has a gorgeous blending of love and nature imagery, and then Playlist (a found poem constructed out of collaged song lyrics) displays a deft selective precision. The final section of the book is called Songs of Extinction, each poem dedicated to a species of animal that has gone extinct within living memory - so treated are the desert bandicoot, the gloomy tube-nosed bat, the laughing owl and western black rhinoceros. Tragically, the final poem in this section and indeed the whole book is titled Self-Portrait as Animal (extinct by choice), and functions as something of a poet's farewell letter to a world that has given all it can to make life worth continuing. Serious content warning to readers who get to the end of the book for that one as though it is a beautifully written piece it is also a heartbreakingly honest portrayal of anguish and annihilation.

   This is a difficult post to write, but I think it's probably the most important post I've ever written on this blog for the simple fact that David deliberately bequeathed his work unto the wider world before his departure, and it would be a tragedy if his memory were not kept burning as brightly as possible by sharing and enjoying and being inspired by the brilliance of that work. So please, if you have even the slightest fondness for poetry (and his style is as wide as it is deep - precise yet pliable, erudite yet never indulgently elusive); go download this book and read it at your leisure. And lest it not be said, be kind to one another. You never know the intensity of pain someone might be plastering a stable face over. I've been torturing myself with the thought that had I been just a bit friendlier or more intentional or encouraging I might have tipped the balance and David would still be living and laughing and breathing and writing. But I know from his memorial service that there were many people far closer to him than I who were far better positioned to be that kind of support and it still wasn't ultimately enough to assuage everything that pushed him to where he ended up. That said, we all walk our own roads and bear our own burdens, but company is always nice and is more often than not helpful in the struggle. So share, and listen, and love. Nobody makes the world a better place simply by leaving it.

the Booktime Book of Fantastic First Poems

This book, edited by June Crebbin and illustrated by Emily Bolam and Nick Sharratt, is a collection of poetry aimed at getting children to read and enjoy it. I read it having seen it lying out at my parents' house after my niece and nephew had been to visit, and rather enjoyed it. All the poems, which are split between the two categories of "animals" and "nonsense", are understandably very short; and the book features inclusions from many well-regarded children's poets - John Agard, Eleanor Farjeon, Michael Rosen, Ted Hughes and Rose Fyleman all get at least one thrown in, although a fair few of the poems included here are anonymous. Overall a decent little book to introduce children probably aged 3ish to 7ish to poetry.

Point Me at the Stars

This book is the second collection by Noel Williams; like his first collection I was given a copy of this by my friend Ian (whose own book you should also check out). This is a much shorter collection, but the themes are far more consistent - these are poems about distance and closeness, isolation and ambition. Heron-dream speaks of that which is tantalisingly out of reach and Appreciating physics applies this same feeling to belief; the later poem Reality check brings to mind knowable comforts in the midst of desperation; and the final in the collection Nocturne with lake and astronomer seems to be considering the loneliness of perception. A concise and powerful little book of poetry - would recommend.

Out of Breath

This book is Noel Williams's debut poetry collection. I was given a copy by my friend Ian, whose wife was a friend of Williams before his recent death. This is a diverse and powerful collection, and I really enjoyed reading it. The opening poem, Snow on the edge, is positively pregnant with expectation; leading into the quietness of On the verge of the M40 and the stillness-yet-adventurousness of The island, the morose fatalism of Daphne, the summery atmosphere of Sunburn and the paranoia of Safe house, the wistfulness of Refraction, the defeated undefeatabilitiness of Heartbeat, the impressive quasi-haiku sequence that is A rose of broken stone, then a pair of sequences that take on a sombre anti-war tone in Till Death and Kim Phuc, and finally the indefatigable hope of the closing title poem. The sheer breadth of emotionality in these poems is startling, yet they all have a similar human warmth to them that breathes through the deft control of their language. A collection well worth reading.

For the Hypothetical Aliens

This book* is a poetry pamphlet by Ian Badcoe, a friend of mine from the spoken word events I host. As the title suggests, this collection straddles the hazy line between science fact and science fiction, as such being intended as a statement of human identity to any alien races we may whenever encounter out in the cold, wide galaxy. I really enjoyed this little book - from the loneliness of the opening poem A note on broken hearts to the following considerations about the Drake equation, then the concise empathic statement of Personal space probe and the hyper-optimistic magic of She knows whereof she speaks, a litany of pop-cultural examples of how humanity comments on itself via imagined alternative races, and finally ending with a banging mic-drop moment in The shapes of things to come. Badcoe's poetic style is dry and precise, lending itself perfectly to the material's themes; I hope that should we ever encounter aliens for real, someone will have the wherewithal to lend them a copy of this early in the communication process so that they have a bit more context for where we're coming from and what they may meaningfully expect of us.

* Unfortunately it's not available from anywhere online, so if you want a copy I recommend getting in touch with Ian himself and asking if he has any copies left to sell. I'm sure he'll oblige if so.

Garden of Madness

This book is a collection of poetry by Pete Bearder (author of this book about spoken word generally). I picked it up on the solstice when I saw him live at The Shakespeares doing very cool things with a loop pedal, and have just finished reading it in one sitting. It's difficult to give justice to these poems in a coherent summary - they are largely consistent in style and tone, all somewhat existential, dealing with humans as conscious embodied creatures and the myriad confusions and convictions that come with that. Bearder delves into dark depths of psychology and glimmering heights of spirituality that all seem to knit together into the same, single tapestry of - well, the title. Knowing his gifts as a performer I know full well that I would have enjoyed this collection immeasurably more had I heard Pete himself performing all of them live, but even on the page these poems jostle indignantly and thump their way from page to brain before once more evaporating into nowhere, but leaving you with a distinct moistness that knows the fog that had been just then settled upon your mind. Big ideas but not distractingly philosophical or overly verbose; grand humanity but never obsequiously sentimental. Any enjoyer of poetry will get a lot out of this, I think.