Blog 59: Spring Reading

It’s that time of year again where we’re all poor, cold, miserable, uninspired and eagerly awaiting the arrival of Spring. The perfect conditions to welcome and house that uninvited guest we all know and hate: writer’s block. I can’t put into words how uninspired I am, how blank my brain is, because there aren’t enough words up there in my noggin to string together an interesting image. Now, you’re probably assuming that I’m writing this because I’m going to offer some elaborate expert advice on how to combat this creative drought. I’m not. My mind currently feels like an over-extended line break and sometimes I just like to complain. And I can’t even complain creatively. (The Virgo in me is much displeased).

Instead, I thought that I would search though my favourite poetry and share the collections (as well a poem from each) that I always find myself reaching for when in need of some creative inspiration. As boring and obvious as the advice may sound, reading really is one of the best ways to engage with ideas and entice new thoughts. It gifts us with perspective as we subconsciously collect vocabulary, images, rhythms and structures that we internalise then apply to our own contextualisation of ourselves, the subjectivities of the environment and people around us, and the relationship between the two. To hell with a Spring clean, let’s have a Spring read.

Richard Siken – Crush (2005)

This was the first poetry collection I ever bought. I must have been fifteen and angst ridden searching Tumblr for relatable content after realising I was bisexual, when I came across the poem Scheherazade (a reference to One Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade, wife of King Shahryar, saves herself and other women from execution by the King who murders and marries a new wife each day by recounting a sequence of interconnected stories each night and always leaving them unfinished) and instantly fell in love with the vulnerability of Siken. The fragmented imagery feels like disruptive yet dreamy memory. His writing is yearning and lusting and needing and wanting. It’s making sense of sexuality and the animalistic fight, flight, freeze, fawn that follows this confusing condition of human. The tenderness, the violence and that grey space that lingers in between. Siken intimately explores queer sexuality and the complexities of the confessional through violent eroticism, obsession, longing, secrets, questioning, pondering, lust, love and loss. Crush is an amalgamation of those nostalgic yet anxiety inducing daydreams that we often keep hidden. Seductive yet traumatic. Beautiful and tender, yet still vicious. (You can probably tell it’s still my most beloved book.)

Ocean Vuong – Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2017)

Vuong was born just outside of Saigon and spent the first couple of years of his life living in a refugee camp before moving to America. His first poetry collection explores identity, heritage, gay love, immigration, war, exile, trauma, death and melancholy. Throughout the collection, Vuong interrogates the inherited fears and traumas of immigration and juxtaposes these brutal experiences with embedded tenderness and stunning lyricism. Night Sky with Exit Wounds is poetry of witness where we the reader inhabit the poet’s social space, from historical and political stories to childhood memories to the experiences as a gay immigrant. We observe alongside Vuong as he fleets through time from his voice to that of his mother and father. The first poem Threshold introduces us to key themes that continue throughout the book, including existing within the threshold, the in between, the confusion of identity, the boundary between the notion of innocence and sexuality. The poem describes Vuong as a child as he observes his father showering. The keyhole embodies the ‘threshold’ between vulnerability and masculinity, body and emotion, familial ties and secrecy. Like a ‘beggar’, the boy wants to journey through the threshold to attain the ‘price’ of manhood and a body with perceived value.

Caleb Femi – Poor (2020)

Whenever I recommended poetry, regardless of who I’m recommending it to, I always suggest Poor. Femi reflects on his experiences growing up on an estate in North Peckham. He explores racism and the vulnerabilities of black boys and men, the trials and tribulations of growing up amongst inequality and classism. Poor is a love letter to his Peckham estate and the individuals who learn to thrive despite disadvantage and gentrification. I find it difficult to articulate just how influential this book has been on my own writing. As a working-class woman who grew up on a council estate, Femi inspired me to dissect the multilayered juxtapositions of working-class life, the poverty and violence, the everyday grit, the community we have amongst ourselves. In poems such as On Magic / Violence he explores the coexistence of injustice, racialised poverty, systemic violence, survival amongst the concrete estates and trauma alongside joy and wonder through seemingly trivial yet intimate moments. Femi works to reframe the conversation around violence and the demonisation of council estates by juxtaposing this with humanity and the tenderness of community. The magic and the violence are communal, shared by the everyday residents of these estates.

Joelle Taylor – C+nto & Othered Poems (2021)

I almost feel ashamed to have only discovered Joelle Taylor’s work in recent years. She is a powerhouse in poetry that explores butch lesbian history and culture, the pubs, clubs, bars and safe spaces lost but not forgotten. C+nto centres main characters (based on real women) Dudizille, Valentine, Jack Catch and Angel, and explores the persecution of lesbian women alongside unity and acceptance. Homophobia and violence, bigotry and dehumanisation, sexuality and gender, womanhood and authenticity, are all central concepts throughout Taylor’s work. C+nto is structured like a play, with poems blending into one another like a collection of individual yet interconnected scenes. Taylor consistently portrays the body as political in a heteronormative society. She challenges the stereotypical gender expectations and examines the relationship between flesh and appearance in poems such as Valentine. I think it’s also important to recognise the meaning behind the title. Cuntare is derived from the Italian archaic word meaning ‘to narrate or recount a story’. Cunto is the inflection of Cuntare meaning ‘a story or narrative’.

Warsan Shire – Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head (2022)

Shire is a British Somali poet who explores themes of migration, the longing for home and safety, racism, sexism, womanhood, the inherited suffering of girls and women, as well as the resilience to violence and trauma. Her work shifts between the confessional and documentational as she discusses the personal and communal experiences of Somali women who have endured the inter-generational effects of civil war. The female body as political is a key motif throughout this collection, the body as sensual, the body violated, the body in exile, the collective wounds bore by women and how these wounds are sustained by misogyny, racism and conflict. Shire gives a voice to the marginalised, to girls and mothers, to refugees and immigrants, to the women who often go unseen and unheard. You may have seen lines from the poem Home before as this poem is often used during political protests in support of refugees. I first saw the opening line ‘No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark’ on a poster at a protest and instantly ran to the internet to search for the writer. This poem is a visceral portrayal of the refugee experience and was inspired by a trip Shire took to visit refugees in Rome. She gives voice to Somalian refugees escaping persecution and does so with an urgency that demands understanding and empathy. The poem argues for the necessity to flee and directly grapples how the forced perilous journey is still safer than home.

Enjoy your spring reading!