On the train home, he hopes the tinsel will at least be burgundy. In the flat it was gold and falling apart already, becoming a handy prop to his act, kicking strands to the side as he huffed his hatred for the occasion again but drank mulled wine out of a takeout cup all the same. But something told him it would be red, and seem brighter than ever somehow, like the 19 years of aging couldn’t touch the cheeriness of the foil, protected by the thing that everyone else seems to feel. The thing that made people smile as they counted down days, open little doors to little chocolates, wear Christmas jumpers with cartoon animals; wondered why they bothered, sort of wished he could care too.

But he doesn’t know what to do with it, think they call it joy. Never seen mommy kissing anyone, never heard dad say thank you, but now mistletoe stares down and forces it, while Jackson 5 sing about a home so full of love you assume it must be adulterous, too much to go round that they must have got his share. They attempt to ration it back out from the small speaker in the corner that will be turned down five times in one day till the festivities match the feeling; nothing but a whisper that you only have out of duty.

And the 50^th photo of the weekend will be taken, snaps him out of that mood and into a worse one. In every picture he looks like he’s been caught in an act. Eyes scream of falsity, guilt over something as if by living and smiling he’s touched something he shouldn’t have. He waits for a hand to hit his away, hates himself for that thought. He’s 19, should be able to smile convincingly without the feeling of his mouth curling making him shiver into a grimace, but for the past couple years every move his bones make feels wrong. Each finger twitch is cringe-worthy, like his body laughing at a joke that’s on him and anyone that catches a glimpse hears it too. Same sound that screams when he accidentally walks in time to the music in his headphones and the pavement points at him and cackles, or when he catches himself smiling at his reflection and the mirror shouts for everyone to come look and laugh too.

It gets louder when the crackers come out. Putting in the effort to rip cardboard from itself, feeling the muscles in his arms tense up, straining for an act of nothingness that tradition demands, the lack of dignity in a paper crown, and mum wants another photo. He feels his face wrinkle, he forgets to unclench his fist.

The year drew itself to a close in a pretty ideal way for my to-read pile. Spending the final months of the year in another lockdown and boring tier 3 life, I was well prepared with a fresh stock of books. Completely ignoring my vow to stop buying new books and focus on the ones left unread on my shelf, I went out pre-lockdown and spent the money I knew I’d save on meals out on whatever caught my eye. So for the final reading list of the year, I went in mostly blind.

BTW. I’m now a Bookshop affiliate! Bookshop is on a mission to support local bookshops and so am I. There’s no reason to be buying books on evil Amazon anymore but I understand the draw of the convenience. Bookshop is just as easy to use, and if you buy any of my recommendations through my shop, I get a commission, so you also get to support me and what I do. A win win. 

#1 The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

Remember back in February where I said I was going to read The Bluest Eye… well. I finally did it! The Bluest Eye was book number 3 on the reading list in my 1^st year of uni, and now I’ve finally read it, I feel like I was robbed of all those seminars and discussions. This book has such a unique way of being so easy to read while also being completely gut-wrenching. The subtle way that Toni Morrison packs her characters full of pain and repression, and the decision to study racism and class through the lens of young girls makes the whole novel so heart-breaking but never so heavy it becomes suffocating. The bit that really got to me was the focus on self-esteem and beauty, and the way racism had seeped into the girls’ view of themselves, tacking a massive issue in a way that felt so reflective of how these things pop up in day to day life.

Took me long enough but I’m so glad I finally picked this one up properly, feels like a book everyone should read.

#2 Spy In The House Of Love - Anais Nin

I’d seen the cover art for this book a million times and always meant to give it a go. Anais Nin feels like a writer I should know more about, writing diary pieces along with essays and short stories, all forms I love. So I went into this book completely blind with no idea of plot and no familiarity with Anais work, something I haven’t done in a long time. Immediately I connected to the main character Sabina, a woman who is a kind of emotional chameleon having multiple affairs, and I love how her personality is built through the narrator’s assumptions mixed in with her thoughts and experiences. It reminded me a lot of Fitzgerald and all his best bits in The Great Gatsby as he describes Daisy, full of really beautiful and rich language, but Anais Nin uses it to describe a female character that’s 100x more liberated and powerful.

The balance of power and vulnerability in this short novel is amazing, but if you’re looking for a strong plot that you can really get stuck into, this isn’t the one of you. With no real climax or build, this novel is more of a sequence of happenings, so there were some points where I felt like the 136 page book was taking me forever to finish. The relatability of the character and the feminine energy throughout has definitely hooked me in though, keen to discover more of Nin’s work next year.

#3 The Descent of Man - Grayson Perry

This is a strong contender for one of my favourite books I’ve read all the year. Previously I’d heard of Grayson Perry but never indulged much, however this has been on my to-read list forever, and since finishing it I can’t get enough of him. Reading The Descent Of Man made me realise how counter-productive so many other book on gender are, always focussing on women and what we need. In this book, Grayson Perry instead focusses on what men need, offering up a discussion of what men may need and the importance of considering men and what to do with masculinity as we attempt to rid of the toxic side of it. Written in Grayson Perry’s classic humour and casual tone, I was shocked how much I actually learnt and have taken away from this book, being one that’s really stuck with it. Honestly, I want to buy everyone in my life a copy of this book, feeling like it’s hosting such an important conversation that too often gets forgotten or silenced.

#4 Diary Of An Oxygen Thief - Anonymous

I picked up this book 100% based on the cover, and it didn’t disappoint in the slightest. Not at all what I expected as I was suddenly thrown into this monologue of toxicity from the male protagonist (antagonist more likely), but I don’t remember the last time I read a book this quickly, polishing it off in a week. With an anonymous author who talks in personal pronouns and even refers back to his plan to write a book, I love that you never really know whether the book is fact or fiction, feeling like you’re reading the diary of a guy who honestly is just a complete asshole. Playing on the sympathy for the devil trope, Diary Of An Oxygen Thief is like Lolita or Frankenstein, told from the villain’s point of view, but then imagine that villain was funny and sounded like half the men you’ve ever met. Building a voice that’s full of all your most toxic thoughts, the narration of this book is so human and captivating in its gross cruelty, you get completely sucked in, being shocked and enthralled and sympathetic towards the narrator all at once.

As far as the plot goes it’s pretty simple, the narrator is awful to women and then a woman is awful to him. But the voice is so good I closed the book and immediately ordered the sequel, hoping I might be able to squeeze it in before the year is out.

✿ ✿ ✿ 

In Conclusion...

I counted and this year I’ve read 25 books, not counting the numerous novels I’ve started and given up on or the complete works I’ve been dipping in and out of. That’s more than I’ve ever read in a year, even while I was at uni, and for once I feel like I’ve actually properly engaged with what I’ve read, able to give you a summary and an opinion on any of the titles. A couple of weeks back I wrote this piece for Reason To Be Cheerful, talking about how I think I’ve finally recovered from the reading burnout of my degree and started to enjoy it again as a comforting activity and a kind of routine self-care. Previously flying through books on my commute, the half an hour I spend reading in bed every morning determines the mood of my day, always feeling a difference if I skip it. 

This year reading has been such a necessary form of escapism, being tied into little luxuries that have made the year bearable at worse, but at best actually really really lovely. Spending every Saturday morning sat by the canal with a takeout coffee and pastry has become my lockdown equivalent of a meal out or a Saturday night cocktail, feeling like the one treat my week leads up to. Especially in a time where we spent so much of our year alone, something about reading makes my own company feel so luxurious and special, a bit of quiet that I really look forward to. Diving into everything from classic novels to new poetry to non-fiction diaries, this year has massively broadened by reading horizons, and given me some of my favourite books that currently sit on my shelf.

And hopefully it’ll continue into 2021. 

Up next...

Chameleon in a candy store – anon

Orlando – Virginia Woolf

Nights Sky With Exit Wounds – Ocean Yuong

All the books still unread on my shelf…

My eyes have been wandering, fatigued with familiarity and flirting with my next go round. I’ve never sickened myself of a name but I’m catching myself yawn at these faults I’m too lazy to fix, too frugal to go down that way, so bored of talking to you about.

And I wake up to another day. I didn’t think we could spend any more time together, that there must be a cap off. A tick on a list to say you’ve done your bit, like a friend who knows all your best stories and you’re now past your prime, a friend that knows you so well they process your feelings for you and tell you it back in simple words you might understand. A best friend like that, cut and dry, pressure off from a point. But we’ve been sat here for months now and all the walls keep growing yellower and yellower with the stain of our conversation and I’ve never noticed the wallpaper before. Did you put it up? 

I’m getting terrible visions of marriage. Is this what five weeks after I do feels like? A kind of breathless exhaustion every time you think about it too much, catch eyes on already bad days and hold eyelashes to spiral down into the fearful definition of forever. No outs here. Just me and you, me, with only death as a door and divorce out of the question without burning all the nerves away. It’s a lot. 

But you know I liked our drinks in the honeymoon phase, dressing up to sit together in a different room as a treat, when you let me not feel silly wearing heels in the kitchen and we concocted sweet poisons, shaking jam into gin with an ever-encouraging inner monologue that sounded like us laughing together.

Then there’s always a splinter and it can never be enough for long enough. Wake up and say hello, testing out tones and prepared for minor, squeezing my eyes together as tight as I can like a reset button that does nothing but click. I’ve started waiting for this side of you at the door of our attic and you hide the keys behind your back again, jingle as I do my series of activities where you demand more from me to get less of you, interrupting as I tell you again I’m trying.

This is that conversation; sat at the table with nothing to promise but effort. 

We have the talk daily, reaffirming with changing conviction, as the room glows fluorescent and I squeeze the promise from my squashed lungs.

Did you know that you can just release a book? Cause I’m here to tell you that you can.

I definitely don’t celebrate myself enough and in a very typically Lucy way, I regularly forget about my proudest achievement. Every now and then the fact I released a book will come up in conversation and I find myself almost shocked at it, like oh yeah I did that. 4 years on it feels like such a distant memory but knowing I’m on a bookshelf somewhere still gives me a happy glow, that glorious bucket list tick feeling.

The story of Chrysalism is almost humorously simple. I’d always wanted to release a book, putting pressure on myself to do it before I was 18. One night sometime in March in my 18^th year, I was talking to an ex about how sad I was that I hadn’t achieved it, and he just said ‘why don’t you do it now then?’. Living in Sheffield at the time, the city is a beautiful place for small prints, indie bookshops and zine fairs, so up until then I thought the only way to release something physical would be through a big time publishing house with an editor and an agent and all that. The idea of just making and print the book myself was never a thought let alone a possibility. But then someone told me I could do that, so within a month I’d done it and I think more people should too.

Self-publishing gives you so much freedom and control. Shrugging off traditional print and rejecting the idea that you need an external professional person to come in and help you know what’s best for your own work is really empowering. Not only do you have full reign over what going into the book, what you edit and how you arrange the pieces, you also open up a whole world of opportunity for aesthetics, letting you experiment with how you want your book to look and how you want your work to sit within it. When someone says ‘I released a book’ it sounds impressive and distant, but books are a collection of words on paper, and with a good printer you can make that.

Whether you write poetry, essays or prose, let me reiterate, you can release a book. Here’s how I did mine. 

#1 Pick your pieces

 The hardest part, it’s time to kill your darlings.

 As a small print, you don’t want your book to be massive. From the get go you want to be considering cost effectiveness of the amount it’s going to cost you to make vs the value it will have to your audience. For homemade zines you want to keep them compact, short and sweet will allow you to make the most beautiful finished product, so this can’t be your complete works.

When I was picking pieces for Chrysalism I was lucky enough to be on a creative writing course, so I limited myself to pieces I’d written and workshopped in class, knowing that these were probably my best works. I also forged a theme!

A theme is a great way to stop yourself spilling out, keeping your book sharp, consistent and cohesive. Maybe all your pieces come together to tell one big narrative? Maybe they centre around the same general theme? Maybe they flow through a journey like mine moved through the four seasons? Having a thematic guideline will make the process of picking and choosing easier and feel less painful. Mine was around 16 pieces split into 4 sections of 4. To help with this process, I also made a playlist to coincide with these four sections to definite the feeling I wanted each bit to have.

#2 Find a flow

Once you’ve got your content, you want to start jigsaw-ing them together. I think it’s important to consider that with it being a small book, some people might read it cover to cover, so having your pieces flow nicely is going to give it a good overall vibe and experience. You want to give people time to process one emotion before pulling them into another so give some thought to what you’re putting next to one another.

Once you’d done that, it’s time to start the official document. To sort the page folds, I just Microsoft Publisher but I better there’s some fancier software you could use instead.

#3 Make it pretty

Arguably the most rewarding part, printing the piece yourself gives you full control over how it looks. There’s so much scope to experiment on every level, from the formatting of your words on the page to the physical design of the book.

I’d start with the hardest bit, picking your typeface. I found this really hard because I’m super picky, but realistically all your typeface has to be is readable. Play around with different styles and formatting. For titles I expanded the space between letters which looks cool, and for my typeface I found one online that I downloaded so it was a bit more unique to me. Fonts In Use is an amazing resource letting you search for themes, eras, genres and even specific things like album covers or posters and tells you what fonts they used! If you book has a specific theme, maybe find a font to match.

Then comes the question of illustrations. While completely not necessary, a little something extra is a small way to make your book 100x more beautiful and precious. I was lucky enough to work with Natalie Friesem who illustrated my book, and I also put in scans of my notepad as I wanted a more personal touch. Remember it’s your book, you have full control to put whatever you want in there. Other things I considered including were my inspiration collages to match the imagery in the work, borders around certain works and handwritten titles.

For Chrysalism I also experimented with different paper sizes and textures, ending up wrapping the book in a thinner cover. I tried out things like printing images onto tissue paper or having different sized inserts, because once again, these are things you can do! Around the time I was going to a lot of zine fairs and spending a lot of time browsing little book shops for inspo simply to broaden my horizons away from the basic all A5 image of a book. So get yourself on Pinterest or order some other small print zines, and play around with it all. Once you realise that it’s all just folded paper, the opportunities become endless with a big world of colour, texture, paper thickness, paper sizes etc ahead of you.

#4 Buy supplies and set your price

Once you’ve decided on the look and feel, go out and buy your things. This is the point where you need to think about cost and sale price. Before I set out to buy a big bulk of materials, I made a prototype and started promoting the book, this will help give you an idea of interest to know how much stuff you should probably buy.

Get your paper, ink and any other materials you’ll need like envelopes and binding stuff, then do the math to figure out how much the book needs to be to cover production cost and (ideally) a little profit. For context, mine was £6.

#5 Bring it to life

After a couple of goes, building your baby will be an easy process. For me this was the best bit. Doing it all yourself means you personally get to interact with every copy, finishing them off with handwritten details like copy numbers and thank you cards. After the first couple, it becomes really lovely and rewarding, I remember settling down on evenings at uni to build the last couple and feeling so proud of myself.

Once it’s all sorted and formatted in your document, do a trial print run with normal paper to check your margins and everything are all okay. When they get your stamp of approval, production is good to go! Print them off, then use a strong ruler to help you get a crisp fold, put the pages together then leave the book under something heavy to flatten. To bind them, you can staple or I hand-sewed mine together in a string that matched the colour scheme.

And you’ve got a book. Congratulations.

Set up a Big Cartel or a Depop or a sales site of choice, spread the good word, ship off your sales. And you’re an author. 

Bucket list check, you did it.

ps. You can still read Chrysalism HERE

I’ve been sat with my fantasies saying goodbye for a while. I fear I might not see them again, at least not the same. The next meeting they’ll be doubled over, suddenly old like a grandparent you haven’t seen in a while, and I’ve been avoiding that too. Time passing in new groans when they stand up, and this reclusiveness isn’t compatible with shouting down the phone. Now I cringe at anything that reminds me I’m, probably because to be alive is to have lost all this, each night spent praying to be in some timeless dream, put to sleep for the duration and I’ll wake up in march; meet my fantasies for coffee all crammed round one table and we all still look twenty-one.

But on inspection day two hundred and something, mirror hour one thousand at least, I’ve found a wrinkle. Like the first grey hair of a coma patient, I’m laying to rest things that haven’t opened their eyes for months.

Old lists laugh in the hospital machine beeping, always seems like they’re becoming quicker. I see myself in slow-mo running towards my lifeless body as a protest parade sprints past, five politicians run 100m in 5 seconds, dizzy with the turning of the ground below me, the beeps go on and on, I’m running and I can’t get there but never flat line, just running

                                            and running

                  and running and

I’m saying goodbye to my fantasies while the world tells me not to be sad; optimism says the body will still be there it’s only the colour that will be missing.

Sunday coffee will be starved till it’s shut down, Paris’ palaces suddenly dusty and vulgar again, New York won’t sing Patti’s songs with an unwanted baby in its arms or blood on a backroad. Can’t shake the sense that all my dreams are going to come back to me haggard and different, and I won’t want to look them in the eye; can’t make conversation with a kind confrontation of how the year has robbed us of itself. Calendars all full of arrows, slipping through months of snakes and ladders, walking through milestones like ghosts.

After the parting I sit for a while pulling at the loose threads of myself, figuring out which ones are essential and which ones I can’t fix anymore.

I woke up and I’d turned to stone. Stuck still in complete fear of the things I’m made of; have been made of, always made of. And this Saturday; it’s disgusting. I’m a greyish brick, some modern built that sits awkwardly among the rest. Stale white, something slate, I clunk with every move, skin rubs on skin in scratching friction but never enough to fade anything away. 

I must have pulled something in the Friday night contortions of moving from size to size, small to large in two skirts as a personal best. I thought I’d stretched it out, fell back into a child’s pose and then rolled my skin up into a ball trying to be least I could and succeeding somewhat when my mirror felt looming. One of us is always getting bigger, despite daily familiarity I’m still not sure who I can blame for all the upset. Something tells my arms they’re the common denominator, four homes and they’re still causing issues so it’s time to stop shifting the blame. I slipped into a cobra and look someone in the eye, to say anything but I hate her feels wrong but it feels wrong to say it.

I felt the same September 2018 but September 2019 looks to me now like a gem, a flower, something thin and clean and to be longed for in lack of substance that somehow makes the colour pop. Why does her skin look foreign to mine? Not quite the four years to be all shed and gone, I hug my hand tight round my forearm to feel her but there’s too much in the way. I’ll work harder for a reunion, but I’m sure I’ll hate her as well when I meet her. 

And all of her clothes still fit. Tuesday I slip again into the polka dot trousers of 2017’s Easter trip home and I no longer want to unbutton them when I sit down. 3 days later I will. 7 days later I won’t again. My comfort is a line to cross and one toe means I’ve let myself go, one button means I’m fat now, sized up and I’d tell everyone but myself that’s fine. Not me though, never me though. Roll the grey cloud in, crying over my inability to despise myself enough for discipline to shrink, cry more over the toxicity of that, burning the back of my throat in a familiar way.

Wake up the next morning and eat some toast, 10am. Drink coffee. Eat 5 olives, 12pm. Plan a morning around the success or failure of not eating a sandwich. Something sweet at 2pm and rewarding the day’s efforts with a meal at 6. 

Seeing the words written down my brain is tugging between too much and not enough, whether normal feels indulgent or I’m kidding myself about gluttony.  I watch strangers on the internet eat 3 meals and 2 snacks like a luxury life not made for my genes, my body which at 9am sometimes looks the same but by 5 is all grey and stone and moss and weeds, clunking again. 

But what did I expect? Nearly a year has passed with nothing to dress my body up for, no big day to work for, strive to make my skin look and feel as good as possible for, no nice new dresses and heels. I think I feel out of context. With no background to be set upon, no music to tell me again why pieces of me move, nothing but day in day out monotony of clothes to put on by not wear, I’m wondering why there has to be so much of me.

I want to live off meal replacement gloop or Camembert, no in between. 

I want to stop wanting cake so much. 

I want to eat cake without it scowling at me. 

I want to stop looking in mirrors. 

I want my skeleton to stop being unique. I want to look just like my friends. 

I want an artist to draw me every 20 minutes of the day so I can compare without a camera to blame. 

I want to know what I look like. 

And when I know, that can’t change. At least not till I’m 30. 

Today something about who ever this is looks young and old. Unsleeping and greyed over, immediately massive because she skipped a 10-minute workout video that gives her an extra point of worthiness for each exercise. Her nose from one angle looks to turn up and everything else is trying to fall down to the ground. Her eyes have nothing in them to write home about. I hope tomorrow they’re try harder so she can be me and maybe I’ll stick around to chat to myself a bit.

I’m very aware that this corner of the internet is slowly morphing into a book blog, but as of late I feel like my passion for literature has finally come crawling back out of its English degree hiding place. The slower lockdown mornings, the fresh new appreciation for little things like walks and sitting in parks, I think life has slipped back to the basics, letting us indulge in small joys and more time. Since March I’ve probably read more than I did the entirety of the year before, and I feel like I’ve really dug into the books rather than just flying through them on my morning commutes. This month especially, I got stuck into a big range from poetry to contemporary to classics, having a nice spread of bucket list books and titles I’d never heard of until I was buying them.

#1 The Flame – Leonard Cohen

Everyone knows I love Cohen, so I finally picked up The Flame. This is his last collection that he worked on up until his death, and the book includes poems, lyrics and unpublished works. I knew I’d love it, something about Cohen’s style ticks so many boxes for me, it’s beautiful but I like that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Reading his work feels like flipping through someone's notepad in the best way, like someone writing with no pressure or false pretenses of trying to be overly articulate and artsy. It has the same unique imagery and phrasings as his lyrics, but The Flame especially feels very open and personal, like you get the chance to understand who Cohen was in his later life.

The foreword by his son Adam is stunning, so beautiful it’s worth buying the book even just for the opener. He talks about how poetry was his father’s number 1, his intense dedication to his work and his ‘fiery preoccupation’ with writing this book. He says that The Flame was what Cohen was staying alive for, and you can really feel that in this lively and passionate collection that feels like the perfect ending to his incredible back catalogue.

#2 Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk

A wild change of tone and style, this was a spontaneous read that I picked up from the wholesome book swap we have in my building. I love the Fight Club film and I was intrigued to see how they’d manage to handle that plot twist in writing so at only 218 pages I flew through it in a week or so.

Verdict – it was okay. It’s easy reading and it was nice to just settle into a simple piece of modern fiction, I also liked the random breakdowns where the language and imagery became weirder. But overall, it seems like the film manages to take this book and turn the plot from average to amazing. It’s weird, despite obviously being a novel first, Fight Club is so reliant on visuals that the text just didn’t do it for me, a bit unsatisfying. But I read it anyways and watched the film again after.

#3 Moder Dy – Roseanne Watt

I saw this collection being hyped up on Instagram, deemed a kind of exploration of language and translation so the language side of my degree was caught, captured and intrigued. I’m also trying to make more effort in supporting smaller publishing houses, so it was nice to be able to pick up a book from a little Scottish press.

Roseanne Watt is from the Shetland Islands, and Moder Dy looks into the idea that there’s certain words that can’t be translated, like little pieces of poetry built into language. So the collection moves between English and Shetlandish with a glossary at the back to define certain words. In her intro, Watt explains that when a poem has been fully translated, she made no effort to attempt to maintain meter or anything when translating which I loved, like a real dedication and focus towards celebrating her language.

But even beyond being a really interesting read linguistically, Moder Dy is beautiful. It’s packed with nature and landscapes, mixed in perfectly with more personal and feminine scenes as well as bits of folklore. With every page turn you didn’t know what you were going to be met with, but you knew it would be tender and glorious. Reading this really got me thinking about translation and all the classics that we could have all read different versions of, the way the translation of just a couple of words could alter the whole thing. It also got me thinking I really need to get back to DuoLingo and stop being an embarrassing single language speaker…

#4 Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

I successfully avoided Frankenstein throughout my entire education, I bypassed it during my gothic A-level and ducked out on the module at uni, so I was admittedly one of those people that still thought Frankenstein was the monster. Honestly, I’d never even thought of reading it until I started seeing TikToks about Mary Shelley and a band I interviewed mentioned the novel as an inspiration; my book collection is very easily influenced. Then there it was in Oxfam one day for £1.50, so Frankenstein accompanied me on a trip to London.

My relationship with the gothic is a tumultuous one. When I first read Wuthering Heights I thought it was one of the worst things I’d ever read, so painfully bleak. But after a year of studying it alongside some other texts, it’s probably one of the most significant book memories in my life. I think the thing with gothic is being able to just surrender to darkness and try to settle into it. It’s easy to get bogged down by the language and the dramatization of it all, so with Frankenstein I tried to just sink into it and enjoy the story. It immediately shocked me how easy reading this is, the language isn’t too flowery and the plot is easy to follow. For a mythic story about a monster, Frankenstein is so intensely human and confrontational about the topic of existence and necessity for a liveable life. Frankenstein’s ‘monster’ speaks so frankly that it will break your heart, the whole novel really being a tug-of-war on your sympathy. The plot isn’t action packed, but the discussions in the book really make you think. Only 200 or so pages with nice short chapters, Frankenstein opens up a debate that’s been sticking around in my head since.

#5 Platinum Blonde – Phoebe Stuckes

I will be screaming my love for this book from the rooftops forever more, I’m going to tell everyone I ever meet to buy it and savour it and share it with their friends.

Platinum Blonde feels like a book made for me, from the Hollywood starlet cover, to the title, to the female-focus and big emotions. I sat down by the canal to read a couple of poems and ended up sat their shivering for hours, completely captivated by the beauty and brutality of the book.

It's hard to put my finger on what I loved about it most, but Platinum Blonde made me feel more confident in my own writing. Female-focus works about love and heartbreak and just generally being a deeply emotional women are often put down, regarded as ‘not good’ by (usually male) poetry gatekeepers. But Phoebe Stuckes is good, very very good. This collection is full of glorious unique imagery without smothering the realness of it, it’s both so personal and frank but also so universal. I found myself sending photos of poems to my friends saying ‘this reminds me of you’, I had to stop myself underlining my favourite phrasings or else my whole copy would be scribbled over.

I know this will be a collection I’ll return to regularly, probably cite it as one of my favourite books. I’ll be lending it to everyone, flipping through the pages next time I’m heartbroken.

Next up...

I'm attempting to place myself on a book-buying ban, trying to force myself to go back and tackle the one left unread on my shelf. I have a bad habbit of avoiding reading thicker novels, but I'm determined to get through them. 

But that being said, I really want to try out Lana Del Rey's poetry book... so we'll see how I get on. 

Of all the art forms, poetry is one that most intensely falls victim to gate keeping. So many people are scared away from the poetry section of Waterstones by imagined bodyguards, setting made up rules about what makes a poem a poem. They hold up difficulty as a measure of goodness, use tradition and genre as a sword to scare off the casual reader, like you must dedicate your life to the form or die. And who are we kidding, it’s usually men, stood there defining what’s worthy and what’s not, stomping on the Rupi Kaurs of the world to keep the genre elite, keep their egos in check.

But if there’s a hill I’ll die on, it’s that poetry doesn’t have to be difficult in order to be beautiful and artistic and worthy, that the average reader should be able to switch between fiction, non-fiction and poetry without stress, reading what they want without feeling like they need some kind of secret passcode to enter the poetry club. And I know, it’s easy to be scared of, especially when for so many people the word poetry brings up nothing but big scary names like Keats and Browning, but underneath the big boy scary surface of the tricky classics, there’s a beautiful pool of glorious collections that don’t need a PhD to decipher.

Here are some of my favourite easy-read collections that are perfect for people that say they don’t like or don’t get poetry.

#1 The Book Of Longing - Leonard Cohen

I’ve talked about this book to death, in the same way that my copy is in tatters. Gifted to me before I had any real interest in Cohen as a musician or really knew anything about him at all, The Book of Longing was the first collection that introduced me to the scrappy lyrical write-and-go style I love. Full of drawings and handwritten notes, this collection pull together some of Cohen’s greatest lyrics alongside some of his silliest throw away pieces. If you’re looking for a collection to dip in and out of, something with every emotion under the sun from beautiful learning poems to comedic quick-witted 2 liners, Cohen’s work is a great place to start. His style is at once both traditional, often sticking to strict rhyme schemes, but is really fresh in its content, so you know you’re reading poetry but it keeps you on your toes.

In general, I think lyric / poetry books are great places to start with poetry. Loads of incredible musicians have books full of their lyrics and unreleased drafts that let you dip your toe into poetry without being completely baffled, as well as letting you get a more intimate understanding of an artist.

#2 Ten Years In An Open Necked Shirt - John Cooper Clarke

You’ve probably heard the Arctic Monkeys cover of I Wanna Be Yours, putting their own musical spin on the famous John Cooper Clarke poem. JCC is a perfect example of a northern poet, infusing his work with human and slag to the point where you find yourself putting on a Manchester accent while reading. Gaining fame in the late 70s punk era, John Cooper Clarke’s punk poet style doesn’t take itself too serious, and this collection gives you the best of this work with some more traditional works like A Heart Disease Called Love mixed in with his sillier, more characterful stuff like Evidently Chickentown.

You could analyse it for themes of class, or you can simply sit back and enjoy, maybe even listen along to one of his albums.

I can’t tell you where or why I picked this collection up, but Michael Stewart’s Couples is one of my favourite collections I’ve ever read. His style is so simple but really sensory, full of beautiful descriptions that use every day images and sensations to ground the feelings in the norm rather than trying to be difficult. I think it’s that relatability that allows the collection to be totally flooring, managing to make you feel euphoric and heartbroken in a short amount of pages.

The special thing here is the layout. The poems are placed in pairs, or couples, where the pages of a spread are in dialogue with one another. As the collection looks at love, loss and co-dependency, I like that this layout gives you different perspectives without complicating the poems. Instead you get a collection of beautifully written, relatable and engaging pieces that are layout like a series of mini stories. If any collection is going to prove to you that poems don’t need to be difficult in order to be considered art, this is the one.

#4 Rapture - Carol Ann Duffy

I’m here to defend Carol Ann Duffy. While GCSEs curriculums have black listed her name, Rapture was one of the first collections that made me love poetry after seeing her perform it when I was like 15. While being quite classically poetic, packed full of metaphors and imagery and whatnot, Rapture is easy and relatable in its raw emotion. It’s a love story told through individual pieces, following an affair from start to end. When I saw her perform she talked a lot about Rapture as a kind of diary which pushed me into my forever love affair with confessional poetry, I like the idea of taking day to day emotions and hyping them up into something artistic and big.

I also think Rapture is a perfect gateway collection, feeling like a nice welcome into the world of poets like Sylvia Plath in the way that it etches out relatable emotions with big imagery. But Rapture feels very approachable, always giving me the feeling that these were words wrote in the moment in a notepad by a real person, rather than a meticulously crafted and produced piece from a mythical poetry god. So pick up a copy of this next time you have a crush or you’ve had your heart crushed and read it cover to cover like a book, finally free from the pressure of having to annotate it for your exam.

It wouldn’t be a Lucy Harbron book post without including Patti Smith. But her Early Works is the book I’ll grab if I’m running for a train, being both a full and easy read. Patti Smith’s work is like an introduction to imagery, I feel like I’ve learnt so many references simply by reading her work, as she never leaves you wondering what she means. And what I mean by that is if she throws in a random Greek hero’s name, her work is so well done and so emotive that you can always figure out what they stood for.

She believes in everything I stand for, chucking the poetry rule book out of the window as her work is all about writing from personal passion and drive. Always dealing with real humans, real human emotions and real moments in cultural history, she doesn’t overcomplicate the point she’s trying to make. Similar to Cohen, I also love that you get glimpses of her songs in this collection, going even further to make it more approachable and easy reading as you can hear the soundtrack in the background.

‘Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine’; she says it better than any classic poet could, it doesn't need to be hard.

I’ve dedicated a fair amount of time to Warhol. I’ve read his books, slogged my way through his diary, forced myself to sit through several hours of his ‘anti-films’, and found myself hooked on any literature I can find to give me another view of the enigmatic icon. Every knows Andy Warhol but nobody knows him. After hours and hours dedicated, I still can’t make my mind up as to whether he was the social butterfly of the 60s scene or the ‘ambulatory black hole’ the Grateful Dead deemed him. Within a year I’ve moved from writing about the beauty of his friendship with Edie, to writing essays about his manipulation, to settling into an ongoing obsession with his multiplicity as no matter how much I read, I’m unable to pin down a personality for the icon. You can picture him so easily in your mind, pull up mental images of his works that are recreated world-wide, know the easy quotes off by heart, he feels like the easiest artist ever, but once you get into it, the image quickly blurs.

The more I started reading and watching, I got the feeling that Andy was laughing at us all from beyond the grave, desperately trying to find some meaning in his ‘wow yeah’ rhetoric and half-smirking answers proclaiming himself ‘empty’. With his most famous work being so simple and specifically made as a screen-print to be recreated as quickly and easily as possible, the over-arching legacy of Warhol is one of thoughtless living room prints and vapid American-dream myths, but I think his genius is in making us fall for that.

While so much has been written about every and all artists, it seems that none are aware and crafting of their legacy as Andy Warhol was. Though he famously said that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, Andy, who would’ve been 92 this year, secured his place in immortality and worked for it. Furiously recording his every thought through transcribed diaries, surrounding himself with photographers to capture every glamorous factory moment, even half-joking that after dying he’d allow his name to be used on anything that will make money, Warhol’s fleeting fame obsession and product-frenzy are immediately complicated.

I think I’ve settled into a love for it, stopped trying to pin him down into one thing, or characterise him as good or bad, but loving him for the messy multiplicity of his self and the self he made. Walking around the Tate exhibition, I forced myself to not get hooked on the sharp question mark corners of assumptions about the figure, simple staring starry-eyed at the scale of his work and silliness of his persona.

Even writing this is tricky, never knowing what path to take here. I don’t envy the Tate staff that had to sit down and craft a path round Warhol’s legacy, deciding which works to focus on and which parts to not. I had moments of love and hate in the exhibition. I loved the immediacy of the reminder that Warhol was once Varchola, careful to introduce the artist as an immigrant born into poverty, and not the capitalist All-American artist that the Make America Great Again age could morph into something sinister and wrong. In this, his simplest works get an immediate context; the soup cans seem brighter than ever when you’re reminded that Warhol’s early years were fed on watered-down ketchup. I loved the companion quotation of ‘a coke is a coke is a coke’, reframing pop-art as ‘commonism’, reminding you that American culture of Cola and Elvis transgress class and economy.

I had questions about the narrative of Warhol as a ‘shy gay man’, purposefully seeming to pull out his most erotic images, and choosing to display his film Sleep, a 6 hour still shot of a man sleeping. One Google search and you’ll find claims that Warhol was gay, bisexual, asexual, celibate and in a relationship with pretty much every single person he did a portrait of, meanwhile, Warhol himself said nothing about his sexuality. I was confused by the continuous references to his queerness mixed in with the reminders that Warhol purposefully and regularly distanced himself from the Gay Liberation movement, known for standing for pretty much nothing and finding politics a bore.

I hated the hero-worshipping energy of it all. In a small corridor you’re towered over by a portrait of Warhol’s scars, walking you through the experience of his shooting with little to no context beyond one page of the S.C.U.M manifesto, brushing over it as Warhol was shot by a radical feminist that wanted to kill all men. The absence of Edie Sedgwick, one of Warhol’s biggest muses and original superstar felt like an active erasure of the more exploitative sides of Warhol as a man that didn’t pay anyone and obsessively captures his friends' mental declines, choosing to show Sleep rather than Beauty No.2, a film of him grilling a drugged up Sedgwick about her sexual abuse while forcing a male model to kiss her. Instead, filling the exhibition with the 60s soundtrack of The Velvet Underground and funny moments from his TV appearances seemed to want to keep you in the narrative of Warhol and his friends as a group of faultless coolness and antics.

But the likes and dislikes made it perfectly messy.

While I stood in front of his 6-foot towering Elvis, my friend stared into the face of a corpse, repeated over and over. An intense car crash complete with splayed bodies reflected into his glossy flowers, his Brillo boxes sat pretty next to a recreation of a newspaper that screamed ‘129 DIE IN JET!’. The Tate, in attempting to carve a covid-friendly one-way path round Warhol’s identity, perfectly captured the manic light changes of his work, from his pop-culture obsession being the thinnest line away from morbid wallpapers of disasters and suicides. My friend was shocked, looking at the repeated print of a paused moment before a woman jumped to her death, never knowing that Warhol was so dark. I hear him laugh again from his final resting place, he tricked us. Writing a 2-sentence chapter on Death his The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, the artist said simply ‘I don’t believe in it’, a complete lie from a man that dedicated a large majority of his career to studies of electric chairs, skeletons, dead bodies and mourning celebrities.

And that sums it up perfectly. Warhol left us with a mess of an identity that he knew we’d never decipher and settle for something chic and simple. He made a product of himself that was so shiny and consumable that we’re willing to brush over all the rest, showing us up to be the filthy capitalists and consumers we all are.

Stood near enough with my nose on the glass, I stared at the mistakes. In his flowers, you can sit little patches that missed a second coat. In 129 die, you can see the tracking lines for the typography and where he went over them. In his Marilyn Diptych, some of the faces are distorted or lines duplicated. All these little details won’t make the cut in your living room print, no.1084903858 to be made of that print. Maybe Warhol knew he could get away with messiness because when you’re dealing with celebrities, or products, or the American dream, it will always be blurred or simplified into perfection. Or maybe it was all purposeful and meaningful as some critics say, that Warhol duped us all with funny statements hiding the deep artistic and poetic thought behind his repeated Monroes. Or maybe Warhol himself didn’t know, didn’t care enough to think about it, just wanted to make his pictures and have his parties and capture the things and people he liked and get paid for it.

For better or worse, the Tate exhibition serves as proof that we’ve blown Warhol up to a god-like status, displaying his silver wigs in a case like ancient relics. And you can see that however you wish. A statement of our obsession with celebrity culture. A celebration of how an immigrant can become an American icon. A sad image of societies simplification of art. Or a shrine to our shared love for pretty, shiny things; a coke is a coke is a coke and we all love it, stare up at the nice pictures and say simply, ‘oh yeah’, ‘wow’, ‘gee whiz yes!’.  

While some people might have written novels or recorded albums, my proudest lockdown achievement is 100% my film list. As lockdown began, I started with a list of around 10 films I’d been meaning to watch for ages, determined to finally get around to it. It started with classics like Clockwork Orange, Valley Of The Dolls and Quadrophenia; all of which I talked about in my last films list, and has spiralled into a huge list of everything from cult classics to new releases I never got round to watching. Honestly any time I get the chance I’m showing people this list, it’s my pride and joy at this point.

As autumn rolls in and the appeal of drinking outside fades in the face of colder nights, I thought I’d share the films on my list that got a big rating from me and have the perfect vibes for colder seasons.

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#1 Captain Fantastic

Captain Fantastic was one that came out years ago but somehow managed to totally miss my radar, a shame as it’s very much my type of film. Telling the story of a family that lives in the forest, outside of capitalist society, and their re-entry to the world to attend their mother’s funeral, it’s a perfect film if you like quirky storylines infused with a big dose of emotion and a hearty splash of satirical humour. It perfectly balances silly and serious as these young kids spouting socialist rhetoric is hilarious but also opens up this whole big debate about how to raise children in this world. As an independent vibe film, Captain Fantastic has all the features of the best indies but doesn’t slip on the quality as the cinematics here are beautiful. This film made me feel so comforted and cosy I honestly could have wept, the combo of the family unit and the forest background makes you feel so safe throughout all the drama, making it a film I know I’ll be coming back to in the later months.

# 2 Anna Karenina

On my last day of sixth form, my favourite English teacher gave me a copy of Anna Karenina, so this was always high on my to-watch list.

As a classic Russian novel, the book is difficult and chunky with a million and one long Russian names to memories. But this film not only makes it easy to follow but also manages to capture and translate the glory of those monumental Russian texts. One all levels this film is extravagant; think Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and add 10x more drama and jewels. The costumes and sets are incredible, proving that there was no slacking on the budget here, but also the adaptation is beautiful with the direction being artful and noticeable which I always love. As a kind of nod to the origins of Anna Karenina as a story, the film flows in and out of this amazing opera stage set that shows you exactly the level of drama you’re in for from curtain up.

The story itself is a tragic romance like no other; a true pillar of literature. It tells the story of Anna Karenina who is considered to be one of literature’s first feminist characters as she refuses to fit in with what Russian high society expects. For a classic text, the story feels super modern as it’s full of sex, scandal and gender politics. Always at her best in a period piece, Keira Knightley is incredible here, her performance actually made me cry which is very very rare. High drama, high fashion and high art, this is a big yes from me.

#3 Jojo Rabbit

I’ll admit it, I can be a bit prejudiced against new films. I don’t go to the cinemas as much as I should so new films regularly get away with me, and then I always find myself wanting to watch the classics rather than that new blockbuster. But so many friends recommended JoJo rabbit to me and I’m so glad I watched it cause this film had me howling.

This is a must-watch for any fans of dark humour, but if you’re easily offended or struggle to settle into some more sensitive jokes, maybe steer clear cause a film about a young Nazi whose imaginary friend is Hitler might not be for you. But if you’re down for some darkness, add this to your list immediately as every time the little boy said ‘oh hi Adolf’, I was crying. The mix of cute innocence with these young children leads that you feel sorry for vs the fact that they’re raging Nazis makes for a funny watch like nothing I’ve seen before.

And beyond the humour, as a big award-winner, the cast and cinematic in this are huge and honestly flawless. Set in a German village with a cosy colour palette of greens and yellows, add this to your autumn watch list.

#4 Before Sunrise

The Before Sunrise trilogy is the best thing I’ve watched in ages and I’ll be screaming it from the rooftop till everyone has seen it.

I’ve never seen a romance film like these before. Yes, they’re cute, but something about them manages to by-pass all cringe and cliché and capture exactly the feeling of two people getting to know each other. Despite being films in amazing locations after the couple meets on a train and get off in Vienna, with the 2^nd and 3^rd taking place in Paris and Greece, the locations never overtake the focus on the interactions. So much of the films are taken up by really simple dialogue as Jesse and Celine get to know each other, talking about the things all people talk about on a first date, making the series feel so familiar and so real. By the end of the trilogy, you really feel like you know these characters as you’ve been on a journey with them, getting three insights into their life that feel at once normal and wildly romantic. With Before Sunrise being filmed in 1995, the original has those perfect 90s aesthetics, but the characters don’t feel dated at all. Unlike all the other 90s classics, something about Before Sunrise and it’s protagonists has managed to be timeless, recreating all those conversations you have about art and life and death, rather than quickly-ageing pop culture.

The third one wasn’t my favourite as I think by 2013, they lost the aesthetics of the film and the Grecian setting didn’t quite match the cosiness of the others. But it’s still a beautiful film. All three feel super romantic while also capture the reality of relationships as they feature little to no drama but instead focus on the small moments.

#5 I’m Thinking Of Ending Things

If you want a real challenge of a film that’s going to make you feel like you’ve achieved something, watch this.

Following an unnamed woman, maybe called Lucy, on a trip to meet her boyfriend's parents, the film spins in and out of existentialism as it gets weirder and weirder. His parents age at every turn, ‘Lucy’ has multiple different jobs, her boyfriend’s personality changes like the wind and every now and then the plot is interrupted by snippets of a whole other character. The best thing to do is to sit back, relax and try not to read into it too much till it’s over. Once you’re done, google it and it’ll all become clear.

But even without understanding the plot, I’m Thinking Of Ending Things is a beautiful film as the landscapes are vast and intense. With a film that seems to include everything from moments of horror to musical numbers, it’s a real display of incredible writing and production, moving through so many different ideas and vibes that you’re never quite sure how to feel.

For the colder months, it’s perfect. The opening 30 minutes see ‘Lucy’ and her boyfriend Jake sat in a car in a snowstorm with a narrative that talks about the decline of a relationship and just that general sense of dread that comes with getting old. The whole thing perfectly captures how it feels to be trapped in your own head as your thoughts spiral and you find yourself feeling worse and worse. It’s bleak but it’s beautifully done, so if you’re after a darker head-scratcher of a film, settle in for this one.

#6 Wild At Heart

I’ve been on a David Lynch binge recently as I’d previously never seen any of his stuff. Currently working my way through Twin Peaks and having ticked Blue Velvet off my list, Wild At Heart remains my favourite.

My favourite genre of film is Bonnie and Clyde stories and this fits that perfectly. Somewhere between the sarcasm of Heathers and the over-dramatic love of True Romance, Wild At Heart is a dark-comedy infused romance as Sailor and Lula’s attempt at a Bonnie and Clyde/Thelma and Louise style getaway is filled with the classic Lynch weird characters and sinister imagery. The best part of it is 100% Laura Dern’s ridiculous southern belle protagonist who is such a bimbo but Dern’s line delivery is comedy gold. As with all other Lynch productions, the soundtrack is amazing and the cinematics are creepy but glorious, yet Wild At Heart isn’t quite as dark or heavy, making it a perfect way to dip your toes into Lynch’s back-catalogue or relax with at the end of the day. But having that darker edge makes it a perfect autumnal film, giving you all the passion without the side portion of that end of summer sadness.

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Leave me your recommendations!