by Lucy Harbron: poetry

5 Poetry Collections For People That Don't Like Poetry | #NationalPoetryDay

By Lucy Harbron - 18:35

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.

#3 Couples - Michael Stewart

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.

#5 Early Works - Patti Smith

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.

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The Ick

By Lucy Harbron - 21:27

I remember when he slept in my bed, more nights than not, for four months. His evening routine was more meticulous than mine, a feat that was impressive on good days and increasingly annoying on the rest as my toothpaste bill doubled and phone timers interrupted songs from the bathroom. Toothpaste on the brush, start timer, 1 minute 30, spit, new toothpaste, 30 seconds, spit. In May I hated how he washed his face, always popping his head round the door and smiling at me, foamy. It used to be funny but by then I didn’t roll over to see. My age felt old, his same number felt young. Our roles disfigured and then I hated his t-shirts, his insistence on wearing mine, his mirror face, the fact he’d kissed that girl in February and the fact he told me in April with balloons in hand, presents to protect something I’d stopped feeding.

June. He came with wine, unexpected, as I packed lingerie into a case for someone else. He stopped the door with his foot before I’d recognised his face, stood sloppy with my tired face and pyjamas. His frantic voice pulsed with the excitement of the gesture and the vibration of it itched me, all too tempting to pick it apart; ‘why didn’t you just call?’ ‘what if I wasn’t in?’. We both had a habit of not saying what we wanted to so we drank the wine, I felt his eyes trying to stick to mine as he lingered too long, all a routine we’d come to repeat two months later after a chance meeting on a train. In the rattling carriage he said ‘I should come visit some time’, I heard it as ‘I miss you’. We’d spent enough time together to know the language.

Our tenderest moment involved her. He couldn’t lift me but in my head I see him carrying me home, some wounded creature hit by the blunt force of a loss of a friendship turned toxic and cruel. I brought him there to cushion it all, he came to see me perform and instead found a trail of pieces of me as I crumbled outside, hurt in the way only an old friend can hurt you, digging right in between your ribs and remembering every insecurity shared. When we went home that night in late March, as he held my hand tightly on purpose and we said goodbye to newly mutual friends, I thought I could love him. I loved the silence he made for me on the walk back, only breaking it with affirmations, finding his voice newly soothing. He made me a drink, sat behind me, making a new sky out of himself with arms and legs doing their best to block it out with nicer touch and that perfect way of sleeping next to someone, when its still and considerate with one point of contact.

When I opened the door in May, I’d lost and care for that. The new sky was now irritating with a hundred tiny instances. When my eyes settled, I wondered why I couldn’t brush it off, all crumbling like there had been some big storm, but there was no red warning just mild and toothpaste and that way he danced and the one time he tried to yell at me and the balloons in his hand in April.

August. ‘I saw you upset; I didn’t see her do anything’. He sleeps next to her now, affection to impartiality to opposition, 3 stages of some recovery. I saw pictures of her kiss on his cheek, always soft and over-moisturised and that annoying foamy smile. I wonder if she still laughs. I saw them first in my city, 2 weeks after the train where he missed me and I spoke about her, the sting still there and he comforted me again, not sky but a bit of solid land at least. He took me out for brunch and asked to see me again, but saw her. Blonde hair, pretty face, cruel and cutting in her faux innocence like something Sofia Coppola would create and I would love. Both younger than their number, both vegan, both annoying dancers, perfect match, and I shared baths with both of them, scraps of me probably still asleep in their bed. Cupid's arrow dipped in my blood, the impact made them spit my name in hatred, and the merging together must have tasted like love.

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poem

Cohen Pieces...

By Lucy Harbron - 20:44

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poetry

Homesick : Thoughts from Manchester Art Gallery...

By Lucy Harbron - 22:43

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art

Sappho : Thoughts from Manchester Art Gallery...

By Lucy Harbron - 19:02

So many are pulled here, heard the call to arms to sit at the feet of the lost and lonely, to give Sappho their tears are she stays frozen on the brink of her own, whispering; remember whom you leave shackled by love, in a glass frame, on a wall in Manchester. Heartache on display, on tour for the lonely hearts to see. Sitting in front of her and I feel the need to confess my sorrows, show my own in return for hers, given unwillingly. Sitting in front of her and I want to strip myself bare, tear off my clothes for her, place myself under her eyes, my hand on the glass and try to hold the cold paint from which she was made, unknowing. Sitting in front of her and I feel some sense that her soul was left locked in the likelihood, left waiting for love to return for which she will raise her gaze and finally, weep.

Until then I don’t want to speak. I wish for the room to fall silent, for the guide in the corner to stop trying to explain in any words other than her own. While the lovers no longer sing their song, we have no right to sing along, so sit down. Shut up. Only hum the refrain silently in your head for all the goodbyes and unwilling exits made. Remember in secret the cold stones your feet have felt, the waiting on cliffs for a return that never came. Hear the sound of the funeral you made of that love. Don’t taunt her with vocalisation, shh. No chorus here, no choir singing, just silent soloists naturally knowing the words hidden behind painted skin.

Where do your eyes fall? Not to the chest but to the arm. The lean of longevity, still staying stood and patient, respectful to the possibility of reunion and the ceremony it would deserve. To the bare feet of abandon, of rushing out of the house, of chasing her down the street, of pavements and stones and coals you’d step on to bring her home, of how unexpected it was that she left, of how unprepared you were for this. To the eyes, tired and stinging stoney, paused in the moment before the flood and disallowed the relief of it, averted from those that try to meet them, that dare try to relate to this pain, this image of love unknown but certainly gone. She keeps us distant as if her gaze would show some paradise, a memory she must ration for only herself.

Turned to the sea she begs for relief, for permission to cry or die or something, to not be confined to here, this feeling, this place, this wall in Manchester where onlookers try to explain in words other than her own, make a mockery of her pain as they wrap arms around lovers at the foot of her stone. She begs to be left alone.