A Small Collection of Poetry
Sep. 30th, 2017 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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50books_pocI started doing this challenge at the start of the year and I'm delighted to see that this comm has woken up again. I don't generally make it to 50 books in any given year, so I don't expect to finish the challenge this year. My target for this year is to make it to 25 books read for the challenge. I'm currently on my 11th book so hopefully the comm having woken up will inspire me to get reading! (Just writing this post caused me to grab another book of poetry from my shelf and read it so I could include it here.)
I've read a few books of poetry for the challenge (largely because I also set myself the challenge to read 10 books of poetry this year, I've got to 7 so far) so I thought that would make for a good theme to gather together some mini-reviews.
2. Off-Colour - Jackie Kay
This is a little bit of a cheat book for me. Because, honestly I need no excuse to read Jackie Kay's poetry. I discovered her poetry as a student, a long way from home, and fell in love with it. Her poetry is beautiful and lyrical and moving, very Scottish and very queer. And increasingly, as she explores her Nigerian roots, influenced and enriched by the literary traditions of Nigeria.
I have a little bit of a bee in my bonnet about media portrayals that would have you think everyone in Scotland is white, and as such this collection of poetry is especially dear to me, as it re-inserts BAME people back into the historical narrative.
3. Talking Turkeys - Benjamin Zephaniah
This is an incredibly fun book of poetry. It's aimed at kids and I spent the time reading the book feeling increasingly sure that I'd either read the book as a child or seen it adapted on Jackanory. Zephaniah is primarily a performance poet, and the typesetting and illustrations in the book do their best to capture the vibrancy and animation of the performance on the page. The poetry is funny and clever, perfect for kids and delightful for adults too.
7. Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known - Wole Soyinka
There's something about Nigeria. I hadn't really thought about it before but everytime I do this challenge I end up with a significant percentage of books by Nigerian or Nigerian hyphenate authors and this time is no exception. Wole Soyinka has previously won the Nobel Prize for literature - the first African writer to do so, he's something of a giant of Nigerian literary culture - and I sort of feel that that fact probably tells you if you'll like his poetry or not. There's some lovely imagery in the poems but they left me a little cold emotionally. He's written a huge number of plays so it may just be that poetry isn't his best medium, I'd certainly seek out his short fiction if I can find any of it.
10.A Silence You Can Carry - Hibaq Osman
I bought this book by chance. I was buying something else from a small press publisher and looking for something else to buy to justify the postage. It was only a fiver and well worth the risk on a new poet.
Hibaq Osman is, in the words of her book bio, a Somali writer born and raised in West London. She's mostly a performance poet and I do wonder how much is lost in tying her words down to the page. However, despite what may or may not have been lost in the transition to the page, she has written some beautiful, moving poetry about love and loss, grief and trauma. Trading Breath is definitely my favourite and I think that there are several poems here that I will keep coming back to, growing fonder with time.
I've read a few books of poetry for the challenge (largely because I also set myself the challenge to read 10 books of poetry this year, I've got to 7 so far) so I thought that would make for a good theme to gather together some mini-reviews.
2. Off-Colour - Jackie Kay
This is a little bit of a cheat book for me. Because, honestly I need no excuse to read Jackie Kay's poetry. I discovered her poetry as a student, a long way from home, and fell in love with it. Her poetry is beautiful and lyrical and moving, very Scottish and very queer. And increasingly, as she explores her Nigerian roots, influenced and enriched by the literary traditions of Nigeria.
I have a little bit of a bee in my bonnet about media portrayals that would have you think everyone in Scotland is white, and as such this collection of poetry is especially dear to me, as it re-inserts BAME people back into the historical narrative.
3. Talking Turkeys - Benjamin Zephaniah
This is an incredibly fun book of poetry. It's aimed at kids and I spent the time reading the book feeling increasingly sure that I'd either read the book as a child or seen it adapted on Jackanory. Zephaniah is primarily a performance poet, and the typesetting and illustrations in the book do their best to capture the vibrancy and animation of the performance on the page. The poetry is funny and clever, perfect for kids and delightful for adults too.
7. Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known - Wole Soyinka
There's something about Nigeria. I hadn't really thought about it before but everytime I do this challenge I end up with a significant percentage of books by Nigerian or Nigerian hyphenate authors and this time is no exception. Wole Soyinka has previously won the Nobel Prize for literature - the first African writer to do so, he's something of a giant of Nigerian literary culture - and I sort of feel that that fact probably tells you if you'll like his poetry or not. There's some lovely imagery in the poems but they left me a little cold emotionally. He's written a huge number of plays so it may just be that poetry isn't his best medium, I'd certainly seek out his short fiction if I can find any of it.
10.A Silence You Can Carry - Hibaq Osman
I bought this book by chance. I was buying something else from a small press publisher and looking for something else to buy to justify the postage. It was only a fiver and well worth the risk on a new poet.
Hibaq Osman is, in the words of her book bio, a Somali writer born and raised in West London. She's mostly a performance poet and I do wonder how much is lost in tying her words down to the page. However, despite what may or may not have been lost in the transition to the page, she has written some beautiful, moving poetry about love and loss, grief and trauma. Trading Breath is definitely my favourite and I think that there are several poems here that I will keep coming back to, growing fonder with time.
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Date: 2017-09-30 07:23 pm (UTC)