Well, February was split in two: the first half characterised by some fairly quick reading and the second half spent adapting to life as a new parent. Two weeks in and I think I’m doing ok, although reading has taken quite a hit. Nevertheless, February featured three books all of which are poetry.
The first book/ collection was Stranger, Baby by Emily Berry.
I’d not read Emily Berry before and, at the beginning of this collection, I was left a little bewildered. I wasn’t feeling the connection between the poems or the styles between the poems. I felt as though they’d been written by different people who’d been given a loose theme.
However, once I sat down and read the collection as a whole, rather than stopping and starting, I appreciated it so much more. There are still poems in Stranger, Baby on which I feel I’ve missed the point and will need a re-read, but I’m certainly feeling much warmer to this collection than when I first started.
The collection, primarily, explores loss so I wasn’t expecting it to be the cheeriest of books. Nevertheless, it’s not all doom and gloom. It does have humour. It does have a sense of acceptance (although this isn’t present throughout).
There are a range of styles in here and I think my favourites are those that read as a train of thought, as one stanza with no punctuation, such as: ‘Aqua’, ‘So’, ‘Once’, ‘Flowers’ and ‘New Project’. I enjoy how there are different ways of reading these poems; the meaning is not dictated by the punctuation. Although the opening poems didn’t grip me straight away, I got a lot out of the final poem ‘Canopy’.
Other reviewers have stated that this collection is a welcome follow up to Berry’s debut Dear Boy. However, if, like me, you’re new to Emily Berry, Stranger, Baby is a good place to start. I do feel that it needs a fair chance though. I don’t think it’s a collection to be dipped in and out of. I think for a first reading it needs to be read as a whole collection and then given time.
I’m going to think over what I’ve read and definitely re-read some of the poems and then I might try Dear Boy. This wasn’t the easiest start to a poet for me, but I certainly haven’t been put off completely.
You might also like:
The Hungry Ghost Festival – Jen Campbell
Undying: A Love Story – Michel Faber
A Song for Ella Grey – David Almond
The second book for February was The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan.
After really enjoying One, a friend recommended I dive straight into The Weight of Water. I didn’t pick it up straight away, but once I did I read in a matter of hours. Over on Goodreads, I gave it 5 stars. I think I enjoyed it more than One.
The Weight of Water is the journey Kasienka and her mother take as they travel from Poland to Coventry in order to find Kasienka’s father. While mother’s journey is desperate, knocking on doors every evening in broken shoes to ask in broken English if the residents have seen Tata; Kasienka’s journey is one far more understandable for this book’s audience. Kasienka has to settle into her new school, where she is outraged that she is placed in Year 7, despite being older. She has to find a way to fit in to this alien environment at a time when she’s also dealing with growing up and finding her voice. Her way to fit in is through swimming, and the descriptions of being submerged and the sensations of swimming are beautiful.
As with One, The Weight of Water is written in verse. I really enjoy this aspect to Crossan’s work. I love how each incident is self-contained, yet we still get to know (and are invested in) a range of characters. There is nothing lacking through this structure. In fact, I would argue, we get more: each word has to mean something, there isn’t the ‘flab’ that you sometimes get with prose.
There are some very poignant pieces in the book, such as ‘Mistaken’, ‘Cracked’ and ‘Vacant’; some heart-warming, such as ‘Treat’, ‘Snow Meal’ and ‘Resurrection’; and some which simply portray the issues encountered when growing up, such ‘First Kiss’, ‘Rumours’ and ‘Grating’. It really is a wonderful story of individual strength and there is something for both teen readers and adults.
In the acknowledgements, Crossan mentioned Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons as a source for some of the information on bullying in schools from girls. I think I’ll try to get my hands on a copy. I’ll probably also read Breathe by Sarah Crossan before the year is out.
You Might also Like:
One – Sarah Crossan
The Art of Being Normal – Lisa Williamson
A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness
The final poetry collection I read was Off The Shelf by Carol Ann Duffy.
Strictly speaking this isn’t by Carol Ann Duffy, but she did comission the collection. In essence, this book is a lovely idea: a collection of poems written to celebrate bookshops around the UK. This book was a gift from a friend to help me through the boredom of maternity leave (the waiting for the baby to arrive part I have found to be incredibly dull). I think, otherwise, it may have been a book I’d only have bought on a whim, rather than one I’d add to a wishlist.
Two of my favourite things (bookshops and poetry) together in one place, and there are some poems, especially in the first half of the collection, which I thoroughly enjoyed as they captured many of my own feelings and experiences of visiting bookshops (particularly independent bookshops). However, there were moments were the collection felt a little self-indulgent; where it seemed as though the poet’s name was enough to have their work included rather than the quality of the work itself.
Equally, this is a collection for people who’ve read widely (which seems quite obvious when you remember it’s a collection celebrating bookshops). I do read, I love to read, but there were references in some of these poems which I feel I need to research before I can fully appreciate the poem. In that sense, there were times when I felt a bit alienated from the collection, but I’m always up for learning new things so research and then re-read I shall.
You might also like:
The Bookshop Book – Jen Campbell (she’s featuring quite a bit this week – I am quite a fan!)
In March my book group are meeting for the first time to discuss Jean-Paul Didierlaurent’s The Reader on the 6:27, which I’m really looking forward to. Otherwise, the challenge is to find a balance between caring for this new baby and reading. I will, of course, be reading to the baby once I’ve mastered the “feed and a read” strategy (by which I mean, feed the child without getting milk all over the book!)
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