BOOKSBOOKS
culture left by preaching. It’s
topical: “At each and every
checkpoint the refugee is
asked/ Are you human?”
When Shire speaks of racism,
misogyny and life as a refugee
(she came to England from
Somalia aged one), her
imagery is striking. But at
collection length what strikes
the reader starts to feel like a
blunt instrument. Perhaps her
most famous line, from Home,
is, “No-one leaves home
unless/ home is the mouth of^Superstars and Insta poets
POETRY ROUND-UP
Graeme Richardson
Why does poetry come in
“collections”? They fill up the
shelves like novels. Like novels,
they arrive at regular intervals,
allowing a writer to make a
career, or gain a following. But
a shark”: resonant in a live
reading but, after a moment’s
reflection, interestingly untrue.
Where Shire is a preacher,
Emily Berry is a ghost.
Unexhausted Time (Faber
£10.99), her third collection,
floats through a dark, queasy
lockdown world: “A faint
whisper of contagion, then a
cloud./ Everything in the diary
crossed out.” Anne Carson
is the presiding influence here:
stream-of-consciousness
prose-poems cascade,
deliberately affectless in tone,
full of hypnotic circling and
repetition. Previous collections
by Berry had a relatable focus
— relationships in her first, the
death of her mother in her
second. Here, recounting
nightmares and daydreams,
the focus is blurred.
Fiona Benson is altogether
less spectral. The words
“body” and “blood” chime
throughout her collection,
Ephemeron (Cape £12). But
this is not just Grand Guignol.
Her great gift is an intimate
empathy with her subjects;
bringing them alive brings her
alive. The inspirational women
here come in unexpected
guises, from Mama Cockroach
(“you purr when your young
stroke your face”) to Grandma
Bairstow, “dead for years”,
taking over soothing the baby:
“She sang, and all the hurt/
and beautiful universe, all the
souls/ came crowding in”.
Again, though, this is a third
collection, fondly indulged,
and too much of the good stuff
is crowded out. Benson’s best
poems come from the gut;
Ephemeron feels a little bloated.
Denise Riley was
publishing poetry before the
others here were born. As she
says, she’s an “also-ran in the
Kindly Pensioner Poets stakes
— not an expanding field”. But
with her 2012 poem A Part
Song, on the death of her son,
she was finally recognised as
an important figure. After a
Selected Poems in 2019, she
joins the “collection” game
with Lurex (Picador £10.99).
So here are writing exercises
(“A thing in a room”),
ekphrasis (on a painting by
Picasso), prose poems (Facts
of the 1950s) and elegies
(Unlike). But in a few pieces
— Committed or Be Quick
(“Dear life, don’t ghost me
yet!”) — she returns to
mortality and grief. And then,
among the usual “collection”
furniture, her lyric gift stands
out as a true original. ccalled a “superstar poet”.
Collaborating with Beyoncé,
quoted by Benedict
Cumberbatch, she has more
than 80,000 followers on
Twitter, 60,000 on Instagram.
But a collection is still required.
So here is Bless the Daughter
Raised by a Voice in Her Head
(Chatto £12.99). This sort of
poetry fills the hole in ourwith so much poetry published
and soon forgotten, maybe the
arrangement is out of date.
Eventually we get “Selected
Poems”, so we know
collections are rarely “all
killer, no filler”. In the age of
Instagram and Twitter, should
poets — makers of the original
“memes” — change their ways?
Warsan Shire has been28 1 May 2022