Keep your head up

New poems from Helen Tookey and Jack Barker-Clark

(Photo by Vik Shirley)

Hello Anthropocene readers,

How’s it all going? I hope your week has been peaceful. Rain has come to Madrid – after a long absence. I don’t mind a little rain, I do hope the blue skies come back before too long though.

I had a bad experience this week, I won’t go into details, but what I will say is when you appear outwardly successful there will always be small people taking shots at you to try and bring you down. The metaphysical poet George Herbert wrote “living well is the best revenge” – personally I prefer Taylor Swift’s immortal: “players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate”. Taylor and George are both getting at the same thing. Keep ya head up. Don’t take things too seriously. Poetry is a lifelong journey, step carefully through the grey clouds.

This Wednesday on Anthropocene we had two medatative poems by Helen Tookey. While earlier today we had three poems by Jack Barker Clark of which Mike Ferguson tweeted “the surprises (and other) of the sequence of staccato images: 'and the shingle still twinkled, and the rind was astonishing'.

3 book reccomendations from HLR

H:

Traum/A (Fifth Wheel Press, 2023) – This abecedarian book of exquisitely crafted experimental poetry reaffirmed my belief that JP Seabright is An Actual Genius. Depicting the short- and long-term implications of the complex trauma that follows sexual violence, these poems are brave, shocking, and completely devastating (I cried three times across 37 pages, such is the power of JP’s words).

Now Say It Back (Bent Key, 2022) – I’m a big fan of Caitlin McKenna’s performance poetry, and their page poetry is just as captivating. This gorgeous collection — about love lost, love gained, love thrown away, and love reclaimed — overflows with surprising imagery (‘blindfolds made of petals’ and ‘their freckles in the froth of my latte’). McKenna finds meaning in the mundane in a way that’s fresh, inspiring, and a joy to read.

Die Deeper into Life (Penguin, 2017) – I’ve been making my way through the new Penguin Modern Poets series, and I’m loving the sixth instalment: a selection of poetry by Claudia Rankine, Denise Riley, and Maggie Nelson. These women write with such audacity, reading them feels like a privilege. This collection is strong on prose poetry so I’m learning a lot about the form from some of the best to ever do it.”

That’s it from me,

Hope to see you next week,

Charlie

p.s. tonight’s Broken Sleep Books launch is going to be fun - it kicks off in a few hours (7.30 gmt)