I’m often asked where to begin with poetry: how to discover new voices, how to interpret subtext, how to climb inside a poem’s skin so you can see how it breathes. I think many of us are discouraged by education’s insistence on there being a ‘right’ response to poetry, which can make us wary of the form in later life. I remember a poet speaking about this in the bookshop where I used to work, telling me how his son was asked during a comprehension test why a character in a poem was wearing a blue hat. The answer the examiner wanted was, ‘He’s wearing a blue hat because it’s raining’, but his son wrote, ‘He’s wearing a blue hat because he supports Chelsea.’ His son was marked down and told he was wrong. And that’s boring, isn’t it? Poems should present windows, not boxes to tick.
If you’re looking for poetry that really speaks to you, my advice is to read verses by authors whose work you already enjoy in other forms – for instance, Margaret Atwood and John Burnside are poets as well as novelists. Anthologies are also a great way to sample work by different people, and if you enjoy one (or several) of the voices, you can track down books by those poets afterwards. The Forward Book of Poetry anthologies are some of my favourites (I edited the 2019 edition with fellow judges, if you’d like a specific recommendation). What Meets The Eye, The Deaf Perspective edited by Lisa Kelly and Sophie Stone introduced me to many new poets, including the work of Khando Langri: ‘A tree falls in a forest and I am / there to make sure no one hears it.’ That line lives in my brain now. More Fiya: A New Collection of Black British Poetry edited by Kayo Chingonyi houses so many great lines, including this from Janette Ayachi, in a poem called ‘The Lovers’: ‘I am hugging a wounded reindeer / that has taken an arrow for me. / I feel where his antlers protrude / under the tendrils of his blond curls.’ It’s a poem that begins sleepily, then demands your full attention. Think of anthologies as walking along a beach, deciding which pebbles to pick up and hold – or as an art gallery in which you can happily drift by and see which pieces speak to you. You don’t have to deeply understand every poem. You don’t have to dissect every line.
Another way to discover new voices is to subscribe to literary magazines. These tend to showcase a range of new voices alongside more established ones. Two of my favourites are The Rialto, a small but mighty press based in Norwich, and Modern Poetry in Translation, which publishes the best of world poetry. I’ve been reading some of their recent issues. In the editorial of MPT’s The Food Focus, Khairani Barokka writes: ‘Food is culture, and poetry chronicles our engagement with what nourishes or destroys.’ One of my favourite poems in this issue is Saddle by Teemu Helle, translated from the Finnish by Niina Pollari. It begins: ‘I opened the door and let in the darkness. / It collapsed on the couch, / lifted its feet on the table and sighed: / “Got anything to eat.”’ I love how this is a statement, not a question, as though the darkness always gets to be fed. This could mean the darkness is either powerful or childish. The poem continues, describing how the darkness is sitting in the living room, which invites ideas of death haunting living spaces, or perhaps something more comical – a ghost who longs to eat but cannot, for they no longer have a body.
Speaking of the serious colliding with the comical, in the Vietnam issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, Hien Trang has a poem called ‘A Poet-Shark’, translated by the poet herself: ‘Would I keep writing poems / if I were a shark, / when I couldn’t use poems as a trap / to hunt?’. The poem asks us what use words are if spoken underwater, unpublished and unheard. And if a poet can be a shark (writing as a hunting, as a money-making enterprise) and still be taken seriously? It’s a delightful poem that swims.
I always find it interesting how poems, perhaps more so than any other form of literature, can be interpreted in so many ways depending on who is doing the reading. In the most recent issue of The Rialto, a poem by Jenny Danes speaks to me of new motherhood, though perhaps that’s a projection on my part as no baby is mentioned in the poem itself. She writes, ‘Even if it’s sometimes hard to reach the surface of myself / and the world is a greening fish tank / there is my love for you like a tall building.’ Lines like that stop me in my tracks. I actually pause to inhale when reading Diana Hendry’s From Ordinary Hours, where she says: ‘When I unlock and open the front door / the garden rushes up to me with all its sweetness.’ This issue also celebrates submissions to its recent Nature and Place Poetry Competition, the winner being Anastasia Taylor-Lind, a photojournalist, writing about Kharkiv Zoo under Russian invasion: ‘In a simulated seawater, three small penguins / shoot about their pool, a generator humming as it / heats their habitat in a power cut.’ The word ‘shoot’ manages to shout; the repeated ‘s’ sounds creating a hiss, as though a wind is rolling through the poem.
I’m also grateful that this issue of The Rialto contains work by Raymond Antrobus, reminding me to pick up his new collection Signs, Music, a poetic dissection of family life. It begins: ‘I don’t know the name of that tree. / I can describe it but can’t distinguish it; tall, brown, bursting / with leaves like a loaded wallet / autumn’s green and yellow receipts.’ Raymond’s poems rebuild this image of a family tree, exploring the rooting of new fatherhood, the finding of words: names for a child, the evolving self, how everyone involved is a creature reborn. I sink into these poems, some peppered with BSL, as Raymond stops in the street to ‘stare at the dads / with babies strapped to their chests.’ As he writes himself into view, he muses: ‘They’ve always been here. I’m just / moving slowly enough to see them’.
The Rialto and Modern Poetry in Translation are published three times a year.
Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus is published by Picador.
Jen Campbell is a bestselling author and award-winning poet. She has written fourteen books for adults and children, most recently Please Do Not Touch This Exhibit.
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