If you read one book this year, I would strongly urge you to read this one. Especially if you care about our planet and the environment. In fact, even if you don’t usually read anything, let alone poetry, and you don’t care about our beautiful world please try, give this book some time and hopefully change your mind.
Why? It’s a collection of eco-poetry with a constant theme concerning the environmental holocaust unleashed on the Earth and the effects on the innocent flora and fauna. There is much doom and gloom, but also a smattering of hope. Plus it’s very good poetry with sustained themes and metaphors. Each page has an illustration of what looks like like some kind of horned, winged, beetle, and it’s like what we used to call flick books when I was a kid. You fan the pages and you can see the insect move.
The contents are like a menu. You’ve got three sections - a Taster, Mains and Afters. Right from the off the food and eating metaphor hits you right away with the poem called For Starters, a perfect opening to the collection with a no punches pulled poem about an unusually hot Californian sea cooking mussels alive. I could easily go through each poem, extolling its virtues, but rather you read the book for yourself! So I will just try and restrict myself to those poems that were my particular favourites.
Flip the Track is a very clever work that takes popular music from the Jacksons and the Bee Gees to Prince with some great word play, and a vegan/veggie message contained within its lines.
‘ Plump for less beef, let those artichoke hearts run free.
The beets go on and on and on with vegan spanakopita,
so rock the boat with a cauli, a hot pot of chilli non carne’
Next up is We Crave a Sea Change which takes alliteration to a whole new level! It’s so clever, I was in danger of appreciating the structure of the poem more than the message it contains.
‘for closer cooperation, creation of a common centre,
confident, but cautious, we champion a countryside
of cowslip, some clover conservation of all,
its creepy, crawlies. No caveats, we need to see change.’
Green Wash takes the world of advertising to extend the environmental message where the poem is comprised of advertising slogans all in uppercase to emphasise the volume of the message.
‘EVEN THE FILTHIEST OUTFIT FLUFFS UP SOFTER THAN A LONG-FORGOTTEN ARCTIC WINTER.’
Global Warming particularly appealed to me, because it uses a poetic device, the lipogram, and a wonderful use of words to convey the message deep within it. The only letters used are a, b, g, i, l, m, n, o,r, w and the result is a wonderful almost tongue-twistery lament for the planet.
‘A liana growling in limbo, worn
rainbow, abnormal rain. An albino
gorilla aglow, a moralling aria, largo.’
And the final poem, not of the collection itself I hasten to add, but of those that I’ve selected as my favourites is To All The Insects I Ever Squished. I did find this poignant because I am an insect rescuer. But I wasn’t always. I remember as a child, my mother used to pour boiling water on the flying ants that came up through the floorboards and I thought nothing of it. It was only when I reached adulthood that I saw this as the most heinous insectocide. I save every creature that I can. No matter how many insects enter the house I will not kill them. I help them out by whatever means necessary. But when younger, I’ve killed bees and wasps, squished numerous ants without meaning to, killed moths, worms, snails in complete and utter naivete and ignorance. And my conscience pricks me. So there was a paradoxical element of reassurance in reading this poem.
‘……To all you
trampled ants, all you cursive gnats and copperplate moths
signed by my citronella flames, I apologise…….’
Of course I could go on. But it would be better, if you grabbed a copy of this book and read it. I think it’s important. Art, literature is there to entertain us for sure, but it can also educate us and make us think. This collection of poetry should make you do just that.
My thanks to Isobelle Kenyon and Fly on the Wall press for a copy of the book and a place upon the blog tour.
About the author
Julian Bishop has had a lifelong interest in ecology and worked for a time as Environment Reporter for BBC Wales. He's now a member of the collective group Poets For The Planet. A former runner-up in the Ginkgo Prize for Eco Poetry, he's been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize.
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