Invisible Strings - 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift.

 

I find that I cannot usually read a poetry collection from start to finish. I dip in and out as the mood takes me. And I prefer to read poetry aloud. That doesn't go well on any kind of commute, I find! And so it takes me a while to read through a poetry book especially one of length. And that is really my way of apologising for taking so long to post anything about this book!

It's a fascinating premise; 113 poets (Why 113 you may ask? If you need to ask then you are not a Swiftie?! 13?!) have been brought together by poet and professor Kristie Frederick Daugherty to present poems inspired by the songs of Taylor Swift.

The collection also contains an erudite essay by Sir Jonathan Bate Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University and Regents Professor of Literature at Arizona State University who has no hesitation in equivocally affirming that Swift should be considered a poet and details why from her use of poetic devices to her releasing an album on Emily Dickinson's birthday! (in fact Swift and Dickinson are sixth cousins, twice removed). 

As for the poems themselves, and I confess I still haven't read the whole collection, the onus is on the reader to find the comparisons between the poems and Swift's songs. Not all are obvious which might frustrate some people. And I think that to try too hard to determine which song the poem is about might detract from the poem itself. Sometimes it's a giveaway word like 'jewelled' or the age of a protagonist '22' but ultimately I found myself not really worried about whether I had 'guessed' the song correctly, and although it is fun to try and figure it out, I simply allowed myself to be enveloped by the poetry. Poetry is so subjective and not all of these will resonate with everyone. You find your favourites. I especially liked Firstborn by Jeannine Oulette which I think might have been inspired by August and Plural as the Universe by Susan Rich and I think The Man has inspired that one. 

But I guess it beggars the question, do you have to be a Swiftie to enjoy these poems? No, you don't.

My thanks to Isabelle Wilson at Headline for the copy I won in a giveaway.