Brian Bilston is described as "a poet shrouded in the pipe smoke of mystery" by his publishers on the dust jacket of this hefty volume of poems. You Took the Last Bus Home is published by Unbound Books which provides a crowd-funding publishing platform with impressively high standards.
Bilston’s book was funded in less than three days, a reflection of his popularity and status as the uncrowned poet laureate of Twitter.
Poets are born, not made, and more of them are born than people realise because most people are not exposed to enough poetry for the magic to happen. When Bilston took to Twitter, the synergy of instant fans and the freedom to create small-scale poems anonymously meant his poems took off like a rocket.
His poem Refugees has had more than 5,000 shares; its clever use of form uses everyday language with an instinctive flair for that vital turning of the line that makes this such a tight and surprising unity.
"They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way"
(now read from bottom to top)
A highly visual poet, Bilston writes a lot of concrete or shape poetry using spreadsheets, Venn diagrams and Scrabble boards to make witty points. There is a real sense of play, of someone having a lot of fun.
Can Brian Bilston maintain his anonymous status for much longer now that his book is in print? It’s an interesting question, as anonymity must have given the self-effacing poet a lot of scope for experimentation.
He has said in interviews that he has been bothered by trolls. This is understandable in the Twitter free-for-all where the mean-spirited can inflict their damage anonymously; it might also explain why he wrote a two-page introduction describing the key characteristics of his poetry. There’s nothing really new under the sun. Nowadays poems rhyme, don’t rhyme, are funny, are visual, concrete and so on.
It’s a pity he felt the pressure to explain himself because readers often prefer to make up their own minds. If it’s the heat of those trolls on his tail, it is to be hoped he can rise above them and continue to develop.
The defensiveness creeps into the actual work on one occasion, marring what could have been an interesting poem which uses cross-outs:
“For the real poet, you see,
rhyme’s deleterious,
when you want to be seen
as poignant and
profound.”
Interestingly, it's his non-rhyming poems, such as Refugees, that really stand out and especially the succinct and mysterious Frisbee which can be read on more than one level:
"Frisbee whizzing
through the air
above our heads
over the sand
into the water
onto the waves
out to sea.
You cried a lot that day.
Frisbee was a lovely dog."
A poem such as The Crocs of the Matter reaches for easy and obvious rhymes and is not in the same league:
"the one crime worse
than wearing crocs
is wearing crocs with socks."
In contrast, Internet Shopping, a clever satire on globalisation, benefits from the absence of a clanging rhyme, making its understatement more powerful.
Bilston is at the beginning of his poetic career, so “weeding” is something he will develop as he develops his art. Twitter accepts the ephemeral as well as the profound, but the printed page is less forgiving. This book could really have been half its length, which would have allowed the stronger poems to shine.
To develop in public in such a blaze of publicity must be daunting, but Bilston has proved that he is a poet and that the public have a thirst with poetry. Ultimately the best poetry, whether serious or funny, is about deeper feelings.
His quick-tweet poems about Trump are throwaway but the quotidian of Little Poems points to work that could be more lasting. It delivers the pain of rejection with a light and humorous touch and serves as a coda for this collection:
"You would write
little poems for me,
and scatter them
around the house,
like unexpected confetti . . .
2 tins toms, read one
Cuc x 3, caulie, bread rolls.
I came to adore
these lettres d'amour,
and would secretly clamour
for their post-it note
glamour."
Martina Evans is a poet and novelist. The Windows of Graceland: New and Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in June 2016
