Overheard in a Tower Block: Poems by Joseph Coelho and Kate Milner
| Overheard in a Tower Block: Poems by Joseph Coelho and Kate Milner | |
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| Category: Children's Rhymes and Verse | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: There's a very clever and poetic mood conveyed by these pages as a whole, but as for instantly likeable verse for the young, that may be a different matter. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 112 | Date: July 2017 |
| Publisher: Otter-Barry Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781910959589 | |
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Longlisted for the 2018 CILIP Carnegie Medal
I've said it before, and I'll end up saying it again – for sheer variety of contents, and diversity on the page, you can seldom beat poetry. Here are bullied children, the angst of parental break-up, and hard-done-by gods getting revenge. We're in the realm of myth, and Richmond Park, and Eastbourne. We're with whale sharks, or stuck in tower blocks, or feeding the seagulls that are with us in the latter but that ought to be with the former. We're rapping about puberty, visiting our absent father to tell him our exam results, and leaving for university. I'm sure you'll agree, that's spread enough for any book, let alone a slender hundred pages.
But it might all mean nothing if the form conveying that content does not work. And I have to repeat something else – that I was once a child, and a child who read poetry now and again. And I haven't changed my tastes that much that I can't work out what child-me would have enjoyed on these pages. And at times I would have hated some of them. The fact that I got to find a distinctive and unexpected flavour – and yes, a kind of unity, despite the disparate contents – here, is down to adult-me knowing more about poetry and its techniques. But in reviewing a book clearly for the young, I do have to go on record as to say that the child-me would have struggled, and therefore many more may do likewise, without an adult nudge into comprehension, understanding and appreciation.
So it took a few pages for me to find something I really liked here – but that like was a very strong one indeed. A parental argument is equated to a monster calling, or played out against a new hobby courtesy of a home electrical circuit kit. Twice we visit a very strongly rhythmical and rhyming world of seemingly malicious statues – I have no idea if there's a puzzle to be solved as to what they are or not, but they're brilliant.
I think a lot of what makes this book distinctive is the style – certainly it varies widely from what I would have presumed to expect from a young, Afro-Caribbean-looking author, who seems to be writing very autobiographically of inner city life. There is that one puberty rap, and none other. Instead we're very lyrical, and much slower. A lot is blank verse, with a languor to it, and not the snap of the patois-filled contemporary verse our author's colleagues settle for. A lot just seems blank verse – the second of three visits to the life cycle of Prometheus does incredibly clever things with form you might not cotton on to immediately, a trick which is repeated by the last work here.
The fact that the book features a long narrative, with our authorial voice growing from primary school woes to parenthood, is further evidence that these pages may lack the immediate child-friendliness you might be seeking. In style and substance, they may well be not what the young reader has ever come across. Which, in-and-of itself, is no bad thing. But I still think a helping hand – or decades of maturity – might be needed for the young reader to see just what cleverness s/he has got hold of here. As a book for the young, then – meagre pickings, and three stars. With a personal reflection based upon being an adult – strong stuff, and a more encouraging four stars. So it is recommended, but with caveats.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
Message from the Moon by Hilda Offen has, if anything, an even more colourful range.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Overheard in a Tower Block: Poems by Joseph Coelho and Kate Milner at Amazon.com.
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