Britain just hates everyone who isn’t British. They hate them at sports, they hate them at Eurovision. Maybe they’re just jealous; everyone else has better weather, better public transport, better Eurovision entries. It’s not that they hate the Irish less, they just stopped noticing Irish people when they found someone else to hate. Kim O’Flynn’s poem commemorates a different time when the British had the Irish at the top of the list of people they hate. We got good at ‘fitting in with the rest.’
No one hates anyone as much as Russia hates Ukraine though, and even if they’re slowly losing, and facing economic collapse, four years since they fully invdaded they still seem to be intent on being one of the most brutal destructive countries to exist. In amongst that, Ukrainians still go to the supermarket and try to live their lives. Anna Bowles sent a number of poems set in Ukraine. ‘Supermarket’ was the one that highlighted something the others didn’t. War is brutal and war is mundane.
I rarely see a poem where the visual layout of the poem seems necessary or useful. I think sometimes it ends up being a lazy way to make the poem distinctive. It is a formatting nightmare. Melisande Fitzsimon’s poem, ‘Agnes gets lost in the Netherverse’ makes this work, as it portrays a person who is fragmented, disconnected and losing. We’ve all met this person. We all hope not to be this person.
You can read the poems in full at the links below for free throughout June. Other poems are available to members for £2 a month, sign up here
Anna Bowles ‘Supermarket’
Melisande Fitzsimons ‘Agnes gets lost in the Netherverse’.
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