The chalked outline of a dead poet on the carpet

WRITTEN BY ALI WHITELOCK

Jul 01, 2025

Glasgow is my happy place. It is a city heaving with grunt, grunge, music, history, creativity, too much deep fried food (yes, Mars Bars and lately, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, who does that?), incredible architecture, the best Indian food you will ever taste, art, poetry, Magi Gibson and absolute wonder.

I’d just finished a morning’s writing and decided to reward myself with a trip to the bookshop. I’d been hearing great things about this new poetry collection that had just been released and I was keen to get my hands on it. I’d read a poem by this poet years earlier and considered it to be one of the best poems I’d ever read. I’d go as far as calling it an absolute masterpiece.

Of course we all know poetry is subjective. But I think it’s worth asking ourselves what it is we want from a poetry collection. Personally, I want to be able to pick it up again and again and each time I want it to fill my at times depleted tank, inspire my own work and bring me a deep and somehow inexplicable emotional connection to myself and the world. I know, it’s a huge ask. Probably too huge, but there are a few collections on my bookshelf that do that, every time. They are too numerous to mention, but the three I’ve been rereading this week are Bill Moran’s Oh God Get Out Get Out, James Tate’s, Ghost Soldiers and my poetry coconspirator Magi Gibson’s, Washing Hugh MacDiarmid’s Socks. I return to these collections time and again and they excite me every time. Like most people, I’m not interested in mediocre poetry. Our tag line here at The Magi & Ali Poetry Show isn’t––fuck mediocrity, we want risk––for nothing. I want poetry that doesn’t just shine, but curls the paint off walls. I want to dine on the poet’s words forever, after all, writes Oscar Wilde, If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all.

I’d seen this new collection being discussed on socials, and the reviews were in:

––Electrifying

––Intimate, dynamic, profound

––Defiant

––Urgent

––Redefines the paradigms of poetry

I have no idea what that last line could possibly mean, but I was keen to find out. My hopes were high. I couldn’t wait to hold this book in my hands and for the poems to weave themselves into every fibre of my being. Perhaps reading them would bring a new dimension to my own writing? Maybe it would unlock all of my thus far unrealised talent and finally catapult me into international fame and fortune – you know, something I so rightly deserve ;)

It was winter. The warmth of the bookshop rushed to meet me as I stepped in through the automatic doors. On approaching the counter, I was somewhat taken aback to find the young woman on duty was wearing a neon yellow wig with neon braids dangling from each side––Rapunzelesque, if you will. I looked around for a poster perhaps advertising a themed day at the shop, a kind of Come As Your Favourite Distressed Damsel Day. I didn’t see one. I turned back to her. She was mesmerising to look at –– alabaster skin, bright green eyes, shoulders slouched in that way that conveys a certain, (how can I put this?), disinterest in all that’s going on around her. Trying not to stare too intently, I asked her where I might find the poetry section. Oh, you’ll find poetry over there, she said, pointing to the back of the shop, IN CRIME. I imagined that section of the store cordoned off with police tape, a CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER poster blu-tacked to the wall, maybe even the chalked outline of a dead poet on the carpet.

As you would expect, the book was prominently displayed. I lifted a copy from the teetering pile as though I were handling a priceless artefact, paid for it and proceeded to the cafe to order my coffee and oversized croissant which more resembled a loofah than the buttery French pastry loved the world over. It even looked like it might take the dead skin off your elbows.

The cafe was on the second floor. I found a seat by the window that looked straight onto the roof of the red sandstone tenement opposite, small trees growing in its gutter. In anticipation of the riches the reviews had promised me, I sat down and opened the book. Ah, that new book smell! The sound of those pages cracking open for the very first time! In a warm bookshop on a wintry day, is there any better feeling than this?

With most poetry collections, I dip randomly into the book and select poems with titles that appeal. But with this one, I didn’t want to miss any possible connections between each poem that the poet may have been at pains to make. So I started at the first poem. And I read and I read and I read. And I kept reading, dipping my loofah into my coffee in an attempt to make it remotely palatable. And I didn’t stop reading, turning each new page faster than the last, a pile of abrasive crumbs assembling on my lap. And I read and I read and I read some more. And I didn’t find one fucking poem in that book that set my hair on fire. I didn’t even find one which made my hair smoulder, if indeed hair can smoulder. I just fact-checked myself––it can.

I flicked through the book again, maybe I’d been too hasty? Maybe I was too distracted by the croissant? Maybe there was at least one gem in the collection and I’d somehow missed it? So I read it through again, and alas, I had to concede, with a very fucking heavy and frankly, furious, heart that I’d spent $30 on something I’d rather jam down the toilet than read again. Jesus––the disappointment, the despair, the money! But also, fuck all those critics who’d told me this was the best collection since a, continuing with the French theme here, sliced baguette.

Feeling not just ripped off, but also despondent at what passes as exceptional poetry in the so-called upper echelons of the literary world, I thought, nah, fuck it, I’m returning it.

But would the bookstore take it back? I mean, I’d been in the cafe in full view reading the bloody thing, and whilst I hadn’t dog-eared it or left a coffee cup ring on any of the pages, I just didn’t know if I’d get my hard earned cash refunded. My strategy was simple: honesty was going to be the best policy. I’d simply front up as the philistine I’d clearly be judged to be. So, I walked up to the counter, plastered on my best apologetic smile, cleared my throat and explained that I really fucking hated the book. Without so much as raising an eyebrow above her emerald green eyes, the lovely Rapunzel offered me a full refund. I accepted it and felt very proud of myself for standing firm in the face of bad poetry. As I left the bookshop, Charles Bukowski’s, It is hard to find a man whose poems don’t finally disappoint you, accompanied me all the way to my next stop which would be the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, where I was sure I’d find a pastry whose primary purpose was not exfoliation.

As the day went on it niggled me that I hadn’t enjoyed the collection. So, that night I typed the collection’s name into google. Imagine my horror to discover the collection I had so summarily dismissed had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. How can this be? Who decides what passes as good and bad poetry? Do these poetry reviewers know something I don’t? Are they really better equipped to understand the fine art of poetry better than I am? How come I fell for the blurbs? Can I ever trust my own true feelings on poetry again?

As I contemplated these questions, my mind drifted back to the early 80’s when I was part of a group of friends who were serious punk rockers. I was seventeen, had the spiky hair, the plastic trousers, mad make-up and occasionally wore a studded dog collar around my neck. All the punks in my group loved The Stranglers, Bauhaus, The Sex Pistols, the list goes on. And while I liked many of the punk bands around at the time, the truth is, my favourite music back then was Country and Western. I loved Patsy Cline, Glen Campbell and Tammy Wynette, amongst other musicians who might be called cheesy at best. But I never disclosed this to any of my group––ever. How could I? I’d go to punk concerts with my punk buddies, pretend I had a great time, then go back home and play the scratchy LPs of the musicians I truly loved behind the locked door of my bedroom . As I listened to Tammy urging me to stand by my man and Glen advising the Wichita lineman was somehow still on the line, I knew I’d have to take my awful secret to the grave. Until I exposed it here on Substack, of course.

So, fellow Substackers, don’t be tricked into believing something is good because the literary gate keepers, punk rockers or other culture snobs told you it was. Make up your own mind. Love what you love. Anything else––demand a refund.

(PS: I haven’t named the poet nor the collection in question here, because I think that would be particularly uncool!)

The above Substack is written by Ali Whitelock.