Title: Days Like These
Author: Brian Bilston
Type: Poetry
Page Count/Review Word Count: 540
Rating: 4/5
Brian Bilston has been described as “the poet laureate of Twitter”, a distinction which perhaps loses some of its shine when you remember what happened to Twitter. But in any case, I always saw more of his stuff being shared by people on Facebook.
Days Like These is a collection of Bilston’s poetry in which there’s a poem for every single day of the year, with Bilston doing his best to tie his poems into those days. Sometimes it’s something as arbitrary as National Hot Chocolate Day (I’m making that up but I bet it exists). Other times, it’s the more obvious stuff, such as poems that are themed around Easter or the changing of the seasons.
Alongside the poetry, Bilston also provides a short introduction to each poem that helps to place it into context and give you a clearer idea of the circumstances in which it was written. That’s important, because we have to remember that the majority of these poems were written with social media publication in mind. They were literally tailored towards the days they were published on.
Of course, the nature of this book also means that there are different ways you can approach it. You could read one poem a day, savouring the book for a whole year, or you could do what I did and read it over a couple of days, a hundred poems or so at a time.
It’s actually quite a substantial tome for a poetry book, and I think that adds to its appeal. I’m used to poetry collections that you can read through in an hour or so, and so it was a joy to pick up something I could get properly stuck into.
I’ve previously read Bilston’s You Took the Last Bus Home, and I’d have to say that I enjoyed that a little more than this one. Nevertheless, I’m pleased to have picked up both of them and I plan to read more of Bilston’s work when I get a chance. There’s also the fact that because he’s so prolific on social media, you can check out plenty of his work for free.
That’s pretty much all I have to say about this one, which causes me something of a problem because I need to hit 540 words to satisfy my rule of making sure that my reviews have the same number of words as the books have pages.
Still, suffice to say that I was pretty happy with this one and that I’d definitely recommend picking it up if you get a chance, especially if you can find a cheap copy in a charity shop like I did. Brian Bilston is the closest thing we have to a poet for the masses in today’s day and age, and while I don’t necessarily always like his work, that’s inevitable with poetry.
For me, Bilston has something around a 70% success rate, which actually puts him somewhere in my top ten poets or so. And if nothing else, that statistic shows just how hard to please I can be when it comes to reading poetry.
